Gettysburg in 1/72nd scale (part 2), the Army of Northern Virginia

The second part of this Gettysburg big units video is about Lee´s army. Same brands, and same techniques as in the Union army, so nothing new here. Even if the ANV didn´t have any Zouave units the Confederate army is always colorful with all that butternutt, Cadet gray and civilian items. I forgot to show you Jeb Stuart´s cavalry but you can see it here in this blog´s post: http://jpwargamingplace.blogspot.com/2018/12/fire-acw-rules-set-gettysburg-in-20mm_19.html

Gettysburg in 1/72nd scale (part 1), the Army of the Potomac

This one is made from all available plastic figures from the venerable Airfix to the more recent Strelets R, including A Call to Arms, Revell, Italeri and also some metal Irregular Miniatures. I tried to characterize all famous individuals from regimental commanders up to Corps commanders since this is a period with abundant information. This army is complete for Fire&Fury brigade rules and it will be followed by the Confederate army. The houses are made of card and maybe one or two more will be added in the future. All other structures, roads, hills, stonewalls, trees, etc are not shown as most of them are generic and useful for a number of periods.

Fire&Fury ACW using Epic miniatures for the Western battles (part 4) - Last McLernand Brigades and a few extras for Shiloh

The Shiloh project continues with two more Union brigades, General Grant stand, one more artillery battery and the Indian Mounds. At the moment I managed to finish five Fire&Fury brigades total both Union and Confederate, which used five of the free sprues from the WI magazine. The starter set was open and the resin Meade was turned into Grant but more on that later. 

The commander of this regiment had his arm repositioned for more variety and longer shafts were inserted after drilling in the hands of the flag-bearers for the bigger 15mm Revo flags. 

Marsh and Raith's Brigades, respectively 8 and 10 stands for F&F. 

The gun barrel was also drilled and the crew and wheels switched sides. For that the metal ends of the wheels axis were cut and glued on the insertion hole. Like this the guns looks different when placed side by side with an original one.

In order to make this stand for general Grant, the Meade figure from the starter set was used. For that the bold head of Meade was scalped and replaced by a slouch hat and a waiting artilleryman had the bold head of Meade glued. General Grant was more known for its civilian cut uniform but at least at Shiloh it seems he used the more conventional uniform.

Another view of the man himself.

The flag-bearer with the army pennant is another conversion. I´ve been reading about both Kallistra and Peter Pig having 15mm ACW ranges that are close to the 13,5mm size of the Epic miniatures. But taking advantage of an order for 20mm vehicles from Lancer I also ordered some packs of 10mm command and cavalry ACW figures after looking at their site. The bodies of the cavalrymen looked quite compatible with the Epic range while the horses were on the small size, which was expectable. Like this I glued the torso of this flag-bearer to the horse of a 15mm Irregular Miniatures WW1 French cavalryman which are quite similar in size to the Epic ones. I'm thinking about the same procedure for more figures in command stands namely officers and cornets as nowadays ordering from England is troublesome to say the least. 

I found this smallhill top in a local pet shop in the aquarium section.

Somehow it looks like the Indian Mounds of Shiloh that can be found in the northeast part of the battlefield close to the Tennessee river.

Next: The "Colonial Shermans" for Seelow Heights 1945.

Fire&Fury ACW using Epic miniatures for the Western battles (part 3) - The gunboats of Shiloh

Grant itself recognized the great help given by USS Tyler and USS Lexington during the battle of Shiloh namely by helping the repulse of the Confederates that tried to envelop the last positions of the Union left on the first day of the battle. That help continued during the night, this time not causing many casualties but preventing the enemy from sleep!

These two boats were converted commercial boats and fought all along the war in many battles and ended up with many scars. 

The construction of the miniatures was quite easy. I used two wooden toys as the base and built the upper parts from blue board. Small parts of card were added later as well as plastic chimneys and cardboard roofs. The masts were pieces of metal waiting for years to become useful. 

