Long Island prep (2)

When I first received the orbat for Long Island I was carried away on a tide of enthusiasm and wrote of great plans for what I would prepare specifically for the game. Nine days into September and reality has kicked in - the putative painting target I set a week ago is clearly unworkable and already I am paring down what I intend to paint up; I simply will not have time to paint everything I would have liked. So I have decided that the three extra British regiments will have to go, and I will need to find substitutes. I will not paint up Smallwood's Marylanders, but I think I can piece together a regiment in hunting shirts from those Carolina regiments I painted a couple of months ago. The regiment is recorded as wearing tan/brown hunting shirts with officers in scarlet faced buff coats. Rather than paint this 24-figure unit from scratch, I should be able to paint up a 4-figure comand stand in uniform coats. So this leaves to be painted the Hessian Lossberg Fusiliers and 2 gun crews, a light infantry battalion and a grenadier battalion - much more manageable and this should also leave me some time to paint up a couple of vignettes and other stuff that one would expect to see havering around a game of this sort.

September, then, is the month of the Hessians, and I was suprised to see that I have not painted any Hessians since the von Bose last Christmas. The brigade is as follows: Rall Grenadiers (24 figures), Knyphausen Fusiliers (24), von Lossberg Fusiliers (24), two 4-pounder guns and crews (8); von Mirbach personality figure as brigade commander. Rall and Knyphausen I already have, although the reason why Knyphausen's Fusiliers are not featured on this blog is because I painted all the cuffs red instead of black, and I haven't as yet changed them. If I find the time, I will do so. But that is not a priority and the next 2 weeks will see the von Lossberg Fusiliers zipping through the painting table, followed by the artillery. For the von Mirbach command figure, I will prbably use my Perry General Stirn figure or perhaps one of the Old Glory personality figures that I have.

I will have some photos of recent bits and bobs to post shortly. In the meantime, above is a wip photo of a militia unit I have been working on over the past couple of weeks. This uses all the new Perry Southern militia figures and is designed to show a firing line that is beginning to disintegrate. None of the figures are based (and a few in this photo are not finished) as I am still toying with various ideas as to how to base them. I may well use deeper bases to give more space to those figures that are running away and to add some scenic features. I have an idea or two for a home-made flag....