Wednesday 17 December 2014

10th Massachusetts

The 10th Massachusetts was raised in 1776 at Boston and assigned the following year to the Northern Department.  In October 1777 it was assigned to the main Continental Army.  It appears that a Colonel Thomas Marshall was commanding officer from 6 November 1776 until 1 January 1781. Colonel Benjamin Tupper was commanding officer from 1 January 1781 until 1 January 1783.  I haven't managed to find out anything else about this regiment.  Wikipedia states that it was present at Saratoga and Monmouth, which seems plausible enough.

I was inspired by the Don Troiani painting of this regiment, which showed the brown coats with sea-green facings.  I knew nothing of the regiment but was drawn to the brown faced blue-green facings.  The round hats suggested that this would be a good unit with which to start on my Perry plastic Continental Infantry sets.  The facings were painted with Foundry's "Teal Blue 24" palette and the coats with "Bay Brown 42".  I wanted to have some variation in the colour of the breeches and stockings.  The flag design is taken from an image I found on the internet, attributed to the regiment.  I have never seen a flag with this design, but it's different and somehow the pink/peach colour of the flag goes quite well with the green/brown look of the regimental coats.  Another point to note is that this is the first unit I've painted and then not varnished.  This is largely an experiment - I had noticed that the varnishes I was using dulled the colours and in particular took the edge off the faces.  No doubt some readers will think the latter is a good thing, as the unvarnished faces here do look a little shiny, as a result of the brown ink washes I use.  I'm not sure I'd leave metals unvarnished, but I think these plastic figures may have benefitted from it. 

As noted above, I don't have much information on this regiment's battle history and it doesn't appear in any of the published "British Grenadier!"/Caliver scenario books.  Plenty of Massachusetts regiments do, however, and so I would ensivage uses these figures when something more specific is lacking - for example, the Princeton scenario has two 12-figure units of "combined Massachusetts regiments".  I'm surprised to see that it has been 4 years since my last unit of regular American infantry.  But these figures were fun to paint and in uniform colour and pose are quite different to anything else I have in my collection.  I finished painting the figures in August but then got stuck on the flag for a while until I found the online example.

24 figures. Painted July/August 2014.


 

 
 
 

10 comments:

Michael Awdry said...

They are great Giles, that turquoise piping, really sets them apart.

Fire at Will said...

Hmm, tempting, maybe a Massachusetts brigade sometime with my spare figures 2020 sometime!!

moipasfou said...

They look good, great work !

painterman said...

Wonderful unit Giles - back to your best with AWI.
inspiration for me to start assembling mine.
Simon.

Simon said...

Hello Giles,
Very nice. You must have the patience of a saint assembling this amount of plastics. Another brown faced green Unit would be Gists Addtl. Very tempted by this unit as I need more brown coated Regis myself.
The flag is an interesting choice. It's always been associated with the Second New Hampshire. Allegedly designed by Ben Franklin himself. Who knows the truth? Patriot research for the AWI is a minefield. to be honest I think all our units are to regularly uniformed until maybe the later years of the conflict.

Have a great Christmas and New Year
Simon

David said...

Nice work Giles!

airhead said...

Great looking unit Giles, love the colors. Seasons greetings to you and yours and all the best for 2015.

Airhead

Unknown said...

Good work, which I follow very happily as usual. One thing has called my atention this time: You mention you have dispensed with varnish. I did the same about 2 years ago, when I decided start painting again and went deep into 28mm Nappies. I die for contrast and the illusion of depth, and I noticed that varnish always dulled somehow the contrasts and took away a little life. No more varnish for me. After all, the minis will live mostly in the dark and current Vallejo paints are suppossed to be very resistant.

Simmy said...

Great work!
This 10th Massachusetts is really very nice, as all of your regiments.
Best Regards
Simmy

Unknown said...

Excellent site! I just completed a review of "Tarleton's Quarter!", a board game published by "Against the Odds" and thought you guys might be interested:

http://grognard.com/originals/tq_rv1.html

Thanks!