Sunday, December 29, 2013

From PeterD: 28mm War of 1812 American Militia (48 points)


Peter debuts with these great dismounted dragoons for his War of 1812 project.

From Peter:
I signed up for Curt's 4th Painting Challenge, but was much later off the starting line than many others.  I plead an acute case of real life - 120 Stats papers, 30 Financial mathematics papers, swapping the furniture between two bedrooms in our house and the return of our daughter after a storm delayed flight home from University.  I swear that Curt sets the timing up to put me at a maximum disadvantage - really Curt I have both Final exams and Christmas to deal with.  [Douglas, you don't fool me for a minute. I know that even if the conditions were absolutely perfect you'd still be a drag-ass paint slug...- ed. :P ] 
Anyway, this year I've decided to keep my submissions to bite sized morsels rather than full meals.  First up are these 8 members of the Trojan Greens, a War of 1812 Militia unit from upstate New York. Figures are kit bashed from the Perry 28mm plastic dismounted French Dragoons.  Construction wise I quite like the Perry plastics, but I am rather ham-fisted in my approach.  


In this case, the major bashing involved trimming the boot detail off of the rank and filers to represent trousers.  I left the officer in boots and breaches as this seems to be a unit composed of uppity upstate mucky-mucks, and I figured that the officers would be trumped up Johnnies who would dress like gentry. Otherwise, I swapped in arms from the mounted figures for the trumpeter and officer.  I left them with the cavalry belts and cartage box, I'm sure a button counter will tell me that's not accurate but it works.  


I don't have a lot of info about the unit - they were rifled armed and from the Albany area.  They appear to have served along the St. Lawrence frontier and I believe that they were one of the volunteer units that existed pre-war - with the members providing their own uniforms and drilling on their own time.  I found a uniform plate here, and references here about an existing officer's coat.  The black belts on black facing and plastron always blurs details but I think that the yellow lace shows the difference well enough for my purposes.  I am not 100% happy with my lace work, but decided it was close enough and experience has told me that fussing about with yellow on black just makes things worse.  There is a similar black on black effect with the helmets and crests, but I find that a wash effect on the horse hair shows a difference in texture to get the effect reasonably.
Great job Peter! It's always nice to see something outside the main tropes of figure gaming. What system are you basing these for? Black Powder? 

These eight New Yorkers will give Peter a base of 40 points but I'm adding another 8 for the modifications he did. Welcome to the roster Peter!

14 comments:

  1. Good to gave you on board, you've done a really nice job

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  2. Curt
    Thanks for the extra points. All comments about my energy levels are of course completely accurate. However, you title of the post is not accurate. The Trojan Greens were in fact an infantry militia unit, not cavalry.

    Yes I'm thinking something based on Black Powder. Give me a few more Challenge entries and I'll have enough that we can give it a go.
    Cheers
    PD

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    1. Noted and updated! I look forward to seeing them on the tabletop.

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  3. A grand "bite" for for a start.. Keep it up!

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  4. Great Start Peter looking forward to seeing more soon
    Peace James

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  5. Thanks for the encouragement all.

    Hopefully I'll have more 1812-ers up this week.
    Cheers
    PD

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  6. Dismounted dragoons aren't something you see very often. Nice work mate!

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  7. Great figures - the War of 1812 is one of my favorite periods to game

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  8. Busy time of the year. But this is an endurance event I think?
    cheers

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  9. These are nice, and as Curt say's nice to see something not in the usual range of figures

    Ian

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  10. Very good conversion work; the unit is very nice.

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Thanks for your comment! As long as you're not a spam droid I'll have it up on the blog soon. :)