At the battle of Ravenna Pedro Navarro a Spanish commander came up with the idea of war carts, multiple guns on wheels with shields and spears to defend them, to add a bit additional strength to the infantry. Ive always been interested in them and as there arent any historical images of them I've tried to invent something that would suffice, made out of bits and bods I had lying around. I had some duplicate pieces from a hinchcliffe organ gun, a number of mdf wheels that I picked up from warbases, some aluminium and plastic tube,mdf offcuts, balsa wood, Perry plastic pavisses and some polearms from the same source, some old glory polearms, a couple of 15mm chariot bodies and some GW muskets which together with some old glory Swiss artillery crew( together with a few Foundry Swiss) gave me these war carts.
I used the late medieval ribauldquin as some form of inspiration, wrought barrels would be relatively easy to fabricate I thought? Outside of Ravenna, I'll just use them as light artillery.
A fun bit of scratch building, I went for red and yellow as Spanish colours but I still think they're generic enough.




















Great work on these carts Iain, and I really like the use of the Spanish colours.
ReplyDeleteThanks Lawrence, happy with the colours!
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Now that is a site to see, Iain. Crackin work!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ray!
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Excellent work! I didn't know they had defenses on artillery like that back then. Reminds me of some of the armor plating on more modern guns. The spikey bits are cool, too. Now I'm wondering why I haven't seen more of that kind of protection in fantasy armies, such as for dwarves and orcs.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think they were trying to give the infrantry a bit of support? Fun bits of kit anyway!
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These look great Iain - particularly en masse in the last few photo's. Hopefully a few people realise you have posted - I note no new posts have appeared on Jons PWJ Blog Roll for over two days - I just posted this but goodness when or if it will be shown to anyone? https://1808534.blogspot.com/2026/09/first-defenders-of-berlin.html
ReplyDeleteWell, besides my own!
DeleteThanks Keith, people seem to get here in the end, Im not in any hurry!
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Amazing bit of conversion and modelling, Iain.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much Richard!
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Impressive scratch building Iain! The war carts art spectacular. Exactly the sort of stuff I love.
ReplyDeleteI know,nice to do something a little unusual!
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Great use of the different parts Iain, they look fantastic on mass, and great painting to.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dave, not terrain but still fun!
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Super pieces of modelling Iain, they have turned out really well, super work on them.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much Donnie!
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An absolutely splendid job of using various parts (bits box).
ReplyDeleteYes, nice to have a big bits box!
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Those a re brilliant Iain:)! I checked your Blog via the 'All Blogs' option, where I can click on it and it shows your recent posts. Or at least the ones it has published alreayd, as it didn't show this one, until I actually visited your Blog:(. I only knew about it via your comment on Norm smith's Blog. Sooooo frustrating!
ReplyDeleteThanks Steve,hopefully that will get sorted out at some point?
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These guns look terrific, Iain!
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot Jonathan!
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Great work Iain. A genius idea by the Spanish that obviously didn't work so well as it was rarely used. But it would have been a bit of surprise to their opponents the first time they were used.
ReplyDeleteSorry I have taken so long to get to your post. I am going through my list slowly. On the upside a tried Jonathan Freitag's method in his blog and it worked for me in spreading my last post.
Yes fun bit of kit, even if not terribly succesful!
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Great work Iain!
ReplyDeleteThanks Michal!
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Really nice! I confess I didn't know of them and they are an interesting concept, but as said above, they have a Warhammer vibe!
ReplyDeleteThanks Suber, they do, dont they?
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Warhammer Empire and Dwarven armies would approve of this post and your creativity and research!
ReplyDeleteLove how you've managed to construct these out of random parts and not just one or two, but five of them! They are going to wreck havoc on their targets if they manage not to misfire! LOL
Yes a definite whfb vibe going on, until they go bang!
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Wow! Five cannons at once! It will be interesting to see the Italian pikemen.
ReplyDeleteThanks Alexi, still working on various colours!
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What a wonderful unit. The group shot would be a fearsome sight for any would be attacker.
ReplyDeleteLets hope so! Thanks a lot Michael!
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Blimey! That's great work Iain.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much Chris!
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A formidable battery of infernal looking machines!
ReplyDeleteBest wishes, James
Always good to have an infernal machine or two, I find!
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Those gun batteries look awesome Iain. Having scratch-built them, you must be very pleased with the outcome. The enemies they are up against, might be less pleased though, as I imagine these guns will open up some gaps in the opposing files!
ReplyDeleteWe can but hope Jason!
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Neat stuff, never even knew stuff like this was around but it makes sense if you think about it haha.
ReplyDeleteThanks SD, interesting stuff in the highways and byways of history!
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