American artillery (8)

This should really be "American artillery (7)", but then that wouldn't include my Rhode Island artillery sets, which were the last American artillery bits I painted, back in 2017. The figures here are from Brigade Games' AWI range. When I placed an order a few months back I bought some Continental and militia packs, which I'm slowly working through, and decided to add one of the artillery packs. As seems to be the fashion these days, each pack comes with 6 crew figures and no gun, which you have to buy separately. The gun is a Brigade Games "6 pounder", although it's a bit on the large side when compared to the Perry/Foundry 6 pounders. As my AWI artillery crews each have four figures, I put two on pennies to have them floating around the rear or standing next to ammunition carts.  

This set takes my tally of American artillery crews to 20, which is pretty ridiculous.  Even for a large battle like Brandywine you only need twelve guns on the American side.  But these are nice figures, even if the faces are a little "rat-like" (as David Bickley describes them!), and I'm pleased to add them to my collection.  Only one of the figures is wearing a uniform coat, and even then it doesn't have lapels or cuffs.  I painted the cuffs on, because I wanted to have at least someone wearing a semblance of a proper coat, and then I tried to put the others mainly in white/beige/off-white clothes to suggest they are in uniform and have just taken off their coats.  But I quite like the irregular look.  In this respect, the Brigade Games artillery figures are similar to the Eureka Miniatures ones, which are also in shirtsleeves and coat-free (although by the look of it, the other "loading" Brigade Games pack does have a couple of figures in uniform coats).    

Apologies for the lack of posts - I simply ran out of photos and have been too busy until today to take any more!

6 figures.  Painted September 2024. 

American staff (4)

These are more Old Glory staff figures: the guys on foot from the "Dismounted Continental High Command" pack and the mounted general is the Philip Schuyler figure from the "Continental Personalities" set. Schuyler is an interesting choice for a personality figure, as his career as a Major-General in the Continental Army wasn't very distinguished and he resigned in 1779. He doesn't appear in any of the Caliver/"British Grenadier!" scenario books, so I could put him to use as someone else. Most of the scenarios involve the famous trio of Washington, Gates and Greene as the commanders-in-chief on the American side. But there are a hand-full of scenarios that have others as the c-in-c: Brigadier-General John Ashe (Brier Creek); Major-General Charles Lee (Monmouth); Major-General Benjamin Lincoln (Stono Ferry, Bound Brook); and Major-General Artemas Ward (Dorchester Heights). So this is basically a general and staff on a "British Grenadier!" c-in-c base of 70mm x 60mm to represents these gentlemen in the relevant scenarios.

I thought the Schuyler figure was pretty good, and the horse doesn't look like it's about to fall in the Grand National.  He's supposed to be looking at the chap waving his arm but, annoyingly, the eyelines of the two don't quite match up.  I thought maybe the general has received a despatch or some new orders, which the staff are reading, and he's thinking how best to act on this change in circumstances.

4 figures. Painted September 2024.