Just a wee caveat on the New FFL Artillery piece with crew.....WRONG SCALES.....While the gun garrison is at the TGM standard 1:30 scale the gun BELIVE IT OR NOT is on a most likely 1:35 scale...too small! It seems TGM got a master mold for the gun at 1:35 scale....You can easily see that by a close look and you notice the height of the wheels and they are about the chest height on the standing gunner! Just look at a period picture or sets from other manufacturers and you will automatically see that....It is a pitty......As an artillery fan, I was really looking for its release and got a furstration impact when I actually saw pictures of the set....
Other than that, I did question myself the non standard approach chosen by TGM on the non regulation layout of the gun garrison. Having said that, the gunner and layer would be seated by the gun at the defined seats ( included in the gun as we see by the set pictures)! TGM opted to assume that the officer instructed the garrison to fire from open sights and on a straight tragectory....meaning that the garriosn - short of at least one gunner ( the layer ) must be either on the verge of being overrun or the target is in the open and easily visible for firing on the desperate choice of !!! " guess firing" as no one is using the gun sighting although it is clearly there..... Using only one gunner " standing " maning the gun breach...which is ok as it could be done on a desparate situation, it would be great if they did go the extra mile and added the two seated gunners....Guess they did not do that for the obvious reason that being the gun smaller in scale to the soldiers, he could not figure out how to seat the gunners....
Well, bottom line I will not add this set to my collection due to the crucial and important miss...WRONG SCALE! Would not expect that from TGM....Big blunder!
Wrong - its not 1/35 scale, its 1/30 scale or very close to it. Admittedly the wheels are a little small by approximately
2mm due to mould shrinkage but then its not the end of the world.
Secondly you have not taken into account the soldiers are on a base which has increased their height by 3mm. The 5mm difference would have brought the wheels up to chest height.
The reason we did not do seated gunners was because the gun support struts were in the way, you can see this below in our photo, and the sculptor advised standing or kneeling crew. Originally this was supposed to be a 3 man set but because we decided to add an additional crew member at the last minute, there was no time for complicated add on crew poses.
As you can see from the 1/35 scale painted model kit next to our 1/30 scale model there is a noticeable size difference in width, height and length.
There are also plenty of photos on the internet where the crew are not seated and as this is only a toy solider set AC we are allowed a degree of flexibility with poses.
Last but not least - this is a desperate situation, this cannon is designed to go with our firing infantry who are about to be overrun by our Arab Berbers, once everything from this release is put into context it will become quite obvious.
Provided we make a WW1 version, we wont be doing seated gunners then either.
If you decide not to buy then its entirely up to you, as the set is 95% sold out we are very happy with the overall result.
Regards Cathy
