Saturday, September 4, 2010

Sargent's Massachusetts Battalion

I've been feeling very guilty lately when looking at my painting totals and viewing the solitary '1' in the 'Painted 25mm Figures' column. As a change of pace to the 15mm ancients and WWII I've been painting lately I thought I should go back to my roots and paint up another unit of AWI figures. Since I'm trying to finish up my Saratoga armies I picked Sargent's Massachusetts Battalion. Lately the scenarios I've been hosting with my AWI armies have been using a lot of my generic troops to pose as Massachusetts troops so this was a primary motivator to paint up another dedicated MA unit.

I've painted this unit up as regulars. By the time of the Saratoga campaign they were receiving regular continental pay and I've uniformed them as such. This is a stark contrast to Giles Allison's excellent rendition of this same unit that he featured on his blog. For the flag I couldn't find any specific references to what this unit carried so I selected a suitable standard using a Google search for 'AWI Flags' and then with a little Photoshop magic rendered it as a two-sided image which I printed out on plain paper. This is my first attempt to replicate the awesome techniques that the Flag Dude uses on his flags. I'm still falling short of his excellent product, but for a homemade attempt it's not bad, save the few flecks of static grass that stuck to it during the photographing session.

As is my current custom, I've painted this unit up as two formed stands and an additional skirmish stand. This will allow me to use the figures in several different scales in Volley & Bayonet, as well as allowing me to use the figures in Carnage & Glory and British Brigadier! as well. The figures are all Old Glory brand, most of them from my favorite pack of theirs: 'Continental Firing Line'.  Next up will be a big push into early war WWII for the recently released 'Blitzkrieg' rule and army list book.





4 comments:

Captain Richard's miniature Civil War said...

excellent job...very nice

Galpy said...

they look real great a real nice job
Cheers
Kent

Steve-the-Wargamer said...

Nice work indeed! A welcome return to one of my favourite periods...

Giles said...

Very nicely done, AJ. Your "properly uniformed" look is probably the better way to go - and it's nice to see so much green on the American side.

Best wishes

Giles