Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Dystopian Legions: Kingdom of Britannia Armstrong 14 Pounder Cannon

As the second of my recent purchases (the first is reviewed here) I bought the Kingdom of Britannia Armstrong 14 lb cannon. I have been eagerly awaiting this mini, as I love the overall 'historical' look of this mini, whilst it's still clearly a fantasy/VSF piece (although less so than the Prussian Tesla weapons).

The mini is a mixture of resin and metal parts, with 2 metal crewmen. The overall quality is good, with there being no flash or seams on the crewmembers, however, the gun, and especially the wheels suffer from a common problem with Spartan vehicles, in that they have a large flash/chunk of metal where they have been snipped from their sprue. With one of mine, the clippers had also caught the edges of the wheel. This is not the end of the world, as this part of the wheel can certainly be used to stick the gun to the base, and therefore be completely hidden. This was slightly more of an issue with the Bassett Tankettes than it is here. Another issue I found was that there was a crack in the resin of the main part of the gun. I'm not sure what could have caused this, other than a flaw in the resin at casting, but it was easily filled with a dab of liquid green-stuff, and will be completely invisible after painting.

Gun parts

Crew

 
The infamous Spartan Wheel Sprue issue


Crack in the resin

The last thing about this kit (and all the artillery pieces for the other factions) is that it is released with a Spartan custom base. This base is perfect for creating little dioramas on to spice up the battle field. I think this will be the perfect place to use up the bags of Secret Weapon sandbags or bricks I had bought for the bases of the Bassett's, until I realised there's no space on their bases to add anything but the mini and a little mud. 

The assembled gun on cool base.
Overall a pleasing model, with rules that may have to wait until I am playing against a bunch of Ironclads, so there's no real rush for me to get this guy painted yet (my opponents don't have any tanks that need killing. Yet). I give this guy 7 out of 10, as the casting flaws were easily remedied, and the crew were of a very high standard.

2 comments:

  1. I wonder if I can get away with one of these for the Zulu Wars? A fabulous piece of kit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Although it has a historical look, I don't know how historically accurate it is (my guess is not very), as the whole shield plate part seems much more WWI, but my theory on gaming is if you like the fig, use it! ;)

      Delete