The gun ports had small pieces of plastic tubing to simulate the guns.

USS Tyler (sort of). 

USS Lexington. This one was troublesome as at first I could not see two chimneys and no covered deck and she was built, as you can see in the second picture of the post,  filled with mistakes. A few days later, thanks to information from ACW buffs, those mistakes were somehow corrected. 

At this time thousands of my faithful followers are asking "Why is this post Epic?" and Warlord is preparing its dozen layers to sue me. But cool down, the sailors are converted Epic plastic infantry, so I´m safe!

The weapons and bedrolls were carved out first, then kepis and slouch hats were trimmed and later squashed after heating with fire. A flag post was also converted to a ram. The result is far from good and I managed to find some great brands with 10mm and 15mm figures for this exact situation but all US based and taking too much time to arrive here. Besides the "Epic" flavour would be lost :)

Bird view of the USS Tyler. These models generally always end up in the fatty side as I want to compromise between the general shape, some details and a smaller size than scale. The same happened to the 20mm aircraft carrier I showed you a few weeks ago and many other structures made all along the years. 

Bird view of the USS Lexington. The painting of these boats is very scruffy due to the haste I have all the time and also to the hot glue used to put together all parts. This glue leaves plenty of bumps everywhere but its an easy way to attach different materials. The blue board was covered with PVA glue and then all joints got a small stream of superglue to strengthen the final result. Don´t forget to paste your blue board with PVA otherwise you will get a smaller scale thing in the end.  

A big Thank You to the FB ACW buffs that gave me precious information in particular to Richard Schwab and Mike Hinton this time and also Brad Butkovich for some of my future projects. 

Next: More Russians for Seelow Heights.

Fire&Fury ACW using Epic miniatures for the Western battles (part 2) - US Hare's brigade and Shiloh´s Union camp

Whith the battle closing by, Major General McLernand directes Hare´s brigade to a counter attack against Johnston's Confederates on the Western part of the Shiloh battlefield on the 6th April, 1862. 

The Union units are much more easily painted than the Confederates. I kept the slouch hats black and the bedrolls grey to speed up painting. 

Only some hair and beards were painted in blond tones to achieve some variety. The flags are Revo and true 15mm, so a bit bigger for these 13,5mm figures but looking Ok in their middle. I chose to paint this brigade first for the Union side due to the the Illinois regimental colours of Hare´s brigade being very similar to the Revo flags I already had. 

The Camp tents were made of carved BlueBoard and kept as simple as possible. Only two types were made here, the Wedge tent and the Officer's tent. I couldn't find any reference to the usage of the Sibley tent, undoubtedly the most interesting of the whole ACW as it was inspired in the Indian Teepee. Probably there would also exist plenty of Dog's tents but I also kept them out.  

The tents were painted in a buff colour and only then in white. Some flags were added to the Officer's tents for them to look more colourful. I made 52 Wedge tents in 13 groups of four plus 13 Officer's tents to represent the entire Union camps for Grant's army at Shiloh. 

Artillery was also kept simple with the usual green colour for the guns.

A little more than a full sprue was used for this brigade and the Western Union Armies will be apparently easier to paint in comparison to the Confederates which always need a more subtle variation in colours. 

Next: A return to 20mm and France 1940.

Fire&Fury ACW using Epic miniatures for the Western battles (part 1) - CSA Stephen´s and Cleburne's brigades

 

General A.S.Johnson adresses an  Arkansas regiment before urging them forward around 2P.M on the 6th of April, 1862, at the battle of Shiloh. He holds a cup taken from one of the Union camps early in the day. He will move in front and will get killed a few hours later, being the highest ranking officer killed on both sides during the American Civil War.

