New Regiments from Steven Marthinsen

I'm still here - just resting!  Sorry I have not added anything for a while - to be quite honest my gaming interests have been elsewhere, mostly 15mm Napoleonics (Commands and Colors) and 28mm WW2 (Chain of Command), and with no resent releases fro Prince August I have not had anything to report, however.........

Some Eye Candy

Steven Marthinsen has kindly sent me some more photos of progress on his SYW project - it is nice to see that the moulds are being used and enjoyed. 

Austrian Cuirassier Regiment No. 9 Sachsen Teschen 

Steven sent me a few comments about casting these, which I will pretty much just repeat:

"....the casting was pretty easy overall.  The only locations that gave me any difficulty were the harnessing bit below the horse's mouth and the carbine.  Moving the clamps around before pouring fixed most issues as I have always found that a loose grip on the mold allowing air to escape was better than a tight grip.  This does create a bit of flash but that is easily cut away.  Assembly was straight forward and fit reasonable.  About the only concern I have is that when I complete the regiment of 12 figures I mount them three to a base.  This is a heavy base given all the metal and the fact that they are a bit over-sized.  To their credit, however, they are strong figures and well attached to their bases; some of the older Rossbach cuirassiers have relatively weak connections to their bases."

Saxon Infantry Regiment No.4 
Prinz Friedrich Augustus

It would be nice to see photos of any other projects which are underway.

Hopefully we will see something more from Prince August in the not too distant future if I hear anything I will let you know.

Cavalry - any feedback?

The Cuirassiers have now been released for over a month now, so hopefully some of you have taken the plunge to buy the moulds, cast and assemble some figures. It would be interesting to get some feedback before PA progress to the dragoons, which are hopefully later this year.

Size

PA have accepted that there has been an issue with 'scale creep' with the cuirassier riders, and intend to correct this with the dragoons. The current plan is to make the dragoons about 7% smaller in all directions, this will:

• Reduce the rider to about 42mm tall, so he will tie in with the infantry (he is currently too tall).

• Reduce the horse to about 15 hands - which is correct for a dragoon horse (it is correct for a 16 hand cuirassier horse).

• Reduce the assembled weight by about 20%. (My assembled troopers weigh in at 90g each, compared with 60g for the K-931 cavalryman - that is 50% more bulk. If they are reduced by 20% they should weigh in at about 72g, so should a nice size.)
• 
  

Multi Part?

With the figures that I cast there were a few of issues with the assembly (note that I had a set of 'test moulds', so slightly different from the ones that went into production):

• On some castings the torso was narrow relative to the horse, so was difficult to align (I do however use a variety of metals from old figures, so can tend to come out different sizes as they shrink differently). This could be easily rectified by just making the torso wider, so that there is always an overlap.

• I had difficulty fitting the right arm, particularly on the trooper. The problem was that the peg often ended up too large for the socket. I fixed that by shaving down the peg, and understand that this was modified before they went into production.

I know that PA are considering whether or not to continue with the multi part route so your feedback would be appreciated. (My preference is to continue multi part, but make them such that fit is less critical).