Perry Plastic ACW Artillery: A Short Review

 The new Perry 28mm plastic ACW Artillery box sets just arrived over at Architects of War so I couldn't resist running over and grabbing 3 boxes of them.  Each box comes with 3 guns (with 4 barrel options each), 6 crew per gun and 3 Caissons.  I've read that the Perry's will make some metal horses available so you can make limbers with Horse teams at a later date.

 I went ahead and put together one of the fund and painted it up as a "generic" Union gun and crew.  The barrel options with the kit include a (i) Napoleon 12 pdr, (ii) 3 inch Ordnance Rifle, (iii) 10 pdr Parrot, and (iv) 12 pdr Howitzer.

I used the 10 pdr Parrot for this gun crew.

Like all Perry plastics I've tried to date, these models are top notch and well worth investing in.  I should know as I've done at least 800+ Perry plastic infantry from Napoleonics through ww2.  My only complaint is a very minor - the instructions for assembling the crew figures are, shall we say, "minimalist" and it can be very confusing matching the arm sets to the figures.  I'm pretty sure after assembling a few crews those issues will not exist.  The figure sprues offer three different hat styles so one can have a good bit of variety.

What excites me the most about these figures is that now I've got a cost effective way to have multiple gun batteries on the table top.  I'll be basing these figures to use with my two favorite ACW rulesets - Longstreet for casual games and Regimental Fire and Fury when I want a more detailed simulation.

As for the caissons, I'll be using them for ammo resupply bases as per Regimental Fire and Fury.  I've got 4 metal limbers and teams already (2 Union and 2 Confederate) and may use 1 or 2 of the caissons to bulk out those when the metal horses become available.

A resounding Huzzahhh! for this box set.