American ammunition cart (1)

This is the Continental counterpart to the British cart I painted last summer. I seem to have bought two packs of these figures and intend to turn the second into a more interesting vignette. It occured to me the other day that sets like this are likely to see far more "action" that many regular units in one's collection. For example, my Black Watch, lovingly painted over the course of about 15 months, features in the Brandywine and Monmouth scenarios and not much else; it's not often that I'm to be putting those battles on, so the regiment lives only in cyberspace and my "Scots box". An ammunition cart on the other hand will appear whenever I have artillery on the table, which is likely to be every game. Already the British dragrope men I painted last year have appeared at more games than my British grenadier battalion and the two limbers I have (for a 3-pounder on each side) are crying out for relief. So I'm more than happy to put the time into making these Perry packs look the business, as they will appear on the tabletop far more often than anything else in my collection. AWI games usually have a fair amount of space too, so there is always room for things like this.

Everything other than the horse was painted last month. The base is the standard 50mm x 100mm size that I use for limbers, wagons etc. The continued collapse of the British economy has resulted in me spending far more time in the office than at my painting table, which is a shame because Perry Miniatures are releasing 11 more AWI packs next month and I really need to push my painting schedule forward. I foresee a large Salute order with Dave Thomas in April of Southern militia and British Legion cavalry. The 3rd Continental Light Dragoons are almost finished, but I'm going to have to bump off the 9th Foot to next month. For the rest of February I'm going to concentrate on the other artillery train packs I have - another ammunition cart as mentioned above, a second 2-horse wagon and a 2-horse 6-pounder limber. The past two weeks were taken up with painting some stuff that's so new I don't think it's been released yet - I need to check with the manufacturer to see whether I can show pics! Later this week I hope to show how I turned Eureka's SYW Saxons into AWI Brunswickers and showcase some rather nice terrain bits I obtained from some chaps in Australia (who have just finished making for me some 45cm high trees.....!).

Painted January/February 2008.