King's Mountain Miniatures - new releases

It's not often on this blog that I have a genuine "scoop" (in fact, it's never happened before), but I believe I'm the first person to have put together castings from the new line of releases from King's Mountain Miniatures.  For those who either missed my posts on the KMM highlanders or haven't come across KMM before, this is the brainchild of American wargamer/collector Bill Nevins who has commissioned Alan Marsh to sculpt AWI figures that Bill is particularly partial too.  The first stage was the release of a large number of highlanders which significantly increase the options available for later war highland regiments.  Bill has now produced a truly staggering release in two parts: first, a 16-figure release of "over mountain men"("OMM") figures (well, in fact, torsos) and secondly some 240 different heads either for use with the OMM figures or to do head swaps on any other 28mm figures.  In fact, the separate heads break down quite clearly into OMM-suitable heads and Continental Army heads.  The "staggering" part of this release to my mind is the fact that the 240 heads between them given you pretty much every type of  hat, cap, bonnet, helmet and head-gear that you'd need for any American soldier in the AWI.  There are also bare-headed and wounded heads.  The torsos are a mix of charging and firing line poses, with one officer (above photo, far right) and a pointing NCO in a uniform coat.

Here are photos of some assembled figures.  As I've said, all the OMM sculpts are headless so you have a wide variety of heads to choose from.  The heads have little plugs which slot into a hole in the torsos, although I've found that the heads sit best when you cut away most of the plug (otherwise the necks can look too long). I haven't worked out how many different variants you can create, but as each type of head-gear has 4 different heads, and in most cases the OMM specific heads come in both shaved and bearded versions, I'm guessing that you can create over a hundred figures and not have two exactly the same. That's just the OMM themselves.  The separate heads obviously provide enormous conversion potential for other American infantry.  With these heads and, where appropriate, basic American bodies in uniform coats rather than hunting shirts you can create Philadelphia Associators, light infantry, South Carolina and Massachusetts infantry, Washington's Guard, the foot elements of Pulaski's Legion and Lee's Legion and many others.  And it's not just Americans - there are the right caps to do Roger's Rangers too, using the OMM bodies.

So there's lots of potential here.  I've yet to fully explore all the options, but initial thoughts for my own collection are to do the 6th Virginia Regiment (in grey faced red smocks/hunting shirts and round hats - see the middle figure in the photo on left and the figure on the far left in the first photo above), Virginia militia in hunting shirts and hats, the OMM themselves.  Other units will need to utilise existing figures from other companies.  An obvious candidate would be the forthcoming Perry plastic Continental infantry.  I haven't yet tried adding one of the heads to a Perry plastic British infantryman, but I'll do that to see how they look - I suspect the heads may look a bit large.  Of course it that proves to be the case the answer is simple - Bill will need to commission a couple of torsos of Continental infantry...!

Below are photos of 2 figures I painted in a bit of rush yesterday.  The bodies and heads were chosen pretty much at random.  I've started basing them as skirmishers - some OMM riflemen fought on the flanks at Guilford Courthouse, presumably in skirmish or loose order; so these figures have that engagement in mind.  

 

 

Some of the "Continental" heads.

 

And some of the "OMM" heads.  The head-gear on the top right looks like some sort of turban; I've never seen it before.

I've not entirely sure when all these figures will be available.  In the UK, KMM figures are generally available from Galloping Major.  

French line foot artillery limber

This is the Perry Miniatures model of a French line artillery 4-horse limber with a 6-pounder gun.  I painted most of this at the beginning of the year, but then rather lost interest in it as I couldn't work out how the limber was supposed to be attached to the horses.  It then occurred to me, after scrutinising photos on the interest that you're not supposed to attach it to the horses without building your own traces etc.  I posted a query on TMP and received some very helpful replies, but which also confirmed my initial thoughts that there's nothing you're supposed to do with the set if you don't want to.  That said, Sada did an amazing job adding traces and ropes, so the effort pays dividends if you put your mind to it.  I decided that in the end I couldn't really be bothered to spend more time on this set and knew that I'd only make a total hash of it if I tried to add fuse wire or whatever to fill in the traces. 

