Guns of/for August - Early WW1 French Artillery in 12mm

12mm French 75mm guns for the early WW1 period. Metal castings by Kallistra.

Back in 2021 I started an early-war WW1 project, inspired by the "1914" rules from Great Escape Games. In painted up a decent-sized German force for the game, but only barely started on some French opponents. Well, the French are now getting some reinforcements, and I thought it best to start with a "bang" - painting up a pair of French 75mm guns. 

Most of the figures I have been painting so far for this project have come from Great Escape Games, but while I love their infantry and cavalry, I find, for whatever reason, the guns they have sculpted to be rather over-sized for the scale. The German field guns from their range look huge, and so I took a pass on their equivalent French offering, and opted instead to paint some figures from Kallistra's awesome 12mm WW1 range.

Great little sculpts from Kallistra - and the gun is excellent. 

Kallistra's WW1 range is admirably complete - right down to offering horse-holding figures for your dismounted cavalry, and even artillery limbers for those gaming types who are truly deranged and would paint such things! While I do have quite a few infantry figures from Great Escape Games, I do find myself turning more and more to Kallistra to expand the collection for this project...my only criticism is that they do not have infantry carrying their packs - and I find those packs have a lot of character, so would be awesome to see from Kallistra, but that is a very, very small bone to pick and overall I really, really recommend them.

Ready for direct fire support in August of 1914!

These guns and crew are based on 50mm squares for the "1914" rules, which will have the players still seeking to deploy these deadly weapons on a direct-firing basis. The French will need them as they enact Plan XVII, seeking to liberate Alsace and Lorraine in August of 1914...

Stay tuned for more WW1 stuff through the summer, in honour of "The Guns of August" - thanks for reading, hope you are having a great day!