American War of Independence - 71st Regiment of Foot (Fraser's Highlanders) - 28mm Perry Miniatures

Having spent since March painting 10mm figures, it was a welcome return to come back to painting 28mm figures for one of my favourite wargaming periods.

On 4th July, I was very pleased to play my first game for ages as the lockdown rules had relaxed sufficiently on that day to permit this. The significance of the date was not lost on me.  The first game chosen was a hypothetical battle set in the Carolina's in 1781. The rules used were Black Powder as they are the simplest 'go to' set that I have, and never fail to give a brilliant game, particularly for this period.  The 'Rebellion' Book written for the rules by Stephen Jones is (in my opinion) by far the best Warlord Games supplement book.

The game was brilliant, even if my Continentals did come off slightly worse. It was still a hard-fought game and it could have gone either way.  Ian managed to achieve a narrow victory and my forces would have retreated at nightfall.  Filled with enthusiasm afterwards I was prompted to put my 10mm troops to the side and paint a unit of  these fine troops from my lead mountain.

The figures are from Perry Miniatures and are of the 71st Regiment of Foot.  The castings were great to paint up and it constantly amazed me to think that I have had these undercoated ready for painting for about 3 years, but I just needed the enthusiasm kick of another game to spur me into painting.

Once I started, I could barely put the paint brushes down.  The Perry's have produced some wonderful characters. This is something that I really missed with painting 10mm figures.  It is just not the same.  It was great just seeing the figures come to life with every painting stage.

The 71st comprised two Battalions.  The 1st Battalion being lost at the Battle of Cowpens, but the 2nd Battalion continued to gallantly fight at Wetzell's Mill, Guilford Courthouse and Green Spring.

The flags are from the wonderful GMB flags range.

Well there we have it, over 2 and half weeks work with up to 10 hours a day spent on them (and other days a lot less).  So far my AWI British are neck and neck with my 10mm British Jacobite Rebellion Army as being the first 'complete' army planned from the outset for one particular battle or campaign.  Each has about 3 units and some command stands to go...who will be ready first?...Or shall I just paint some tanks instead - it does sound easier!

Jacobite Rebellion 1746 - 10mm Pendraken - British 10th Dragoons and Royal Artillery

This post sees the addition of cavalry and artillery to my British Army of 1746.  All of the models are Pendraken 10mm.

The cavalry are painted as the 10th Dragoons (Cobhams), who were posted on both flanks at Culloden.

 As I'm trying to create the armies in as closes as to 1:10 scale of the actual forces in the Rebellion (without having unsightly figure gaps or massive wastage of figures).  The historical splitting of the Regiment meant that I had to do two things, which I don't normally tend to do.

• Think in terms of Troops and Squadrons rather than Regiments for the cavalry, and with Cobham's 10th Dragoons in particular.
• Use enough cavalry to give the feeling of power./numbers that their appearance must have made at Culloden for the Jacobites to send so much of their forceto  face them on their right flank  (I tend to scale back cavalry compared to infantry and in 28mm this can make sense, 10mm gives more options and space for more cavalry)

I was undecided about the basing  even as I was creating it.  Normally I use a base and proceed to fill it with troops.  Unlike 28mm, I have been trying to reduce Regiments to one stand to save moving multiples of bases per turn.  As described above, the need split the 10th  to cover both flanks meant that I didn't have this option.  So I decided to put two Troops on one base (one Squadron).  This meant a small gap between troops.  It looks unusual, but will hopefully grow on me!  The practicality will become more apparant in the game.  I don't have a need for individual cavalry Troops to run about on their own.

The flags came cast on so required some research and painting.  The excellent resource at  www.kronoskaf.com has helped in so many ways with my British Army. 

The larger number of figures used, 30 figures for Cobhams 10th Dragoons, meant that I could use both the Kings and Regimental colours and it wouldn't look 'flag heavy'.