So what you have here is the unaltered Perry set.   I'm not sure it really works without anything being connected to the horses (see photo on left), but I imagine it's completely impractical to sculpt and mould anything else.  Another minor grips I have is the "advancing rapidly" pose of the set.  I suppose in games you do need moving limbers to show guns that are, er, moving.  But personally I prefer standing limbers which I can place behind the firing/loading gun models. Then again, I'm not much practised in Napoleonic games and maybe in 25mm there's just no space; in which case moving limbers are probably best.

I thought it would look nice to paint the horse team in the same colours, so they are bays painted with the Foundry "Bay Brown" palette.  The colours used for the drivers' tunics were Foundry palette "Confederate Grey 117", while the limber and gun were painted with my usual French Napoleonic artillery green combination: base coat of Vallejo "Yellow Green" mixed with plain black, then first highlight of "Yellow Green" and second highlight of "Yellow Green" mixed equally with Vallejo "Dark Yellow".  The whips rather failed me, I'm afraid - I had no idea how to paint them and recall not finding much help via Google.

2 drivers, 4 horses and a limber.  Painted January 2013.

American Militia (7)

This is the first proper AWI unit I've finished since my first go at the Perry plastic British infantry.  I bought a couple of packs of the new-ish Perry "northern militia" packs at Salute and decided to have a crack at them a few weeks ago.  Once again, I needed a bit of a break from painting red-coated highlanders.  This unit mixes figures from those Perry packs as well as some of the figrues in the older Foundry "minutemen skirmishing" pack that Alan Perry made years ago.  The Perries have now released figures described as "southern" and "northern" militia (and some very useful marching negroes).  This distinction is largely shown by the former being in shirtsleeves and the latter in coats.  There is some difference in headgear too, with some northern types wearing a sort of skull-cap that I gather was popular in the northern states and the southern types wearing a variety of broad brimmed hats to shield their faces from the sun.  The northern guys are carrying rather more kit. 

As a general concept this north/south distinction clearly works.  I've been to South Carolina and seen how hot it can get there and the shirtsleeve types are more suitable for summer campaigning in the South.  But of course it gets hot in the northern states as well and it's worth remembering that two of the best known southern theatre battles, Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse, were fought on damp, cold days in January and March respectively (I've seen references to the temperature at Guilford as being around 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit or 7-10 degrees Celsius).  So another way at looking at these militia figures is to think of them as being suitable for "hot" days and "cold" days.  The Perry southern militia figures with bayonets are perfect for representing Continental infantry in battles in the north such as Monmouth, which was fought in June on such a hot day that troops on both sides collapsed from the heat and many Americans took off their uniform coats and fought in shirts and waistcoats.  Bunker Hill was fought in mid-June and while I've experienced first hand how utterly freezing Boston can get even as late as April, I expect by June it's usually reasonably clement.  Don Troiani's excellent painting (see here) of the "whites of their eyes" moment certainly has men in coats and shirtleeves  Of course, on the tabletop none of this really matters - militia are militia irrespective of what they're wearing - but the choice is there if you want it.   

This unit, the first of two militia "firing lines" that I've been working on, is designed for cold weather service.  To build a 16-figure unit requires a bit of doubling-up on figures, but I think there are only 2 pairs of the same figure, such as the Foundry figure in the liberty cap - I stupidly painted both caps red, which makes the figures jump out a bit.  Those caps aside, I deliberately used a more muted palette on these - lots of greys, browns, dark greens and tans on the coats, many from the Foundry WW2 and ACW paints.  In most cases I painted the breeches and the waistcoats in the same colours, as wearing this kind of "suit" seems to have been popular (according to contemporary portraiture, which of course probably reflects the richer end of American society; but then again Don Troiani has militiamen dressed like this too).  I painted the officer in the dark blue suit Troiani uses for a similar-looking chap in his Bunker Hill painting - I'm not entirely sure which of Stark, Warren or Putnam this person is supposed to be (if any of them - I'm assuming the other Perry officer figure is modelled on Troiani's William Prescott, the person in the long, grey coat).     

