AWI Continental Staff and Townspeople

After seventeen months I have finally completed the last of my AWI figures with ten Continental staff and camp, and eight townspeople. The staff are a mixture of Perry and Front Rank to provide a but more variety, even though the Front Rank figures appear much better fed alongside their Perry counterparts:

I have ended up with two George Washingtons, one of them the Perry figure which comes with three boxes of plastic Continentals, and the other a more solid Front Rank figure:

Rather annoyingly, I have also ended up with two Benedict Arnold figures and three instead of the four Front Rank ADC figures I actually ordered, but I suppose he did switch sides so I can potentially field both of them:

Here are the remainder of the Front Rank ADCs:

And some Perry mounted officers:

I individually based some leftover foot figures in the hope they might come in useful in a few Sharp Practice games:

I also completed some Perry AWI civilians, an interesting mix of figures:

And a camp vignette:

The final count for the project came out as:

British:    595 foot and mounted figures

                60 horses

                11 artillery pieces

Hessians: 179 foot and mounted figures

                3 horses

                2 artillery pieces

Continentals:    498 foot and mounted figures

                          28 horses

                          6 artillery pieces

All up, 1272 foot and mounted figures, 91 horses, 19 artillery pieces and 8 wagons. Now to get them on to the table for a few solo games of British Grenadier, hopefully followed by some Monday evening Sharp Practice games.

AWI Continental Light Dragoons

While I ended up doing four regiments of cavalry for the British I calculated that two of nine figures each should be enough for my Continental army, so I settled on the 2nd and 3rd light dragoons:

The 2nd light dragoons or Sheldon's horse, named after their colonel Elisha Sheldon, were an accomplished regiment, detachments of which also formed part of Washington's bodyguard:

As with the 3rd dragoons, these Perry figures are one-piece castings with the horse and rider being single sculpts, although they all come with a choice of several arms which allows for quite a variation in pose and armaments:

It surprised me a little to find that the trumpeters were in reversed colours and I wondered how long that remained the case in practice, but it does make for a nice variation in uniform:

The flag is from GMB and sets off the command stand nicely:

An option for one of the figures is an arm brandishing a pistol which I think is my favourite pose:

The 3rd dragoons or Baylor's horse are almost the opposite in terms of uniform to the 2nd, so complement them nicely:

The trumpeter is again in reversed colours. If research ever discloses that this was not actually the case in practice, I suppose I can simply swap them between regiments...

Another GMB flag for the command stand:

That is the Continental cavalry now completed:

This just leaves ten Continental staff figures, which are currently on the painting table, and a dozen or so civilians to go before my AWI project is completed.

I have however managed to get slightly distracted along the way with some terrain pieces. I hope to have the second of these completed this week, and then it will be back to the final push to complete George Washington and his staff.

AWI Continental Artillery

The completion of six Continental artillery pieces over the weekend means I now only have two regiments of light dragoons, ten or so staff figures and a few sundry civilians ahead of me. The artillery is comprised of four 6 pounders and two 3 pounder pieces:

The 6 pounders have two different crews, one firing:

And the other aiming:

The 3 pounder or 'butterfly' guns also had an option for crew dressed in hunting shirts, which makes a nice variation alongside the regular uniforms:

I also completed some dragrope men on individual bases, to accommodate the rather strange requirement in the Sharp Practice rules to have five figures per gun rather than the more usual four:

For a slight change of pace I also started work on the Najewitz Modellbau 15mm Peninsular village. This is a large piece comprised of eight buildings and a scenic base. I have purchased quite a lot of Jens Najewitz's pieces over the years, but rather than invest in a 3D printer I bought them from a licensee in Western Australia who closed down several years ago. 

It is only now that I have finally got around to painting the first of them I realised there are a few missing pieces, including the onion dome from a 28mm Borodino church which, aside from painting an actual onion and sticking it on top, knew I was never going to be able to replicate. 

I contacted Jens directly who emailed me the STL files for the parts which I have sent on to a friend from my Saturday group to print. Anyway, here are the first couple of houses and the church from the Peninsular set:

I gave the houses quite a heavy drybrush of antique white although they look a little more yellow here than they do to the naked eye, probably due to the light. The roofs and floors are secured in place by sturdy pegs, to allow figures to be placed inside:

I am a big fan of Jens's designs, and they represent an absolute bargain for anyone with a 3D printer. Next up, the Continental cavalry.

Last of the AWI Continental Foot

The weekend past saw me finish the last three Continental foot units in the form of two more militia regiments, complementing the three militia regiments already completed, and a unit of skirmish figures:

First up is a twenty-eight figure militia unit which I have styled as Hobart's Regiment:

The figures are exactly the same as the other four militia regiments, with six command and six firing line poses which I have again painted in predominantly greys and browns:

The command stand is carrying a white GMB militia flag:

The last militia regiment is the Albany County militia comprised of 22 figures, the smallest of the five:

carrying a red militia flag:

The last Continental foot contingent is a unit of thirty-two skirmishers which can be separated and deployed as needed. These are primarily made up from the two Perry skirmishing riflemen packs but I also threw in a few spare line figures for good measure:

Including a few spare command figures which gave me an excuse to use one of the leftover GMB flags:

The rifle-armed figures are mainly attired in hunting shirts and were comprised of an interesting mix of skirmish poses:

Including a figure with a beard, which makes two bearded figures in total across all three AWI contingents:

There are also two prone poses, one firing and the other reloading, which makes for an interesting variation:

That is another eight-eight figures completed in this batch:

I now only have the artillery, two units of cavalry, some staff figures and a dozen or so sundry civilians to complete. The end of the project is now definitely in sight.

AWI Continental Militia

The first three of five Continental militia units were completed last weekend, to join the already completed eleven Line regiments. These were a lot more fiddly to paint than the Line however and I used around forty different shades across each unit to try to give them a less regular appearance:

I styled one of the units after Stark's New Hampshire militia, mainly because that was one of the specific militia flag packs available from GMB:

There are essentially only twelve different poses, six in the command pack and six in the firing line, but it was possible to mix these up a bit to provide some variety:

There was also a Chester County Militia flag available, so the choice for the second regiment was easy:

While I used a generic militia flag for the third unit, the Massachusetts 1st Regiment of militia:

These are quite large units with two at thirty figures and one with twenty-eight, large enough to cover most British Grenadier and Sharp Practice scenarios, so represent another eighty-eight figures completed in total:

Two more militia units to go, along with some rifle-armed skirmishers, six artillery pieces and some mounted staff. The end of the project is definitely now in sight.