Major General Abner Doubleday

This well sculpted Perry figure will most likely represent a standard union commander in my games, but the model himself is Major General Abner Doubleday. He was an able commander, but through false reports and personal dislikes saw him fall out of favour. He is probably most famous for firing the first return shot with his battery at Fort Sumter.

He fought in the battle of Second Bull Run leading a Brigade, then a division at South Mountain and was wounded leading his men at Antietam and was present though inactive at Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville. He again entered the fray with command of the I Corp at Gettysburg after Major General Reynolds was killed. His corps showed excellent fighting spirit when  of 9,500 of them  held off 16,000 confederates for 5 hours before having to retreat with several brigades suffering 35 to 50% causalities. Unfortunately for Doubleday another corps commander falsely indicted his command broke first and since Meade the commanding general didn't like Doubleday believing him to be an indecisive commander(his nickname was 48hours) choose to believe this and had him replaced. When Doubleday requested reinstatement of command from Meade for 1 Corps and was refused he decided to pack his bags and head for Washington to undertake administrative duties.

After the war he got into the railway business, law and wrote some books on his experience in the War.

Thanks for viewing!
Miniature Company- Perry Miniatures

I also won something over at Dalauppror blog here! It's a great blog full of Swedish wargaming history. Michael cleverly likes to take rule sets for other periods and use those with a Swedish background. Very nice painting and great AAR's can be found there so I highly recommend checking it out.
I won what seems to be a history of tanks in WWI and for sure I will be checking it out. Thanks Michael!

Warlord aquires Arsenal Miniatures

I just saw that Warlord acquired Arsenal Miniatures! Here I remember first seeing this range back in 2010 and thought it looked awesome! It looked to be coming along great and I was already set to spend some cash and then suddenly all work and communication stopped and I heard nothing for several years. I was sorely disappointed as my dreams of fighting the Spanish Hapsburgs and the Ottomans appeared to go up in smoke.

Here is the old Arsenal link:http://arsenalminiatures.blogspot.de/

It was with great pleasure to see that Warlord managed to get the range where others had tried and failed. I really hope they continue with Paul Hicks as the sculptor as the material already produced is at a fantastic standard. I'm very excited as this has a lot of potential and will present a beautiful spectacle on a battlefield.

Time to get ready to spend some cash again!:-)

Brigadier General William Barksdale

This is Redoubt figure of Brigadier General William Barksdale who will serve as himself when appropriate and as a fill in brigade commander at other times. I always liked Don Troiani's depiction of him in battle waving his hat forward for his Mississippians to charge so when I saw the figure on Redoubt page I new I had to include him in my collection.

A veteran of the Mexican War and a member of the House of Representatives and a true hot head who beat another member of Congress with his cane over states rights issues entered the Civil War first in the Militia before taking command of the 13th Mississippi. He led the regiment through the  first Battle of Bull Run, Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battle before taking command of the whole brigade after Brigadier General Richard Griffith was mortally wounded at Savage Station and leading it on a doomed, but heroic charge up the Malvern Hill. Barkesdale now a Brigadier general commanding "Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade" joined Major General Lafayette McLaws Division where his brigade under his leadership became a well known tough fighting brigade in the battles of Battle of Antietam, (Sharpsburg), Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and finally Gettysburg where his brigade smashed through the Union forces at the Peach Orchard before being stopped at Plum Run. Barkesdale was leading his men from horseback at the front which inspired his men(and the painting), but left him dangerously exposed and led to his death by bullet in his knee, a cannon ball to the foot and final bullet to the chest which brought him down for good.

Thanks for viewing!:-)
Miniature Company-Redoubt Miniatures

Late Roman armoured infantry (10mm)

Foraging once again into 10mm  to try it out in an effort to get some gaming in. While 28mm is my favourite scale and will remain my primary scale it takes me a very long time to finish each unit making gaming difficult for all the periods and armies I want to do. So, I've decided to concentrate for a little while on some of the smaller scales so I can have some armies to play when I return back to paint the long term 28mm projects that I have. While it still probably takes me too long at even this scale it for sure is much faster then 28mm.

While 10mm is quite small and one must sit down at the table when gaming to see the detail it does however have a certain charm to it that other scales just don't have. The larger scales are more serious and anything under 10mm is flat out too tiny IMHO.

Tim and I decided first to try the Late Roman period focused in Western Europe to start our 10mm venture. I picked Pendraken's very nice Late Romans and Tim went with Coppelstone's equally very nice fantasy Horse Tribe figures which look great for Goths. The Late Roman period has long held an interest for me so I was pretty happy to start here.

The figures are armoured infantry and are based for Impetus on 60mm x 25mm bases. I like a bit of room on my bases so I can handle the base and not the figures as much as possible, plus it comes in handy for the more energetic figures later on and I just think it looks better too. The figures are Pendraken and have surprising detail for the size. The shields are LBM transfers, but I ended up repainting them to give a stronger colour which comes to a good point on painting 10mm. This scale requires you to paint in high contrasts that would look way to strong in 28mm, but work very well for 10mm and is something I'm learning to do. At first I was kind of frustrated, but now that I'm finished I'm pleased with the results and still motivated to do more which is a good thing for future gaming. Oh, another real nice thing is the savings you make at this scale compared to 28mm or even 15mm which is quite significant!

Photography is another challenge for this scale and something I'm still trying to come to grips with so I took as many pics at as many different angles as I could in the hopes that you can see the figures well enough. I'm happy with the painting results, but the photography needs a lot of work still.  I hope to try some proper terrain background when I get a chance and see how that looks as that usually works better.

Thanks for viewing!:-)
Miniature Company- Pendraken