ACW Mini diorama

 I'm straying further and further from 18th century. I did go to perry to buy a battlion of rifles. instead I bought 4 boxes of ACW infantry(2 of the generic and 2 of the confederate) and a box of arty.
I wanted to paint some ACW, and had some random figures laying around, Sash and saber, not enough to make a unit out of. So I thought I'd try a mini diorama. And just to practice painting and basing.

A round base, with 5 rebs on it, two puddles, lots of green stuff and some rocks.

Some rebs have found a damaged fence to hide deployd behind. I did want to put a small tree on it, but I don't have that many trees, so bushes instead.
Poured some ink into gloss vanish for the puddle. Only semi successfull!

I think the paint jobs are prety good,

Did a good job on the rifled muskets, the barrles are gun metal, but the bands are silver, to make them "pop" more,

A line of grey and butternutt clad troops

 I'm watching a documantary about the ACW, I've watched in a dozen times, nobody in the states know about it, was a low budget thing made in the early 90s or late 80s, it's not as "fancy" as Ken Burns film, it's mostly talking heads, a narator and lots and lots of video of huge reeacmetns, and the reenactments are from those battles they talk about, so you kinda feel you are watching that battle.

Anyway Simple yet great, I like it better the Ken Burns film. But i like that fact that you can sum up an ACW army on the colors, sevral times you hear the narator says. A endless line of blue lines, or a massive force of grey and butternut clad troops ect.

  A 20 man regiment, I have enough figures for two more regiments, I'll try and aim low on this project, 7 regiments pr side, 1 unit of cav for each and 1 battery for each.

 I like the figures, and I like my own pain job, I like the officer, amazing how just yellow cufs help bring out some color.

They are all painted with either butternut triad or rebel grey triad, musket stock triad, all from foundry. also sliver baynets, and musket bands, the barrle is panzer grey(as the barrles or the Enfield was black)

More Hood's Texans

So I thought I was done with this unit, but I've decided to expand it to a 24 figure unit instead of 18.

So again this is really Iron brigade figures, just painted as hood's texans.

I did all the frock coas in grey, with some butter nut trousers.

This is my rebs so far,

Finished Battery

So this is a two model battery, representing 4 real guns, which is the standard number of rebel guns. This works for like a bazlilion rules, Guns at gettysburg, Black powder, and ofcourse fire and fury.

Hoods division had like 4 batteries I think.

It's kinda anoying, the evil rebs have divisional artillery park, but the evil yankies only got corps artillery park, I guess my union division could have attached artillery.

Also there is a big diffrence in the size of these formations, So basicly Hoods division has 18 regiments and 4 batteries, the union 1st division/5th Corps only got 12 regiments and no artillery. Even if you give the 20th Maine ungoodly powers like close air suport and a couple of miniguns it's still a big diffrence,

All in all a good looking battery.

Reb artilery and hood's texans.

Well not really, these are chinese hud's texuns, not the real thing. most of you will see that these are actualy iron brigade figures, that I painted as hoods texans, as I gather, both used the frock coat, but the hardee hats and leggings kinda give them away.

I tried to hide the hardee hats by painting them grey and brown.

I did the leggings in butternut.

And I finished the base of the artillery.

I think this gun and crew looks very good.

Here "hood's texans" defend the gun

Reb Artillery

So I found a bunch of metal 28mm ACW figures, I don't know how, but they had been hiding in my mail "inbox" were I put my bills.
Amog them was some artillery crew, which made my very happy becasue I've had this blister og guns laying around wondering were my gunners were.

I normaly suck at painting artillery, some how I never get the guns to be right, and I never put my full effort into the gunners, they are kinda an after thought. I love to paint infantry, but never liked to paint command/cavalry/artillery I've started to come around, I now put more effort into the artillery and command, but still not enough on my cav.


So this is my best gun ever, not only are the gunners paintet to the same standard as my infantry, but the gun it self looks decent.

The gun and gunners are Sash and saber 25mm, probebly the most underrated metal makers in 25/28mm out there. When people think of Sash and saber they often cheap yet good 40mm ranges. desgined for big battles and not just skirmish gaming But their 25mm is not only the chepest 25mm out there at $1.45 a figure, or just over half the price of even the cheapest other makers(exept old glory)

In my opinion these are the best figurs when it comes to Value/quality.

They got very expressive faces, good details ect. I hadn't painted these in awhile and so I wesn't sure how they were going to hold up to the superb perry, but I think they did it just fine. Very clean, just the right amount of folds in the trousers and jackets. The gun is also superb, I think seval people have said S&S makes the best guns in the buissness. and I think they are right.

I think I did a good job on these, I got one more gun and crew to do, and two infantry units.

Like kids at Christmas

So wargamers are among those people that never truly grow up, after all if we did, why would we play around with toy soldiers.

I've been slowly adding some of the foundry paint triads to my collection of paints.
You can say alot about foundry, overpriced byond reason, not all figures are the best sculpts while others are very good.

But one thing is sure, they do have wonderfull paints. And if you by them from other places then foundry them self, then the price isn't that bad.

I wanted my ACW to look better, so I orderd butter nut and rebel grey triads.
I got them before the weekend, but I needed to finish the russians, but all the time, I wanted to try out my new paints, just like kid with a new toy.

I finnaly got the russians of my painting table, and got to work with the rebs.

Technicaly the perry generic acw infantry aren't really that authentic, they were ofcourse the first major plastic 28mm, and did sell alot, they are really fantastic figures to paint, but with half in sack coats and half in shell jackets, they kinda don't fit perfectaly with union or reb. In the end it's a minor thing, when the unit is done, you can tell who is who.

So over to the paints, they are really wonderfull, as you can see the resualt is really good. when the paints are done it actualy looks like it's made of cloth.

I think these looks very good, and it's all the paints job, not me.

ACW still comming along

So finished another Union regiment, I'm now up to 4 of those, and 3 rebs.

I've now set half the money I need for the hauge figures.

I've also spent some pocket change on a couple of more pendraken units.

Lines of union infantry.