There's then the question of flags and whether militia carried them.  I've already used my "Bunker Hill" flags (on very early units that aren't anywhere on this blog) so selected one of what GMB call "ex King's".  I understand that this type of flag would have been a pre-war militia or provincial flag with the union jack in the corner removed.  I think it looks pretty nice.  The photos aren't the best, I'm afraid.  I find taking shots of firing line figures can be tricky to focus correctly.

16 figures. Painted August/September 2013.  Flag from GMB.  

 

French casualties

I have some larger units close to completion, but in the meantime here are some Perry French Napoleonic casualties I painted a few weeks ago.  Not much to blog about, but I put the same effort into dead figures as I do into live ones so I thought I might as well post pics.  Most of the figures are from pack FN16 ("line infantry casualties"), which includes 2 marching casualties that I'll incorporate into my next line battalion.  The chap in the tunic lying face down is a plastic figure from the French heavy cavalry plastic boxes - I think this plastic figure is a bit bigger than the metal ones, which is odd as I think the plastic infantry are a tad smaller than their metal counterparts.  The greatcoated figure leaning on his musket is very useful as he can be used for others periods - the First Carlist War, for example. 

I've always based casualty figures.  I know many gamers just leave them "loose", but I like to have everything on a base as I think it looks neater and of course you can then add other bits and bobs like muskets, hats etc (which come with the plastic British infantryman casualty that is also in the Perry cavalry sets).  Front Rank sell packs of pistols, muskets, swords etc which are useful for adding to casualty bases.  One thing I've noticed about Perry casualty packs is that they tend to have "character" figures in them - for example, the falling officer in FN16, the wounded man being carried by comrades in a couple of the AWI packs.  These are lovely little pieces, but they do stand out rather and that means you're unlikely to buy more than one or (at most) two of each pack.  For large Napoleonic battles, what a gamer really needs is just a pack of 6 different dead people.      

Five figures.  Painted August 2013.

 

Sir Ralph Hopton

Here's the second of my two ECW command vignettes.  In was way back in May 2009 that I started painting a Royalist force for the English Civil War - my efforts can be seen here.  I began work on two command stands, one for the complete army and a second for its (forthcoming) cavalry element (Sir John Byron).  I painted 3 of the figures and began work on 2 cornets, but failed to complete them; I think it was painting the cornets' grey horses that scared me off.  As I said yesterday, I eventually finished these stands in February last year, together with several things that had lain half-finished over the past few years (including lots of Darkest Africa arabs and beluchis, which I might blog about at some stage).  This stand feature Sir Ralph Hopton with his escort and cornet.  Hopton is a personality figure from the Bicorne Miniatures range; the other two figures are Renegade, I think.

Sir Ralph Hopton (1596-1652) is one of the better known characters of the ECW, leading the Royalist charge in the West Country.  He was MP for Shaftesbury from 1621 and then gained early military experience as part of the entourage of Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia (Prince Rupert's mother), whose husband, in 1620, was defeated in battle and deposed by the Holy Roman Emperor.  He saw further action in the early stages of the Thirty Years' War before returning to England to become MP for Bath in 1625.  He returned to the army in 1639 to serve the King in the Bishops' Wars as a captain in the King's Lifeguard.  In 1640, Hopton became MP for Somerset in the Short Parliament and for Wells in the Long Parliament and was active in supporting the King against his political enemies.   He supported Charles' attempt to arrest five members of the Commons in January 1642 and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned in the Tower for 2 weeks.