In addition to the cavalry I now have all of the Royal Artillery I require.  Below are 3 pounders with crews.   I'm still unsure what to do about the artillery in the game.  If I was to issue the guns out to scale then I would need just one piece for the whole army.  This looks a bit wrong, especially as guns tended to be placed between infantry Regiments. 

To cover all options, I decided to paint all of the contents of the two packets of guns and crews.  This gives me options for later. So I now have 6 x 3 Pdr guns.

The Royal Artillery also had Coehorn mortars on the battlefield.  These were not reported to have been effective.  The soft boggy ground at Culloden probably minimised the effect of the mortar rounds.  Even so I decided to include them for completeness, even if it might take some pretty good dice throws to get any hits in the game!

I took the opportunity to take photos of the figures with both my Samsung Galaxy camera on the smartphone as well as with my 14 year old Olympus digital camera.   Interestingly both seemed to perform as well as the other so that didn't really help in my experiment. 

I'm doing my very best to stick with this particular Jacobite Rebellion British Army project.  I have so many other interests trying to pull me in different directions.  Last week I purchased one of the Too Fat Lardies Christmas Specials just to get their Boer War rules and some scenarios.  This has proved to be really interesting and given me a lot of ideas.  The rules really are quite a revelation with their mechanics and I am really keen to try them (which means building an army first!).  Still it's all khaki...how long could it take..!

Jacobite Rebellion 1745 - British Infantry-1st Bde - 10mm Pendraken Miniatures

First posts of a new project (yes, another one!).  I actually started this project one last year but made very slow progress until this virus lockdown.  Pendraken Miniatures are still operating and I thought it would make sense to build on the couple of regiments that I nearly completed last year.

I finally finished these units today.  One unit was awaiting it's Kings and Regimental Colours.  Pendraken sell the 10mm flag sheets too, though I have painted on the regimental details as the flags are supplied with basic colours only, allowing finer detail to be added (and indeed, I have repainted completely as I required).

2nd Battalion, 1st (Royal) Regiment of Foot 

These three regiments consist of the 1st British Brigade at the Battle of Culloden.  The 1st Brigade consisted of the 2nd Battalion 1st (Royal) Regiment of Foot, 14th (Price's) Regiment of Foot and 34th Cholmondley's Regiment of Foot

I am getting to really like 10mm as a scale.  The figures allow the detail to really burst through, and allow some intricate painting if one wishes, though there is always that trade off between what is worth being painted if it cannot be seen from a couple of feet away.

I have tried to paint on only the detail that defines the character of the troops.  So lacework has been confined to be around cuffs and tops of tricorn hats, any more is just not worth the time expense.

The exception to this are the grenadiers who needed that little extra detail as their mitre caps deserve, and also officers and drummers, who have had a further application of lace and detail as necessary.

I have mostly used the Foundry 'triad' painting method and really only using the 'A' darker shade and the 'C' lighter shade.  This enabled a greater contrast and made the highlights stand out more from the depth of the lowlights.

 34th (Cholmondley's) Regiment of Foot

I try to complete a unit in two days (mostly evenings) and work through a typed procedure which I can pick up again at any time if my interest should wane.

Lining in and touching up has been kept minimal intentionally.  I tend to line in around the cuffs and sword/bayonet strap.  As I used a black undercoat which I have tried not to go over too much, this means that I don't have to over-fuss to finish off.

14th (Price's) Regiment of Foot 

It was a hard choice between making two ranks or three ranks for these units.  It all came down to ground scale and the visual impression I wanted to create. 

Basically I hope to portray the battles of the Jacobite Rebellion at a scale of around 1:10.  So this would have a good number of troops on the table and have a relatively short base length to fit the whole battlefield on comfortably.  Culloden will undoubtedly be the main field of battle for these troops (though they may yet see fields as far as Europe in the Seven Years War yet!).

The British line tended to be three ranks deep at this time and I was keen to show that too.

...and here we are with the regiment next to a 50 pence piece, showing the small size of the 10mm figures and the minimal ground size that they occupy.  This should allow some pretty mighty battles to be fought!