Saturday 21 June 2008

American Militia (4)



My intention when I started work on the new Perry southern militia releases was to paint up one 20-figure unit for each state of Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina. This is the last of the trio, the Baden and Brunswick counties militia from North Carolina. The core of the unit comprises the two current Perry marching southern militia packs and I have added a couple of regular army veterans in regimental coats and hunting shirts. I'm not entirely sure at present how to use the pack of chaps in (shortened) regimental coats and funny hats - you could make a "campaign dress" Continental regiment out of them I suppose; there are a couple of plates in Mollo showing early war Continentals in shortened coats, so maybe this is something I will turn to later in the year. The flag is from "Flags for the Lads" and is described as being the flag of the militia from the two counties mentioned earlier. The liberty tree and rattlesnake motif is fairly standard, so these chaps could pass for anything really. For some reason Flags for the Lads flags have black lines through the centre, so I painted these out and touched up the flag generally to add more shading and highlights to it.


I quite like the way this unit turned out - the drummer is clearly concerned about the trajectory of incoming cannonballs. Incidentally, I received the July "Wargames Illustrated" yesterday and the Perry Miniatures advert includes two more packs of Southern militia - another firing line pack and a "nervous firing line" - pics of figures from the latter suggest that this pack is essentially militiamen running away! Alan Perry is really spoiling us now...The hedges in the background are by Barry Scarlett.


20 figures. Painted May/June 2008. Flag from "Flags for the Lads".



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