Muskets & Springfields (ACW)

In 2020 I collaborated with Nigel Emsen on his ACW rules Rebels & Yankees.  Mainly, I was indulging my penchant for rules editing and table tweaking.

In the intervening years, Nigel has proved to be a constant source of innovation.  His output is prodigious and he now has quite a portfolio on Wargame Vault.  It's a mixture of free and "pay what you want" downloads covering many periods.  It is well worth a look.

New rules
His latest project is a commercial set of scale agnostic, grid based ACW rules: "Muskets & Springfields". It was published earlier this month and was launched last weekend at Salute 50.  

I'm pleased to say that I made a small contribution to the finished book: a few of my painted 15 mm ACW figures feature amongst the text.  You can see the originals here.  I'm looking forward to receiving my copy later this week.

The rules are currently available with £5.00 off the £25.00 RRP, and free delivery, from the Helion website.

Read Nigel's introductory & design notes.

15 mm ACW Union Infantry Command (Warrior)

To compliment the ACW Confederate infantry I finished in August last year, I have completed three bases of Union infantry commands.  All figures are from Warrior Miniatures.

The main reasons for doing this was firstly to use my newly printed union flags and secondly to work on a colour palette for the Union uniform; particularly the dark blue of the coats.

15 mm ACW Confederate Command (Peter Pig)

This post completes my collection of Confederate generals.  I now have three large command vignettes and five singly based generals.  I don't think I'll be painting any more.  It was nice to finish this part of my ACW project.

In addition to lots of photos I've added some comments on how I fared painting these figures.  Later on, there's a comparison of the newly completed Peter Pig generals and those I finished two weeks ago from Warrior.  Plus there's a few free flags at the end of the post.

Salad Days?

Am I regressing to my youth as I approach retirement?  I think I may be.

When I was in my early teens I was a keen modeller spending a large part of my pocket money on at least one Airfix kit a week.  Of course I also had lots of the HO/OO plastic Airfix figures. I had both sides for the American Civil War (ACW) and the Western Desert in WWII.

15 mm ACW Old Glory vs Warrior

In this somewhat long post I'm going to tackle the thorny issue of figure compatibility.  But I'm going to start with a true wargamer's tale (read as "shaggy dog story") that ends with me owning and painting these figures:

Old Glory 15s Confederate infantry.

15 mm ACW Confederate Command (Warrior)

It's been over a year since I posted my first attempts at American Civil War generals using the excellent figures from Warrior Miniatures. Since then I've been slowly adding to my commandres and today I finished basing my Commander in Chief vignette:

For the central figure in the vignette I used the most imposing figure from AC36 (Union/Confederate Generals) and flanked him with the officer and standard bearer from AC35 (Confederate Cavalry Command).

Wargaming Rules

Over on my other blog I've written quite few posts about editing wargame rules. The two key posts are: 

• Editing Wargame Rules
• Rebels & Yankees v2.0 Released

One word on warning, to be legible the image above is probably best viewed full screen:

There are two reasons why you may wish to look at these posts.  Firstly, you may be interested in how I go about editing rule sets.  Secondly, you may wish to find out more about a smashing set of fast play ACW rules that are available as a free download.

15 mm ACW Confederate Infantry (Finished)

Well would you believe it!  The tufts I ordered arrived this morning so here are the final set of photos of my first ever American Civil War unit in all their glory:

15 mm ACW Confederate Infantry (Pre-Basing)

I don't normally do work in progress posts; partly because I find photographing miniatures a right royal pain in the bum.  This time I'm going to make an exception to share this newly painted unit before I base it whilst trying a black background for my photography:

15 mm ACW Command

At the end of August I posted the result of one of my impulse buys from Britcon: a set of 18 mm Confederate generals from AB Figures. I really enjoyed painting something other than my usual medieval figures. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to try painting a few more.

A little research led me to order a selection of figures from Warrior in Scotland. I liked the fact that each figure had been photographed and I also liked the look of the sculpting which wasn't too fussy. The prices are low and excellent value plus delivery was superb; my small order arrived next day!

I bought both mounted and foot command figures as well as a selection of rank & file advancing figures. Here's the results of my first efforts on unfinished bases:

18 mm ACW Confederate Generals

I've recently finished John Keegan's 2010 History of the American Civil War (ACW) which I picked up from one of my local charity shops.

I thoroughly enjoyed his approach once I'd got used to his somewhat tortured prose style. When I'd finished the book I felt I had a good grip on how the war was fought and it's unique characteristics. The only thing I found confusing was the geography but I sorted that by downloading a blank map from the American Battlefield Trust.

Needless to say the book inspired me to buy some figures. During my annual visit to Britcon (Manchester UK) I bought a partial pack of Confederate generals, there's a missing fourth figure, but they were cheap enough and I only wanted them to paint not lead an army.

Believe it or not, these are the first AB figures I have ever painted. They have such a stellar reputation I expected them to be joy to paint.