Warlord Games WSS Plastic Artillery review

I picked up a box of the Warlord Games 'Marlborough's Wars' plastic artillery, in case I need to add some artillery support to my Pikeman's Lament Russian company.  As I previously reviewed Warlord's WSS infantry, I might as well show you what you will get in the artillery box.

As with the infantry, the set is a repackaging of the now defunct Wargames Factory War of the Spanish Succession artillery box.  I don't know what came in the WGF set, I am just looking at what you get with the Warlord Games offering.  And in my opinion, it's a reasonable chunk of stuff.  

The box comes with three identical frames, each containing enough bits to make one cannon (choice of 8-pdr or 12-pdr barrel), 4 crewmen and one mounted officer.  There's also some nice extra bits, including a couple of barrels, a bucket and several small stacks of cannonballs.

The artillery crew can be assembled holding either a sponge, a rammer, a scoop/ladle or a linstock.  One poor bloke is stuck holding a cannonball, no alternative arms for him!  There are 4 heads for the artillerymen, so not much variety unless you've saved your bits from the infantry or cavalry box (I didn't save my bits, dammit).  I really wanted the crew to be wearing tricorne hats, so I took some of the heads from my spare dragoons.

There are a few choices for the officer.  He can be with or without hat (he wears his wig either way), and there are three arm choices:  pointing, waving hat or waving sword.  I suppose he could have a linstock or a rammer...  I went with pointing.  

The cannon goes together quite nicely.  There are some small parts, like the handles and trunnion plates, so it's handy to have a pair of tweezers when doing the fine bits work.  

All in all, you get quite a bit from a single frame, and there are three of them in this box.  Everything in this photo (except the bases) came from just one frame.

The box also has two frames of bases, in a variety of sizes.  I love getting extra bases, and this box has lots of them.  If you wanted some 40 mm by 40 mm bases for your infantry, they're in this box!

About my only gripe about this box is that I wanted tricorne hats, and of course I found them in other sets.  I could grumble about the lack of variety with the figure poses, but that's only because I've been spoiled by other products.  The box certainly provides what it promises, and there's more variety in poses and equipment than I'd get with metals.