American Militia (8)

This is a unit of militia that consists of Galloping Major F&IW figures.  I first started working on it in June last year, having picked up a couple of packs of "skirmishing settlers" at Salute.  GM announced shortly afterwards that they were working on more militia figures so I waited for those to be released to complete the unit.  Those figures came out earlier this year and so this unit contains a mix of lightly-armed settler types and more heavily equipped militia.  I thik the mix works well, although some might quibble whether you'd find men in shirtsleeves and coats at the same time - it would be either too cold to be in shirtsleeves or too warm to need a coat!  The GM packs don't contain a standard bearer figure.  I suppose it might be possible to convert one, but I don't mind and I'm quite happy to have one militia unit that doesn't carry a flag as it can be used as Loyalists or Rebels.  

In fact, when painting these figures I had them in mind as being used primarily for Loyalists - rightly or not, the more old-fashioned nature of the clothing (bearing in mind that these figures are designed for used in the 1750s) suggested to me men of a more conservative nature.  I also had an eye on the Savannah scenario, which I've been working at on-and-off over the past couple of years - this requires a 20-figure unit of Tory militia.  Other scenarios which feature units of loyalist militia are Camden (20 figures) and Hobkirk's Hill (16 figures).  The poses of some figures would be good for smirmishers.  If I'd started work on this unit once all the figures had been released I'd probably have saved some of the kneeling and running figures back and put those on some special skirmish bases.  Perhaps I should have reversed the chap who is holding onto his hat and running so that it looked like he'd lost his bottle and was making a run for it.  There is no standard bearer in the command packs, but that's not a problem unless you feel you really must have a standard in every unit - most militia didn't carry standard or flags, I suspect.

The figures are on the large side of 25/28mm.  Being F&IW figures their reference point in terms of size is more Redoubt Miniatures than Conquest; the latter would look rather puny in comparison.  So I'd suggest keeping these figures in their own units and not mix them with other standard AWI ranges.  They are, however, a very good fit for the new(ish) King's Mountain Miniatures over mountain men, which Bill Nevins tells me were designed with more than one eye on the F&IW.  The figures are easy to paint - the surface detail is crisp and accessible and the various straps are clearly set out.

You can't have too many militiamen for the AIW, so I recommend these figures, which come from a mixture of "settlers" and "un-uniformed militia" packs.  Galloping Major have some sailors n the pipeline which will also be very useful for the AWI - the Savannah scenario, for example, requires a unit of 8 sailors.  So it's worth putting this company on your AWI radar.

24 figures.  Painted June 2013-June 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Highlander Casualties

Just a quick post while I work up a couple of longer ones.  These are painted examples of the prone casualty figure from the King's Mountain Miniatures highlanders range.  KMM do 3 highlander casualty figures - 2 standing (although I think one is designed to be advancing/charging) and this dead chap.  I have painted 4 for my own collection - 2 from the 71st Foot and 2 from the 76th Foot.  The 42nd Foot in my collection are in full plaid (at the moment - eventually I will do them in overalls and campaign dress as well) so I haven't painted any casualty figures for the Black Watch as yet.  However, below are a couple of these figures that I have painted for Bill as the 42nd.

Four figures. Painted May 2014.

Prisoners

I'm afraid real life has taken over of late, so please excuse the blog silence.  This vignette consists of plastic figures from the Perry Miniatures Continental and British infantry boxes.  I remember seeing some early photos on the Perry website of figures from the Continental Infantry set before it was released which had an unarmed walking figure.  I thought then that a vignette of American prisoners would be worth doing, and here it is.  I will post some thoughts on the plastic Continental infantry box set in due course (I'm currently working on the 10th Massachusetts using these figures), so this is more in the way of a taster.  The marching American figures are possible because the Continental set has separate arms and the various options allow you to create figures that aren't carrying anything.

I wanted to create a generic scene that could be used for northern and southern battles.  The American with the blue coat has buff facings because I thought there was enough red in the vignette already.  The British soldier has been painted as being from the 5th Foot - not for any special reason, but I wanted a regiment that had a different colour in its facings to buff, blue or red, and the 5th got around a bit during the war.  I had originally intended to add some more "battlefield debris" to the scene, but after playing around a bit I decided that less is more and settled for just one loose hat.  Originally I was going to have a discarded pistol or musket lying in front of the figures, so that the American chap on the left was suggesting that they make a dash to pick it up.  But I couldn't really make that work from a compositional perspective.  Nonetheless, I'm quite pleased with the way this has turned out, although I'm not really sure how often it will appear on the table.

I have a couple of longer posts in the drafting stage, specifically two militia units and my 71st Foot firing line (this vignette is posted out of painting sequence - I only finished it this morning).  As I may have mentioned before, I intend to re-organise the existing post on the 71st  to give each battalion its own post and then a third for my new unit.  I'm hoping to do all that this week (I'm theoretically on holiday now, although I'm likely to be called into work for at least one or two days...)