The British learnt many lessons from the Boer War of 1899-1902, including valuable experience in the use of field artillery. As a result, the 18-pounder field gun was developed, and this excellent gun became the main British field artillery weapon during the Great War.

The gun is of course the centrepiece, and a very nice job has been made of it. Some gluing is required but the whole assembly fits together well and is sufficiently detailed for most tastes. However its crew does not fare so well. There are two poses - a man carrying a shell and another protecting his ears - not much of a selection by anyone's standards. Since neither are directly handling the gun it rather sits there looking a little forlorn. If one man is covering his ears against the firing, it seems reasonable to expect another man doing the firing! Both the crew are dressed as regular infantry, which includes full packs and even an entrenching tool. In reality these items would have been put to one side as an unnecessary encumbrance, and in fact photos of the time suggest the men would more likely have been in shirt sleeves as manning the gun was hot work.

The officer is dressed in standard British officer's uniform, and is presumably monitoring the success of the shots through his binoculars. This is OK, though it is difficult to see why he is pointing to his left.

To help make up for the lack of a proper gun crew this set includes a number of infantrymen. There seems no other motive as these men are clearly ignoring the gun. Both the riflemen are poses also to be found in the British Infantry set, and while they are reasonable figures they simply shouldn't be here at all. The third infantryman, however, is unique to this set. He is firing a Vickers machine gun of a type commonly used during the war, though this weapon has been sculpted with both front legs straight out in front of the gun, making it highly unstable. Of course the legs should be splayed out to form a proper tripod. Also, to avoid excess plastic, one of the legs is provided separately and must be glued in place. However this is an extremely weak joint as there is no real support for it. There are also problems with the legs of the gunner himself, in that he would have been trained to sit on the ground behind his weapon, not kneel behind it like this. Finally, this man should have a No. 2 carefully feeding the ammunition belt for the gun.

Sculpting is excellent and there is good detail. There was no flash to be removed, and in general we liked the models. However the quite serious shortcomings already mentioned make this a good model of an important gun but with little else to recommend it. The Airfix Great War artillerymen could usefully be employed here, but there would still be no horses or tractor to pull the gun.