20 figures. Painted April/May 2008. Flag by "Flags for the Lads".
Wargaming the American War of Independence

I wouldn't normally post on "casualty" figures, but there are three reasons to do so in this instance. First, I think the sculpt of minutemen carrying their wounded friend on a rifle is a tour de force by Alan Perry and deserves a mention. Secondly, as can be seen in the photos I have been experimenting with "flower scatter" to make bases a bit more interesting. Thirdly, I know that many people don't bother basing casualty figures and I thought it might be worth thinking about whether there is any merit in doing so. On this last point, I have always based my casualty figures, mainly because I think it looks neater (after all, everything else is based) but also because casualty figures allow you to be a bit more creative with the basing...
Which brings me to the "flowers". This scatter was sent to me by Murray Bridge terrain in Australia (see the links section); they provided flowers in yellow, white, pink, red and violet. I thought I'd post these picture because I'm interested to know what readers think about the effect. I have already posted one of these pics elsewhere and opinion seems to be mixed, with some clearly feelign that this sort of basing material detracts from the military look of the figures ("Flowers, Sir!? Flowers!!!" was Dave Brown's response). The fallen chap with the pistol has rather too much red scatter on his base - a couple of people who have seen this pic assumed it was blood! (Someone else pointed out that if the red scatter is suppoed to represent poppies, then due to the stalks the red flowers should properly be at chest height.) The scatter is more subtle on the other bases, so much so that you can't really see it in the photos, although an examination up close will show little specks of yellow and pink. I'm still experimenting, but I would be interested to know what people think of the use of this sort of material generally. All the figures bar one are from the new Perry southern militia casualties pack; the figure in the uniform coat if from the Continental casualties pack.
7 figures. Painted May 2008.



The Royal Highland Emigrants were recruited largely from ex-soldiers who had settled in Canada and Newfoundland, although recruits came from all over the northern colonies. As an aid to recruitment, General Thomas Gage stipulated that the soldiers would wear highland dress in the manner of the Black Watch. Men joined in sufficient numbers for two battalions to be formed. The regiment was taken on to the British regular establishment at the 84th Foot in January 1779. The first battalion operated mainly in Canada, whilst the second battalion was engaged in the Carolinas and elsewhere in the south.
I have had these figures for a good few years and could not think of how to use them given that I painted up the Black Watch in full plaid and then the 71st Foot in overalls. I had always assumed that to convert the Black Watch into the 84th Foot one simply needed a spare command stand with the regimental flags - after all, the uniforms are essentially the same. In any event, I had not come across any decent battles in which the 84th participated. So the figures languished in my bits box for a good while. I dug them out when I bought the second "British Grenadier!" as it features the 84th at Eutaw Springs. The scenario gives you the option of combining elements of this and another regiment into an 18-figure unit, so I decided this would give me the opportunity to field the 84th at full 18-figure strength. So this unit is designed to be the second battalion, which means that the flags should have a "golden wavy" in the top left hand corners. Also, one queries whether the troops would have retained their plaid in the southern campaigns, probably switching to trews or brown trousers. But those "mistakes" aside, I'm quite happy with the way these figures turned out.
There are a couple of subtle differences in the uniform as compared to the Black Watch. First, I gave the government sett tartan a red stripe rather than a black one; that followed information in the Osprey on "18th Century Highlanders". Secondly, the lace seemed more red than blue and so I painted it by placing a small red dot on a white background, whereas with the Black Watch the dot is royal blue. Thirdly, I remembered to paint the lace of the musicians in yellow and blue, which I forgot to do with the 42nd. The design on the front of the drum is obviously different, but those are, I think, the main changes in uniform. When I based these figures last night I felt inspired to tart up the bases a little, and so I added a fallen log and some red and purple flowers (courtesy of Murray Bridge Trees & Terrain - I will post more on this in a couple of days). I did a step-by-step on the tartan here. On a point of collection trivia, I see that this regiment takes the tally of British regular battalions in my collection to 25.
18 figures. Painted March/April 2008. Flags by GMB.






Salute never disappoints. Well, it does if there's no trader selling GMB flags; but that minor annoyance aside I thought this was a splendid show. My own feeling was that the standard of demo/participation games was better than last year (I know others disagree) and the space seemed better managed and layed out. There were more children and families, which is always encouraging, and the trade stands were busy. ACW was very much flavour of the day, with (I think) 4 games in varying scales, including the Perries' own 25mm demo, and some re-enactors from both sides of the war. Other re-enactors included imperial Romans, Vietnam GIs, Napoleonic Polish lancers and some Necromongers from "The Chronicles of Riddick" (actually, on reflection I think the last group may have just been wearing their everyday clothes...). The number of traders and games, many of which I never managed to look at, reinforced my view that this should be a 2-day event, or at least one with longer opening hours. There simply was not enough time to see everything and the photos below are a reflection of those games that I managed to find; there were plenty of others which I have heard great things about which I never came across.
I was more restrained with my shopping that I had thought, at least where impulse buys were concerned. I binged on Perry AWI from Dave Thomas, who also supplied some useful half-price Foundry blisters. Foundry themselves had various "bargain" packs for sale, but they were very hard to identify (Crimean War and orcs mostly, I think). Irritatingly their paints were only available in sets and not singly - I thought they might at least have managed to allow painters to pick up the odd colours they needed; Foundry's loss was quickly Coat D'Arms' gain. Perry plastic ACW was flying off the shelves at Dave Thomas and from the Perries' own stand. Alan told me that the ACW infantry had pretty much already recouped its tooling costs, which suggests that I'm the only wargamer who hasn't bought a set yet; given the clear success of the ACW figures I expect their next plastic plans are already underway. I bought the latest issues of "Wargames Soldiers and Strategy" from Caliver, some ACW from Dixon and one or two other things. I resisted the urge to increase my collection of TSS terrain tiles, mainly because I haven't yet worked out where to store the ones I already have. I meant to buy lots more farmyard animals from Amazon Miniatures but ran out of time.
Socially the show was good and I caught up with a few mates. Those excellent chaps at Tablescape had brought along my model of the Benjamin Ring house (Washington's headquarters at Brandywine) - not quite finished yet but I got the gist of it and it's a pretty impressive model. I showed Chris some of the photos from my Boston/Charleston holiday and tweaked his interest in a couple of things. I took away his plans of the next commission, a farm complex, which I need to consider and finalise. A church and meeting house after that I think.
Below are various photos. Loughton Strike Force presented their second 25mm Waterloo game. After last year's "Ney's Cavalry Charges" this game centered on La Haye Sainte. The Warlords put on a General de Brigade game set in the South American wars of liberation, "Maipo 1818". This game featured 20mm plastics, largely converted from Napoleonic figures. It looked stunnign and seems an interesting period. At the top of the post are: The Lance and Longbow Society's "Battle of Varna 1444" and Touching History's Peninsular game. Below are: Loughton's Waterloo; Maipo 1818; perry ACW; the Shogun Group's "Domjogi" and finally the AWI game, using "British Grenadier" rules, of a hypothetical "Battle of the Clouds" battle, by GLC Games Club. As always, many thanks to the South London Warlords for presenting such an excellent show.







