Can you ever have enough artillery?

After the last three weeks, my answer is yes, especially if you have to paint them all.

Things have been quiet here on the posting front as I have been conducingd a major audit of my French and British artillery, sorting into crews, allocating guns, and painting and basing the unpainted and unbased. The results are posted below.

I had thought I had finished, but have found one extra painted British gun, for which I will paint up one further RHA crew, and also I need to paint up a small number of extra French artillery drivers.

Though I wouldn't swear to it, I think the final tally is in the region of:

French

23 guns and 3 howitzers
4 caissons
6 limbers
around 30 horses

British

24 guns and three howitzers
Siege train of 2 18 pounders and a 10" howitzer
A rocket troop in light order (pack horses rather than rocket carts)
1 ammunition limber
12 limbers
around 50 horses

Guns are a mixture of Hinchliffe 20mm, Hinton Hunt, Der Kriegspieler and Newline Designs. There are also a couple of Fine Scale factory siege guns

It has to be said that Marcus Hinton was not at his best with artillery guns and equipment - managing to get them looking chunky and underscale at the same time.

The old Hinchliffe 20mm pieces are miniature masterpieces. The best currently available substitute for Hinton Hunt guns and limbers are those from Newline Designs - a big range, and as they are small 20mm pleasingly recall the slightly undersize look of Hinton Hunt ones, while being considerably more detailed.

My French artillery arm suffers from the usual over-representation of Guard units and the absence of line horse artillery from the Hinton Hunt range. I am intending to second some Guard horse artillery units to support of my Grand Duchy of Warsaw forces.

The acquisition of 30 or so Der Kriegspieler Royal Artillery gunners helped achieve a better balance between foot and horse artillery units for the British. I am also pleased with the siege train - I will sort out some trains for these, as I have considerable numbers of Jacklex oxen which serve a bridging train and colonial artillery units, and which can easily do double duty for the Napoleonic period.

Next task is a second (Der Kriegspieler) Hesse Darmstadt battalion. This will leave me with some new Russian and Prussian acquisitions to complete; and audit of my Austrians; and then facing up to around 100 battalions of French and British infantry - and then the cavalry.... I think in the circumstances the approach of completing national contingents has worked quite well