Don Troiani  painted his beautiful 'Men of Arkansas' which served as an inspiration for the Army Command Stand were I placed General Albert Sidney Johnson. The figure of Johnson is the original officer on horse from the Epic sprue with its torso replaced by the foot officer. The slouch hat was trimmed until it got the shape of a kepi. The cup is a small slice of sprue glued to the right hand of the foot officer. 

Well, this is something. Since the advertisement  that Warlord was about to release new small (13,5mm) ACW miniatures in plastic I confess that I started to speak my poor English again with an American accent. 

 I built for many years the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia in 20mm for the Gettysburg battle using the basing system of  Fire&Fury. It was a pleasurable project with around 4000 minis built and painted that forced me to read books and magazines, watch movies and documentaries about the Civil War in the East, its uniforms, flags and campaigns. Years after I could say I had a reasonable knowledge of the battles of 1st Bull Run, Antietam. Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and specially Gettysburg to name just a few of the more famous. But frankly I knew nothing about the battles on the Western theater and names like Shiloh and Chickamauga were vague and distant to me. A few months  ago I saw  in the History Channel two documentaries about Grant that are absolutely magnificent, some of the best pieces TV ever made with an historical purpose. The depiction of the  battle of Shiloh is a work of art of the finest quality which is strange in a channel that now believes more in monsters and ghosts than in facts.

By coincidence about the same time Warlord releases its hard plastic Epic scale miniatures and offers a sprue with 100 of them in each January 2021 Wargames Illustrated magazine. Then, on their website, there is also a juicy box with 24 of those sprues plus a lot of other things in pre-order. Went looking for these magazines, found six and ordered the big box from Warlord. So, soon 3000 miniatures total! 

With all this I started to think and read about the Western campaigns with battles like Shiloh, Stones River, Cickamauga and Atlanta. The flags, particularly the Confederates, are far more diverse and interesting than the ones of the Army of Northern Virginia. Another aspect that lead me to make these Epic miniatures for the Western Campaigns is that the small 10 men groups have a mix of slouch hats and kepis which is exactly what the Union soldiers wore on those campaigns, on the contrary of the Army of the Potomac to the east which used almost nothing else but kepis, with some honourable exceptions. So the sprue being equal both for Union and Confederates is not bad at least for those who want to model and wargame the armies of the Western campaigns. 

The Brigades will be shown as I can find details of flags and uniforms, not in any other particular order. 

This picture is from an advertisement for the 2nd edition of the Brigade F&F rules showing day one at Gettysburg. It uses the same one line stands of the Regimental rules. Even if looking good I prefer much more the two line stands of the 1st Brigade rules. 

I aim at having all Brigades in the style of the 1st edition Brigade level  F&F units (with 2 deep stands) for Shiloh and slowly moving to the larger Chickamauga Order of Battle. Many units participated in both battles even if belonging to different armies and flags are also sometimes of the same type.  

To the left is Stephen's Brigade of Cheatham division  represented here by the 9th Tennessee and to the right is the 6th Mississipi, from Cleburne's Brigade, Hindman's Division, of Rhea Field fame. The uniform of the 9th Tennessee is mostly Cadet Grey as given to most of the Tennessee units that were at Shiloh, while the 6th Mississipi wears mostly Butternut colours in its uniform. This last unit should have had a bigger percentage of kepis but I ignored that detail, lazinness oblige. 

The 6cm base was cut in two as well as the 10 men line for them to become F&F (aproximate) 3cmX2cm stands. Some shoulders and arms were touched with a naked flame due to some X-Acto damage. An advantage of dividing the infantry lines is that you get four possible combinations of lines instead of two (there are only two variants of lines in each sprue excluding the command line).

To the left is the converted command stand from an original group of five figures you can see to the right. In fact a group of normal infantry can be used for command if you do something like this:

- the second figure to the left had its rifle carved out and replaced by a piece of sprue, becoming a drummer.

- the third figure, the officer, had the rifle replaced by a piece of plastic that became a new sword. With gloves painted he has extra pay.

