Reporting in

Well, now.

I've been a bit quieter than I'd expected to be over the past little while.

We've been re-stumpung the front of the house this past week. Well, when I say "we" I really mean some extremely-well remunerated tradespeople. More power to them, says I - it's a filthy job.  This is being followed up by another gentleman taking up the weekend polishing our floorboards.

The sum of this activity is that very little painting of toy army men has been done, although I have received sufficient inspiration from watching "The Horse Soldiers" this week that I have managed to paint a dozen dismounted cavalry.

They are very nice figures that are not overburdened with detail and were really very quick to paint.

Photos to follow.

On painting, I took a while to adapt to painting these figures. As a true 25mm figurine, the Staddens (I think of them as 'baby Staddens') are more like painting 1:72nd plastic in terms of the fineness of the detail. Because they are quite small and also because I intended to take a lot of photos of them, I have chosen to take a quite "high contrast" approach to painting them to make the colours pop out. The induvidual figures don't really have elaborate paint-jobs, although I do elaborate what's done to the key figures as they are the ones most likely to be picked up and examined by casual passers by. I did do the trick recently though of amalgamating all my union and rebel troops into two super-regiments and they do look pretty spectacular if I do say so myself.

Photoshoot Today...

Confederate officers confer outside an old sawmill.

Brigadier General E. Northman seeing the wagon train to safety.

Brigadier General William T. Compton getting upset with a staff officer.

5th Alabama marching to a uncertain fate.

Confederate 12-pounders assaulted by three Union Regiments.

Union troops march past the unfinished(!) sawmill.

The Union forever!

We've reached a Milestone

The second of this project, indeed.
The first was the production of the rules. This, the second is that I get to say - at last - that I have completed my order of battle for "Sawmill Village".
I now have forces comprising three Union and three Confederate regiments, a battry each of field artillery and a pair of Brigadiers.
My Confederate Regiments are the 5th Alabama, 6th Virginia and the 13th North Carolina. The Union regiments are rather more generic, but will be no less hard-fighting, I am sure.
Today was a bumper delivery in the mail; I also have two more foor regiments to paint along with a two-regiment brigade of cavalry. I also have the two-dozen skirmishing figures I'll need to dismount my cavalry should the need arise.
Once painted this will give me a Union and a Confederate division of infantry plus a Union Cavalry brigade - my next milestone.
In addition to the toy soldiers, I've also gotten two doors which will be my new games table. It ought to be about 6'8" by 5'10", extensible to 6'8" by 7'9" if I get another door. I've spent the afternoon giving them a Phil Olley-inspired coat of gloss green paint.
I will be playing "Sawmill Village" next weekend.