In summer 1642 Hopton went to Cornwall to raise the county for the King, which he managed to do by mobilising the militia and driving out the local Parliamentarians.  He then recruited a local army and won his first victory of Braddock Down in January 1643.  A further victory at Stratton enable Hopton to meet with reinforcements from Prince Maurice and the Earl of Hertford and march into Somerset, where the Royalists won a pyhrric victory over Sir William Waller at Lansdown in July.  Among the heavy Royalist casualties was Hopton himself, who was injured and temporarily blinded after the battle when an ammunition cart exploded.  The Royalists regrouped, were joined by reinforcements under Lord Wilmot and then won a more decisive victory over Waller at Roundway Down a week later.  Joined by Prince Rupert, Hopton's army then captured Bristol.  Hopton was appointed lieutenant-governor of the city and raised to the peerage as Baron Hopton of Stratton.  He was then appointed as commander of Royalist forces in south-western England and ordered to advance on London.

Hopton captured Arundel Castle in Sussex in December 1643, but his march on London was checked by Waller at the battle of Cheriton in March 1644.  After a brief return to Bristol, Hopton was appointed General of Ordnance and fought at the second battle of Newbury in October 1644.   The following spring saw Hopton besieging Taunton, but the defeat at Naseby meant the effective end of the Royalist military struggle and Hopton withdrew to Devon.  Hopton held his army together long enough to enable the Prince of Wales to escape to the Continent and then surrendered in March 1646.  He too went into exile and, after providing some further assistance to Prince Charles, died in Bruges in September 1652.

I've always had a soft spot for Hopton and his dashing Cornish army.  He rather reminds me of Cornwallis in the southern campaigns, winning most of the battles but ultimately losing the war.  There's a rather bad painting mistake on the Hopton figure.  I clearly confused myself about what clothes he's wearing, and assumed that the buff coat was some sort of tabard such that the visible sleeves would be those of an under-coat or tunic.  On reflection, that's wrong - the sleeves should also be buff as they are part of the same coat, although the light blue does give quite a nice contrast to what otherwise would be a buff-heavy vignette.  Portraits of Hopton, like the one above, also show a slight goatee beard, but I didn't see one on the figure so he's clean shaven here.  I also notice that the gloves of the chap with the pistol look rather yellow - they remind me of the Marigolds that my mother used to wear when doing the dishes.  But I remember when painting this figure that I wanted a slightly different colour for the cavalryman's gloves, otherwise everything would look, well, "buffy".  As for the cornet's horse - I have no idea what I was doing there, but, while the dappled effect probably isn't 100% quite right, at least it's a change from plain white or grey.

3 figures.  Painted May 2009 and February 2012.

Sir John Byron

Sorry for the lack of posts this month - real life catching up again.  Also, I don't really have much in the way of new stuff anyway; I have too many different things on the go and I'm not concentrating sufficiently on finishing units before starting others.  That said, there will, I hope, be new AWI militia posted on Sunday and I'm almost ready for a mass of ACW posts.  To tide things over, for the next couple of days I'm going to post about a couple of ECW pieces I painted a good while ago (as long ago as 2009, in fact) and didn't bother talking about at the time.

This is a vignette of Sir John Byron, a staunch supporter of the Royalist cause.  Born in 1599, he became MP for Nottingham in 1624 and was knighted two years later. From 1634 to 1635 he was High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and then Lieutenant of the Tower of London in 1641, although he was forced to give up this latter post as his appointment was opposed by the House of Commons.  He was clearly in very good favour with King Charles, because at some point he became a Gentleman of the Bedchamber (this strange-sounding position was basically a personal servant to the king; according to Wikipedia, the post involved "guarding the royal water-closet", which can't have been much fun when it was in royal use).  In October 1643 he was created 1st Baron Byron of Rochdale. 