- the flagbearer had its rifle replaced by a pole of plastic after drilling the hands. 

Like this you get an extra command group in an easy way.

The command stand of the 6th Mississipi is the one in the sprue, less five of its figures and with the torso of the officer on horse placed instead of the original one (who became General A.S, Johnson of the first picture). 

The massed look of these miniatures is very realistic. 

The artillery stands were painted in the usual colours of the Confederate artillery. The limbers will be released later together with cavalry, dismounted cavalry, wagons and Iron Brigade all in resin. 

Here they go towards Prentiss and Sherman's division early on the 6th of April for the the deadliest battle of US history. Until then. 

Next: wether more Epic miniatures or BEF 1940. 

Fire&Fury ACW rules set - Gettysburg in 20mm, Devil's Den (part 42)

The Devil´s Den is an iconic place of the battle of Gettysburg made of some big and labirinthic boulders . It´s on the southern end of the battlefield facing the equally famous Little Round Top. It was the scene of some brutal fighting on the second day and, by the end of the day, was in the hands of the Confederates but covered with dead and wounded like other famous places nearby such as the Wheat Field, the Triangle or the Valley of Death. 

Initially I thought about gluing some river stones  to make my Devil´s Den. In the end the weight let the idea aside. Besides the rocks of the Devil's Den have plenty of scars and some have a specific shape difficult to find in a small stone.

In the end I opted by hard Stryrofoam (blueboard) and carved the stones individually. The main trick is to attack the blueboard with the blunt part of the Xacto in order top make scars mainly on the sides and a few big ones on top of the boulders. Painting is my usual black undercoat, and without drying completely, applying sucessive coats of medium grey and light gray. 

 

I left three boulders with enough place for a F&F base to stand in each of them. 

Also enough room was left for some markers. 

Aerial view. The piece is around 35cmX15cm in its maximum measurements.

The northern side showing two entrances. 

The famous "Duck Head" pointing at the Union positions a feature that makes Devil's Den easily recognizable. 

Next: The Bailey Bridge at the Son River. 

Fire&Fury ACW rules set - Gettysburg in 20mm, Lee´s HQ and Stuart's cavalry (part 41and last)

Here is the man itself arriving at Thompson House. Lee is a StreletsR figure as well as its aide, Lt.Col. Walter H. Taylor. 

Maj. Gen. J.E.B.Stuart can be seen riding at the front of Hampton's brigade. He will have to explain very well his delay to Lee. Stuart is a StreletsR while all the rest is Italeri. 

1st Virginia represents Fitzhugh Lee Brigade in their typical grey with black facings. The sabre figures are all the same pose which became slightly different by heating the right arm with the flame of a lighter.

This is the last post of this series. Still some Union and Confederate reserve artillery and cavalry to do but it will not be for now. Hope you have enjoyed it. 

Next: a return to the Middle East. 

Fire&Fury ACW rules set - Gettysburg in 20mm, 3rd Corps ANV, Anderson's Division (part 40)

Anderson's Division was composed of five Brigades from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississipi and Virginia and here is prepared to finish Sickles' salient on the second day of battle. 

Gen. Anderson is a figure from Italeri with a resin Airfix copy as Divisional standard bearer. 

Wilcox Brigade is made of mostly Italeri figures with the usual conversions and head swaps. 

The smallest Brigade in the ANV was Lang's Brigade. Figures from all brands including some metal  Irregular Miniatures. 

                           

The same for Wright Brigade of Georgians. 

Posey's Mississipians is another mix of brands. By these days figures started to get scarcer and some bases got only three poses and even a few figures are firing pistols...Mahone's Virginians had their picture erased inadvertently but they are very close to the picture above even sharing the same basing the only difference being that Mahone's has one more stand.  

                           

Divisional artillery mixes metal and plastic and also some infantry recruited to man the guns and suitably converted. 

Next: Lee's HQ and some cavalry to finish this Gettysburg series.