Sunday, March 4, 2012

American War of Indepence Collection

I spent more than a few hours looking at my collection of painted figures for the American War of Independence on Saturday trying to figure out what the heck to do with all of them.

On the British Side I have
12 - British Guard Lights (Half Painted)
12 - British Guard Grenadiers (Half Painted)
40 - British Guard Infantry
40 - British Guard Infantry
40 - 4th Regiment of Foot
40 - 15th Regiment of Foot
40 - 20th Regiment of Foot
40 - 23rd Regiment of Foot
40 - 33rd Regiment of Foot
40 - 64th Regiment of Foot
40 - 71st Regiment of Foot – 1st Battalion
28 - 71st Regiment of Foot – 2nd Battalion
28 - 105th Regiment of Foot – Volunteers of Ireland
16 – Royal North Carolina Regiment
26 – Light Infantry of District 96
16 – North Carolina Highlanders
15 - Royal Scots Emigrees
24 – Queen Rangers
30 – Loyal Militia
10 - Starkloff's Troop of Light Dragoons
40 – Erbprinz Fusilers
40 – Von Bose Musketeers
12 – Von Bose Grenadiers
14 - Hessen Chasseurs
8 - Artillery Pieces and 32 Crew

On the Continental Side
16 – 1st Maryland
16 – 2nd Maryland
20 – 3rd Maryland
20 – 5th Maryland
32 – 1st Delaware
28 – 1st Pennsylvania
32 – 2nd Pennsylvania
32 – 1st New York (No Command and mostly painted)
16 – 1st North Carolina
16 – First Composite Light Battalion
12 – Second Composite Light Battalion
16 – Lee’s legion
16 – Armand’s Legion
15/18 – Backwoods Militia
15 – Virginia Militia
15/15/15/15 – North Carolina Militia
15/15/15/15/15/15/15/15 Generic Militia
7- Artillery Pieces and 28 Crew
I should note that I am in the process of Remounting the Figures and have thought long and hard about how they should be organised, after much debate I think I got the basing right when we chose Wilderness Wars and I am going to skip with that basing.

I guess I need more Continentals as they are outnumbered 3:2. I have the figures, heck I have two New York Regiments half painted and another North Carolina Regiment close to completed.

But the problem is what am I going to do with all those figures?

The figures are organized to play Wilderness Wars, by Normal Warfare. The problem is the flaw in the rules where the rules authors ignored the sizes of the Militia Regiments when creating the rules, thus you have one of two options the Militia Regiments will either rule the battlefield and there is nothing the British can do but run away OR the Militia Regiments are pointless.
After looking at the second edition and basically cringing at a number of the changes (the rules pertaining to Charging are very humorous one way or the other).

After much thinking and rehashing of ideas
I however have a hybrid Idea, which I am looking forward to trying out.
Currently you roll dice based upon stands; however I am going to roll combat dice based upon the number of figures. At Short Range you roll 1d6 per every four figures, at Normal Range 1d6 for every five figures, and at Long Range 1d6 for every six figures.
Casualties will be hits per stand 5 Casualties to remove a A Class stand, 4 B Class stand, 3 for a C/D/E Class stands and 2 hits for a skirmish stands regardless of rating.
Talking to Jim to get it on the Schedule.
Later.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

A productive Saturday

I awoke on Saturday with a pretty massive head cold, thought about the 40 minute drive to Coon Rapids for ReCon! and decided that it was not in everyone’s best interests for me to share my cold.

I understand that the War of the Jumbled Alliances game went off and Tom Zwirn has decided that at the next ReCon! he will be running a double sized Thirty Year's War game using Field of Glory - Renaissance Edition. Tom also announced he has finished rebasing his Rally Round the Flag 15mm Figures for Regimental Fire and Fury and will be selling off three Brigades of figures.

Since I was not going to ReCon! I spent the day organizing, cleaning, priming and painting figures.
The organizing is probably my biggest accomplishment, I love to organize everything but my hobby stuff, and I broke down and did a pretty good job. I found 60 Dismounted Tarleton Figures, a number of 15mm Napoleonic figures, but failed to find the 25mm Courier De Bouis that started my organizing.
I got 60 British Highlander figures cleaned up and mounted on bases and primed that will become the 78th Regiment of Foot, Frasier’s Highlanders for the my Quebec campaign of 1759.
I also got a number of other lose figures cleaned up and mounted and in many cases primed. Cannot believe I need French Officers and Drummers and British Command for the French and Indian War.

When it comes to painting:
I completed for the Austrian Kaiser’s Infantry Regiment I completed the command section of 8 figures, one mounted officer, and the first company of 15 figures. I also got a good start in the second company of 15 figures completing the Officer and NCO, getting all the major color blocks done, leaving finer detail like cross belts.
I got a good start on the French Royal Rousilon Infantry Regiment, completing the command section of 8 figures, and 12 of the eighteen figures I was planning to paint at the beginning of the day, the group grew to 24 figures, but I need Command and Drummers.
For Bougainville command of French Grenadiers and Pickets I got the figures mounted up and ready to paint. His command will have 30 Grenadiers, 30 Courier De Bouis, 30 Canadian Militia and 30 Indians. I have 15 Militia and 15 Indians completed.
I also re-mounted my 30 British Rangers for the French and Indian War onto circular bases from their old square basis to be consistent across my collection for the period, I need to finish flocking these bases in the near future.
In total I got about 45 figures painted for the weekend and another 15 basically done.

I spent some time looking at my American War of Indepence Collection, but I will leave that for another post.