American Civil War Armies Expand

Following on from my last post I have now finished 94 Perry plastic ACW figures.

In terms of the organisation outlined in that post, this now gives me three Union regiments (one tiny, one small and one standard) and four Confederate units (one tiny, two small and one standard).

Again until I have decided that I am happy with this basing method I have simply tacked them to basic card bases.

So how do I see the project going? Well I am pretty keen to take it further as you might guess from theses images...

…well it was on special wasn’t it…about 25% cheaper than I could have bought the same volume of figures ex UK and there is enough here to make another eight infantry regiments, some cavalry and some guns…and a farmhouse with four feet of fencing to boot...gotta love it.

An American Civil War Project

For some time now I have been thinking about reworking my American Civil War armies.

Many of my figures are getting old now and many have lost their bayonets, swords and standards and I have been really taken by the increase of quality that has come about with the plastic figures in the last few years. I also I want to look at trying to simplify play.

For nearly three decades now as a group we have used a standard units of five stands, each of four figures on bases 40mm x 40mm. I have never been a fan of the standardised unit size for American Civil War where unit sizes varied so radically, but it suited a purpose at the time. However, things have moved on and  some players in the group prefer different stand sizes and numbers of figures on the stand and this causes problems when calculating combat based on the number of stands engaged. So I have decided to adapt a concept from Black Powder whereby it is the number of figures in the unit rather than base size (within reason) to define the unit size.

I have decided on four unit sizes for infantry:

Large units:  More than 18 figures

Standard Units: 15-18 figures

Small units: 10-14 figures

Tiny Units: less 10 than figures

I also want to play around with having a unit as a single diorama type base. This stems from my youth when I saw this image of the Battle of Gettysburg in the July 1963 issue of the National Geographic and, as I have mentioned before on this blog, that is how I have always wanted to present wargames units. 

This has the potential for problems because units will largely be presented in line and what if that line is too big to fit in a piece of terrain, etc, but I will cross that bridge later. The trick is to base the figures in such a way that they are more or less compatible with the units that other players already have.

For now I have decided on four base sizes for the units:

Tiny: 80mm frontage

Small: 110mm frontage

Standard: 140mm frontage

Large: 180mm frontage.

And so to the trial… During the recent Black Friday deals I purchased a box each of the Perry plastic Union and Confederate infantry and then a few additional command sprues with a regular Perry’s order. The result is that I have been able to put together seven units, three Union and four Confederate. Here they are on their temporary bases.

Tiny

Small

Standard

Now, I hear you ask, what about when troops are marching in column of route? Well I am thinking about being extravagant and creating half a dozen units for each side in marching columns that can be swapped out, rather like the way we swap put limbered for deployed artillery, and might look like this:

I will do a few more units in the next month or two and experiment with some cavalry before I decide if this is the right thing to do. If the answer is negative, I can rebase these to the old style.

ATTENTION!! It is Parade Time!

Finally I have a had a bit of time to organise a parade of recent projects.

The Bavarians as at Hanau, 1813

The cavalry brigade first, comprising 3rd and 6th Chevauxleger regiments, supported by a horse battery.

Then  the infantry appears,  that is Beckers’ 2nd Division, with Pappenheim’s First Brigade, strolling onto the parade ground. The combined 5th and 6th Light Infantry are on the left, with the Salzburg and Regensberg Nationalmiliz behind and the 4th Line Regiment on the right.

Zollern’s Second Brigade followed with the 1st Light on the left with the 6th Line behind and on the right are the Innsbruck and Anspach Nationalmiliz.

The whole infantry force stands here in column of divisions, Pappenheim on the right, Zollern
on the right.  It certainly looks like a menacing force when formed like this.

Caspers’ artillery brigade took to the parade ground next...



...followed by the glittering staff with the brigade officers on the left, General Wrede and his staff in the centre-right and Beckers an his staff officer on the right.

British AWI

When the Bavarians cleared the ground the AWI British took their place.

What a Difference a Couple of days (and 2100 Kilometers) makes

On Friday morning we sat down for breakfast in Fiji and the forecast was:

And the view from the breakfast table was:

Then on Sunday afternoon we had this eerie view across the Auckland sky from our back yard as the ash and smoke from the Australian bush fires (2200 km to the west) trapped in the jetstream covered northern New Zealand.

All the street lights came on and the smoke and ash filtered out most of the blue light, creating this sepia look. I can think of only three ways to describe this:

• Like someone had put yellow cellophane over the sky
• Like being in the middle of a solar eclipse
• Like viewing some of the scenes from the Steven Sonderbergh films “Erin Brockovich” or “Traffic”

But we are fortunate, it was just one afternoon and evening for us whereas those living in the affected areas in Australia are living in a nightmare.

AWI British Project Complete

Just before New Year I completed these three British AWI mounted officers that brings this phase of the AWI project to a close.

Since we have such a small number of British AWI troops within our group and such a large number of American forces, I may choose to expand this force at some point, but for now I am happy with it as is.

Now French AWI.. that’s another proposition!

Happy New Year!

So 2020, or MMXX as the Romans would say, has arrived. We saw it in as we did last year at a resort in Fiji and we certainly saw it in in style!

As usual I like to use the turn of the year to review my hobby achievements for the year. Every year I tell myself that this will be a quieter year. In fact to quote myself about the figure count for 2019 it will“…DEFINITELY will not be as high a count as the year just gone.” And I was right. The count of painting points was 12,240 compared to 13,060 for 2018 – a drop of just over 7% - but it was still my second biggest year ever. As always the painting points are calculated: foot figures 5 pts, mounted figures 10 pts, gun or equipment 10 pts and each hour of work on a scratch built items 10 pts.

There were thirteen projects tackled during the year of which only four were anticipated at the start of the year, namely the Carlist War expansion, the Spanish Napoleonic, the Crimean War Heavy Brigade and the British in the Peninsular War.

Unanticipated projects have been the French Revolutionary army, a few odds and ends for the French 1813 Napoleonics, the Russian Napoleonic limbers, a sizable expansion of the Crimean War British, a small force of British for the American Revolution, a small addition to the War of 1812 American army, the Bavarian Army for 1813-14, a small German WWII force for Bolt Action and the refurbishment of an ACW collection. I also added a few scratch built items and five Napoleonic wagons.

The statistics are:

Although the number of posts  for the year were down  the goal of 24 games was exceeded by one. The breakdown of the games is:

And what does 2020 hold in store? Well I am not really sure yet. I have a few ACW figures still in the plastic pile. The French Revolutionary armies are also on hand and their Austrian and Russian opponents are on the cards, but they will not be big armies - frequent readers can stop laughing now. I did succumb to the Foundry Christmas special and have four battalions and a battery of Crimean Turks on their way. I can also see myself doing a few battalions of the new Perry 1807-1812 infantry (ha ha...a few..more like 15). Some French for the American Revolution is attractive idea too, but beyond that there is next to nothing, unless some smart manufacturer comes up with something shiny to attract the inner magpie.

One project I do want to get on with is sorting the garage for a gaming area, complete with terrain tiles - and there will be something to show on these very soon.

For now I am not thinking of things wargaming. Instead I am going to have a leisurely breakfast then sit back back on my sun lounger and enjoy the 30 C degree temperatures while I finish reading the Robert Massie biography of Catherine the Great, interrupted by the occasional dip in the pool to cool off..

Bavarian Project Complete

With this unit of Chevauxleger, the 6th Regiment, my Bavarian army is completed - at least until I decide to add another division.

There will be a parade at some point soon.

Also based up today is the AWI gun set that I mentioned in yesterday’s post.