Economical Bavarian B-Echelon

As I have often said, I do like a nice bit of rear echelon supply transport for my armies. But often wagons are an expensive luxury and like limbers are left out of the collection. For big battles the wagon park isn't really important. but for Sharp Practice I hope these will become the focus of some games.

I got myself some clever MDF wagon kits from Warbases and their Napoleonic Carts and Wagons range. They also provide metal draft horses and generic drivers. The drivers are without any identifying headgear, so just paint the jacket and trousers in the appropriate colours for the Transport Corps of your choice! Even with the resin top, metal horses and drivers each wagon came to roughly half the cost of buying metal wagon kits. The Perry wagon would cost me around Cdn$30. And I would have had to do a head swap to make the driver not French. The Warbases wagon with the extra canvas cover, pair of draft horses and a driver cost me Cdn$18.00 all together, so an easy decision.

Assembly was a bit of a puzzle but I sussed it out after some trial, a bit of error,  and referring to the website.

Notice broken hoops. Fortunately I only needed one set.

Ready to paint! 

For the rigid top, which in my mind is so typical of supply wagons during the era, the pre-creased cardboard top needed to be wetted and formed around a cylinder of the correct size (in my case, a marker barrel), then glued and clamped into place over the hoops.

Supply wagons at the Battle of Leipzig 1813

Good progress during a paint and chat over Zoom

The canvas cover is a solid resin piece that you can buy separately. 

The rigid top wagons seemed to have been used for either powder or bread.

For basing I decided that they're going to be on roads mostly, so I'd repeat the trick that I used on my samurai baggage and the mule train by keeping flocking to the edges. White self-adhesive flower tufts from Shadow's Edge continue the Alpine theme that I have on other Bavarian bases. I strategically placed extra flock and tufts to obscure the high edges to the bases on the horses.

Now my Bavarian Army has wagons for their beer, sausages and pretzels! A vital objective for Hans and Franz to guard from marauding Russians and Prussian Freikorps. I can see myself getting some Cossacks and maybe Lutzow's Freikorps next year.