Union Cav

Alright, these are pretty much done... of course they still needs flags and matte spray (I blame the weather and make excuses but I think I'm just scared to death of spraying them and it frosting them!). Click to enlarge pictures.

Here is a group shot, again these are Perry Miniatures (ACW Cav plastic boxset).

Closeup of the first half, Command stand on the left.

Closeup of the second half.

And some closeups of individual stands-
I went Hollywood and gave the commander a white horse!

I just liked how this horse turned out.

I was pleased with the overall look of this guy.

The great thing about these plastics is that they scream for you to do some conversions. I took one of the extra firing arms from the Infantry boxset and cut the musket out of the hands, then glued them to the Cavalryman's body and gave him a carbine. Pretty simple but a little tricky. I should have taken work in progress pictures but alas I am lazy! Maybe next time!

And another view of him.

A Lost Cause Game

I went to my LGS's Annual Gamefest last night to play a game of "A Lost Cause", my friend Rick's ACW rules. We started at 1 AM and the store was still packed with all kinds of tournaments going on.
We wanted to do a Union assault on a prepared Confederate position. As much as we wanted to put EVERYTHING on the table, we only used about a fourth of Ricks mini's. Anyways, here are some pictures from the game (click to enlarge).

Chris, my morale support.

A view from behind the rebel position.

I was the Union attacker- here is my right on setup..

..left..

..and center. The plan was to move the center up the road through the town and combine it with the left to assault the Confederate middle while the right charged straight ahead into the rebel flank. This quickly got stuck in the mud as my commanders couldn't convince their troops to move in any coordinated effort and the massed Confederate artillery quickly started to pile up the casualties.

The confederates massed artillery on their right. This mutilated my left assault.

Rick and Jeannie, the owners of Petshop Comics. Notice how Jeannie is laughing as Rick ranges in his artillery on my center assault!

The right was the only assault to reach the fieldworks as my command rolls kept coming up 1's and 2's. About halfway through the battle we realized that we hadn't deployed enough Union troops to even make it possible to push the Confederates off of their fortifications. Oh well, we still had a great time pushing around big piles of little metal soldiers!

Not the best shot but you can make out the whole table in this picture. The HUGE game that we had earlier in the year was played on this table, except we used the whole thing for that game instead of just the third used for this game.

It's always cool to get Artillery in a wheat field!

At this point it was almost 4:00 AM and it was becoming obvious that it was indeed a lost cause for the Union attackers and so we called it a night. The great thing about when Rick and I play is that we don't really care who wins and it always ends up being us doing what would be historical or fun. (Although he usually ends up winning since he wrote the rules!)

Union Cavalry Teaser

I know I haven't posted anything new in a while- but I've been really busy painting up my Union Cavalry. It is the Perry ACW plastic cavalry boxset- once again, great choice of options and lots of detail. I just finished painting these today, and I will be basing them in the next few days and then I will do a little photo shoot and post some decent pictures.




Next up: An order to Sash and Saber, a few Regiments of Confederate Infantry, and a couple of Union Artillery Batteries. Then some flags from flag dude! This is quickly going from a "Vacation Painting Project" to an entire gaming size/period... The slippery slope that is miniature wargaming!

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

A year and a half ago I built some custom models for a "Seven wonders of the ancient world" custom model railroad layout. They couldn't find models for three of the wonders and so I built models of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Babylonian hanging guardens, and the temple of Artemis.
The Mausoleum was my favorite and so I thought I'd post a few pictures on here....

Battle of Perryville Reenactment

Since I moved here in 2005 I have always wanted to go to the Perryville battlefield/reenactment. And this year we finally made the trip. It was a 90 minute drive and we made it there with 5 minutes to spare before the "battle" was scheduled to start.
Well the main part of the reenactment was representing the fight for a certain hill. And where the crowd was roped off made it difficult to see the entire battlefield. So it was basically you saw one side or the other.. and we were on the Union side. Hence, the lack of pictures of the Confederates.
The reenactment was actually pretty disappointing, it only lasted 15-20 minutes, and for such a short reenactment, the reenactors were very unenthusiastic. I will probably go back with some friends on a non tourist weekend so that I can walk the battlefield.
Anyways, on with the pictures!






I need to brush up on my history, aparently there was only 1 Union casualty at the battle of Perryville! It was a little odd that there was only this one guy sitting on the ground drinking from his canteen!
Of couse, the Cavalry was just sitting there in between their many 6vs6 charging Cavalry engagements! Gotta love reenactors!

Lacy takes a break from the gripping drama to pose for a picture.
One of the monuments

The Confederate Cavalry- The guy in the red vest looked like one of the Three Musketeers..
Better shot of the Musketeers hat..

Another monument.
The Union campsite.
The Confederate monument.