234 : Würst News

The first Würst news came back in Post 114. However, the Redline model that was being sculpted then never went into production. An Austrian gun with a Würst seat must have been one of the first things that I encouraged Eliot of Highfield Miniatures to design for his 1809 range. It was certainly what the 10mm 1809 tabletop was in most need of.

Eliot’s design is a perfect 10mm model of an Austrian 6-pdr Cavalry gun with a Würst seat. It was the gun’s extended trail with the leather seat that was known as the Würst – the sausage. With the crew members sitting on it, it made the gun much slower moving than the horse artillery of other nations. However, it more than made up for this as the crew could mount and dismount faster and therefore had more time to fire.

I mentioned back in Post 108 that I might need to find a way of distinguishing different types of artillery batteries – one base representing an artillery battery of six guns in my rules. Now, an Austrian Cavalry battery can be easily distinguished by a Würst gun model!

I was keen to get a Würst gun on a base and with it a crew from the Highfield range. I was given a preview of Eliot’s Austrian artillery gunners before he finalised their design. I encouraged him to design more than one crew. He went ahead and did two. But as he designed crews of six and my guns only have crews of four, that counts as three crews to me! The 12 figures can, of course, be mixed up to produce a great variety of artillery crews – obviously keeping me and my love of variants happy!