Stunning!! I'm sure I can make use of these sets but what would be brilliant would the same thing for the medieval world.

Not to mention WWI/WWII, Naploeonic, RTW, GNW and many others. Camps would be nice too. I'm alreadu sold on the transport

Dear Matelot

Scholarly link.

The pack animals look OK as there would be lots of solutions of how to distribute weight and the size and weight of the pack would determine the harness. Some of the loads actually seem to sit a bit low but that is easily remedied. On the whole very useful indeed and would suit many periods.

The oxen would normally pull via a neck yoke and the horses would pull via a dorsal yoke as per your link. The arrangement on the oxen looks too fussy. A pole between two oxen with the yokes (bent pieces of wood) and then a shaft from the the pole to the cart. The cart with the bent pole and shaft would be ideal but the bar and yoke should be situated further forward on the animals and the rest of the harness would be supplementary for additional control. Plenty of examples around the world of the neck yoke still in use with oxen but the principles are universal ie pulling from the shoulder not the girth. The oxen are very nicely sculpted and would have been far more useful without any harness at all like the Pegasus ones (although these lack the neck yoke but so easy to make with a bit of bent wire or plastic rod). These ones:

I understand from past experience that what you see is what you get (wysiwyg) so a bit of a shame as these newbies from Strelets look as good as or better than a lot of draught animals readily available from other manufacturers

David

Looks very promising! Those mules are going to be snapped up by fans of several periods.
Have a feeling that a lot of those camp followers are destined for a nasty fate accompanying Varus in Teutoburger Wald dioramas and wargames...

Awesome. Even a pregnant woman well sculpted helps teh atmosphere of teh caravan.I think of Wagon train a classical set but this beats it hands down.Well done SR. aNIMALS ARE GOOD OX AND pack mules , i hope to see more sets with mules reused up to ww2 technocal sets.(you will get your money back Alone on teh mules many times over).
oKAY get more of these technical sets designed after you finish Turkish Cavalry RTW.

Dear David,
Clarification: When I said that the draught animals are not actually convincing to me I meant the oxen harness in particular. I've not noticed until now that there are mules as well. They look good. The carts are a real flaw if they actually come as shown. But I'm afraid you're right when you say: wysiwyg . On the other hand, the humans look very nice, indeed. Like them.

These sets look very promising. Bit-o-critique.

+ Great beasts-of-burdeon and cargos
+ Nice figures
+ Love the Cart
- Shouldn't the wagon have some sort of steering? Two fixed axles don't quite look right.

Overall, great work. My compliments to the sculptor! These will compliment my cherished Atlantic Ancient War Machines. Nice soft plastic with great details, just like the CW Russian Naval Cannons.

A dream comes true! There may be a number of uses for these sets for wargaming, but in any case, there are zillions of things to do with them for the diorama builder!
The carts are not wholly convincing, I agree, but there are plenty of carts available already in plastic, resin, metal. What really counts for me here is the variety of versatile figures. Many of them could be used either as civilians or as Roman soldiers in fatigue dress, absolutely great!

Congrats to Strelets. Good looking sets. These could be my first ever Strelets buy!

One minor point though, perhaps the small ox cart in set 2 is overkill? Perhaps replace it and the oxen with some hand carts but leave the mules? Merely a thought.

Looks really excellent with lots of uses

Please, please please Strelets re-consider those god-awful wheels at least. A quick glance at Matelot's link will show that wheels like that - which wouldn't last down the road, let alone across a continent - just weren't never used.

This is such a good set, it's a shame to spoil it for something like the cart wheels.

Disappointing... the wagons need to be seriously reconsidered.. Female roman dress is not the same as medieval... the mules are good and the male figures and children are I think fine for the most part...


Cheers

Two interesting links, one in English, one in German:

Roman clothing: Women

http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/clothing2.html

(have a look at the image list too)

Keltische und germanische Frauentracht im Spiegel römischer Darstellungen (it may take up to half a minute or so to download the article, so please be patient):

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:c8tacZOrXQQJ:www.fg-zinnfiguren.de/texte/Frauentrachten.PDF+keltische+germanische+frauentrachten&hl=de&gl=ch&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESifq04KmJF3tF9N3NV3_22YaMvFnzQYWNMDPIg1y1-G4AL3HFNsvkhSW1xxUGRCE_33wQOhNuJDJ86PfeqwclPtoYhXFPhff4OxCRaGr002auZ25GTofWYjeDnFIj6tXCiLjQb1&sig=AHIEtbROJ2osy79CYfZisPmsxHNr4QxIGg

(also available in PDF-format; just google for the title)

I'll buy these sets for the pack-mules alone.

Strelets sure has a winner with this set. Absolutely love them.

I was really impressed by the imagination that went
into these sets. They are so much more than what I
expected. I really liked the figures and the cart
in the second set. Great job! My only quibble, and
its a minor one, I would have preferred a single
figure to drive the cart rather than the co-joined
couple.

what bunch of party poopers ...

I am not into Roman era but there are some cracking ideas here. If nothing else the mules are just what the doctor ordered!

Produce a mini set of pack mules only with the loads without delay.

The Western allies, being mainly mechanised in the 30s, may not have used horse power on the scale of the Nazis but mules are a different matter!

is song to listen to. but it speak volume so yes rcd a mule set alone would be big buck$ winner for sr and collectors. roman up to korea wars.awesome .

then make technical sets that have different poses for mule dfrivers in each set. so mule set becomes a generic wars resource pack.

tents also. arabian tents and bell tents square marquee tents .ones that paint does not distort so plastic used pse.yes way to go rcd....i have long been an advocate for teh mules especiale FFL etc.

These are quite wonderful,they will of course be popular in their own right,but the mules......yippee about time someone did them,oxen...ditto, the carts in these sets will be bought for converting up to about 1500ad or so ,the figures no doubt will be used in countless dioramas,they fill alot of gaps,get them in the shops strelets,but sort the wheels out first.

Dear All

The pregnant woman is near full term so I presume she is carrying the sack to speed things up (induce labour). They did have cloth bands to support the foetus so Strelets have this right. A swig of wine also helps, kindly offered by the lady next to her but baring the breast is a bit obscure.


David