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.