In case you were wondering

Since all my non-battle posts have only featured Americans so far I thought some might be wondering if I have British troops for my AWI collection the answer is indeed I do.:-) As a matter of fact I have more British then I do Americans and this is the reason for the concentration on painting Americans, and I also like painting Hunting shirts and militia. :-).

The British featured here are not painted by myself, but rather figures I bought already finished. They were painted nice and cleanly and I got them for a great price so I was very pleased.  However, I did have to do some touch ups on the paint jobs and paint out all the eyes as they had a Marty Feldman "bug eyed" look. I personally stopped painting eyes on my own figures years ago as it's totally unnecessary IMHO at 28mm, and realistically you would not see them, plus you have to paint them perfect on each one or it will actually detract instead of improve a good paint job. They were also based singly so I had to pop them off and re-base them onto my standard multi-base stands for my collection.

The figures are mostly Front Rank and not very good in terms of sculpting , but in defence of Front Rank which I happen to really like btw these are some of their older sculpts. Currently in other ranges they are producing some of the best figures on the market so I really hope they go back and redo their 28mm AWI range as I'd be buyer! One unit I have no idea the manufacturer(Hinchcliffe?), but these too are not to my taste. Anyhow, like I said they were all cleanly painted and a great price so I'm not complaining as they look just fine on the battlefield!:-)

This pretty much covers my regular and light British regiments for now, but I need to add some Grenadiers, Artillery, Commanders, Loyalist units, and some German allies yet. So plenty for me to personally paint up for the crowns forces.

Thanks for viewing!:-)
Miniature Company- Front Rank, Unknown?

Dry Climate/Arid Battle Cloth and thoughts on gaming

I've been meaning to do a a more arid battle cloth for quite some time as my current battle cloth has limited me to Europe and North America in full summer bloom with rich greens and plenty of healthy vegetation and grass. So, yesterday I set to work in toxic fumes to see what I could do. This new battle cloth opens up the Mediterranean, parts of Africa, Asian coastal or near water source areas, North America and Europe in late summer or hotter drier periods. Overall I'm pleased, but it still needs more work I'm sure, but I'll need to have some games on it with troops and terrain to better see where I'm coming up short.

On the gaming front I and others from the group have been thinking of ways to consolidate our rules so as to spend more time gaming and less time reading. We game once or twice a month and so it can be quite sometime in between games and so we often forget the rules and have to re-read things.

Black Powder I think is a great choice as a default rule set as it's easy to learn and collect for and is pretty fun. Sure, you will probably find period specific rule sets that are better, but that comes with a cost of having to re-learn them over and over again unless you virtually only play one period. Since we like a variety of periods using black powder weapons it seems wise to use a more all purpose rule set where you need not worry about reading the rules before and during games.

Ancients is bit more difficult as we have Armatti and Impetus camps(I love Impetus, but others are put off by all the errata). We have yet to try Hail Caesar so I'm hopeful everyone will like it so we can move to a consensus on something.

Skirmish is difficult to have one default rule set, but we are looking at trying to focus one to each period which will help.

Perhaps it's our age? where we are looking less for the newest and coolest rules, but the easiest way we can get our toys on the table and play.

General Otho Holland Williams

The figure isn't modelled exactly after General Williams and is listed as a Continental officer and will likely often be used this way, but I like to give names to my figures and regiments to bring them more to life so to speak. More on his background can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otho_Holland_Williams. He will start off as commander of my Maryland Brigade.

I really like the sculpt of this figure caught in the middle of giving his command and is my favourite from the Perry's Continental officers from both their own range and earlier Foundry range they did.

Oh I just got the Perry plastic Continental Infantry box set to include the Washington figure of course and while I'm not a big plastic fan it's still pretty impressive in what you get. You get two standard bearers which is great as that allows for two units and a great selection of coats and hats which includes my favourite the hunting shirt and turns the sometimes mundane marching pose into something very interesting indeed. I have quite a few ideas bumping around in my head. Oh, they also give a great uniform guide(albeit I recommend avoiding the purple as it wasn't all that common) and some flags for those of you who don't have any.

Happy Easter Holidays!

Thanks for viewing!
Miniature Company-Perry Miniatures

 

Orange County Militia (NC)

My next unit is another militia unit and since I really like the southern battles one can never have too few of these. The Orange County Militia (NC) is from the roster of Guilford's Courthouse serving under Butler's brigade. Information is pretty scarce on them which is the case with most militia units for this period as they tended to just gather for local defences and were not organized like the state or Continental army which contained slightly better records. Also, it didn't help that some records of them were burned in a fire. If you find something I encourage you to please leave a little bit of your knowledge which I would appreciate. Suffice to say they had great trouble standing up to British regulars(not surprising), but could hold their own against loyalist militias and if used properly could be quite effective.

I personally really enjoy painting militia as you have a lot of latitude to do as you please and let your imagination roam, plus your painting palette really gets a chance to breath. I tried to give them a look of a few returning regulars or ex-military mixed in with the civilian locals. The figures are Perry and Foundry and the lovely flag is from GMB designs.

I'm not sure what I'll do next, but rest assured I will be doing more AWI at some point and those new Perry Continentals have all kinds of possibilities that I can't wait to try out!

Thanks for viewing!:-)
Miniature Company-Perry, Foundry