In terms of his military service, Byron began the civil was as commander of a cavalry regiment, which saw action at Edgehill.  His ability as a leader of cavalry resulted in him commanding the Royalist right wing at Roundway Down in 1643 and then the centre at the First Battle of Newbury.  Subsequent to his actions in those battles he was ennobled and appointed commander of Royalist forces in Lancashire and Cheshire.  His siege of the town of Nantwitch in  January 1644 was destroyed by a relief force under Fairfax.  In July that year we find him commanding the Royalist right wing at Marston Moor.  After the defeat Byron withdrew to Chester, which he defended against various Parliamentarian sieges until being forced to surrender in February 1646.  In 1648 the future Charles II sought Byron's assistance in what became known as the Second Civil War, but Byron failed to raise support for the Royalist cause in Wales and fled to Ireland.  He appears to have realised that the Royalist resurgence was doomed and headed off to France to join the Duke of York (i.e. the future James II), who was spending his exile serving in the French army.  Byron died at Paris in August 1652.  As he had no children his baronetcy passed to his younger brother, Richard (see below) and then, after three more barons, to the poet Lord Byron.

This command stand is intended to use as a generic "cavalry wing" commander.  The Byron figure is actually a personality figure of his brother, Richard, that was originally a subscriber freebie from Wargames Illustrated.  It is now available from North Star as part of their Trent Miniatures "Newark Characters" range.  I believe Mark Copplestone was the sculptor.  Richard Byron (1606-1679) was a governor of Newark and also fought in the ECW on the Royalist side, being knighted in 1642.  Judging from the fine portrait of John Byron by William Dobson (which is on the left and is also on the cover of Stuart Reid's ECW history "All the King's Armies") the two brothers looked pretty similar.  I wanted a cavalry commander for my Royalist army and thought the Byron figure would fit the bill.  The cornet is from either Renegade or Bicorne - I confess I can't now recall which.  I remember painting the Byron figure well before I left London, and in fact I've found a photo from July 2009 that shows him finished; however the vignette's completion was delayed by the cornet, as I developed a bit of a mental block about painting the horse.  Then in February 2012 I made a conscious effort to finish off various things that I had been working on for too long.  I must make a more general conscious effort to paint more ECW at some stage.

2 figures.  Painted June 2009 and February 2012.

 

French line foot artillery (7)

Here's another Napoleonic piece from much earlier in the year, which I forgot about.  This is the limited edition set released at the end of last year by Martin Kelly of the Befreiungskriege website and which was sculped by Peter Fitzgerald of Calpe Miniatures.  The process behind the design and commissioning of this set is explained on Martin's website and he has some very good tips on how to paint these figures.  The figures are quite specific: two soldiers of the artillery train; a foot artillery drummer; and a "Marie-Louise" infantryman carrying what looks like potatoes.  There's also a campfire with a "marmite" cooking pot over it, which I'm afraid I totally forgot about when taking these photos!  So Martin's site is well worth looking at for information on painting these types of soldiers.  And if you look here you can see these figures painted up as Italians by young Simon Haldezos in Kapiti, NZ.

The bluey-grey of the artillery train's uniforms is a tricky colour to pin down.  I used the Foundry palette "Confederate Grey 117", which has a tinge of blue in it and I think works ok. The blue facings and trousers on the drummer were painted with Foundry "French Blue 65".  There were quite a few straps and bits on these figures, some of which I couldn't immediately identify - those sort of things are always painted with Foundry "Canvas 8" or "Deep Brown Leather 45".  I confess the precise colours to use on the whip eluded me, so I just used various browns.    

This is a neat little set - it's not often you have the chance to paint members of the artillery train on foot. These were the first Calpe figures I've painted.  They were enjoyable to do, with clean surfaces and carefully sculpted detail.  The figures are a tad larger than Perry sculpts, but look fine together on the table.   The Calpe website states that French (and Saxon) artillery pieces and crews will be available in September or October, so I'll be sure to pick up some French artillery when they are released.  I'm tempted to look at their French line infantry too at some stage.

4 figures. Painted February 2013.