ACW and AWI Distractions

I decided to get my desk cleared off and so have been taking care of some older projects before continuing with the Renaissance Venetians. First up are some Perry 25mm plastic Union Infantry. I was a bit disappointed at first with these, as they are a bit chunkier than I have come to expect from the Perrys, and the detail is not as crisp as I would like. With that said however, I thought they painted up quite well and more importantly, the final product has made me excited to try some more. Now I just need to find a good set of skirmish rules....

To facilitate a more uniform look for the federal troops I only chose figures with the sack coat (at least I think that is what these are called). This was my first foray into the ACW period so I was on a steep learning curve to try and get the uniforms correct. I did some custom cutting as well to maximize the number of troops I could get from the box in a firing line position, converting marching pose to holding a rifle horizontally like the figure above. The officer in the back is holding a pistol from the cavalry set.

A birds eye view of my first Federal company. I have another on the way with shouldered arms, but they will have to wait for the completion of the Venetians - unless I get impatient!

The firing line from Johnny Rebs point of view.

Next up the American War of Independence in 54mm.

I got sucked into the 54mm scale by a demo game at Nashcon by All the King's Men. Though I would like to have purchased their artillery, I ran out of funds, but found this Imex plastic set on sale at my local hobby shop for $8. They were marketed as Americans, but as the uniform was the same for both countries, I simply painted them as British. Above you can see a gunner stripped to his waist coat in the heat of working the guns. I replaced the plastic rammer with a metal rod which I inserted into the sponge and rammer of the plastic original.

Fortunately the Imex set came with the same proportion of 6 crew to one gun that is used in the All the King's Men rule set.

I thought the sculpts of the plastic figures was actually superior to the metal ones, though mold lines in this Imex set were not well placed, hence many a crewman with a mold line down the middle of his face. I have found plastic mold lines very difficult to shave or file well.

The commander. I did some work on the gun with green stuff to make it look more like a Brown Bess musket. It was originally sculpted with a long barrel without a supporting stock, which looked more like a long cavalry carbine. Maybe the sculptor knew AWI weapons better than I, but I could find nothing for the period that looked like it, so I changed it.

Here he is in all of his distinguished commanderly glory. The scabard of his sword was replaced with flattened floral wire which ended up working quite well.