More thoughts on black powder skirmishing...

Thanks to those who commented on my previous post as I try and work out what skirmish forces I can realistically contemplate building over the next year or so.

I managed an hour's painting this afternoon on my Royal Naval Brigade gun crew for my darkest Africa Zambezi campaign.  Just the eyes and the bases to do on these now.  The guns and mules have arrived (very quickly indeed) from Askari Miniatures in America and with the completion of these my British Force will be complete.  I have done a bit more work on my next unit of Zanzibari slave soldiers too, so although we are not making the progress on Darkest Africa that we did last year it is still moving along.

I have definitely decided not to go with the American Revolution or the Crimea on the basis that if I am going to paint figures with uniforms that complex then I might as well do the Peninsula which, emotionally, I would prefer.  I made and started a few of the Victrix Peninsula British but they are a total trial to put together, particularly as I can't work out what pose they are in until they are built.  Maybe I need to dig them out and finish a couple.

Perry Rhode Island Militia

I have thought about the comments I have had, with something of a consensus emerging on ACW.   I recently started to watch the interminable film Gods and Generals with its well done (although rather "clean") battle scenes of First Manassas.  A few years ago I was travelling to Washington DC a fair bit and the battlefield is less than 10 miles from Dulles airport.  I passed signs on the road to it but never got there, frustratingly.  This battle has had a lot of coverage in the magazines lately and the Perry's have started to produce some figures for particular units from it.  I first got interested in this battle having read the Bernard Cornwell novel Rebel and started to paint some 20mm plastics for it but the peculiarities of many of the unit's uniforms  meant they were difficult to model accurately.

Burnside leads the Rhode Islanders at First Bull Run

A classic example of one of these would be Col Ambrose Burnside's Rhode Island regiments in their blue hunting shirts and red blankets but now however, the Perry twins have come up with figures for these, which may well be difficult to resist.  My biggest problem with ACW is that I sold all my Ospreys on eBay some time ago when I needed the shelf space, so am lacking uniform references for the period.

My Renegade early WW1 Prussian Guards

Steve the Wargamer also suggested early WW1 and this is a good idea given that I have actually painted a number of German's for this period.  In fact, I have the 48 figures I am aiming at already for the Germans.  I hope to start some British at some point, but the existence of machine guns means it's not quite what I'm after. 

Prussian Jaeger

However, as I was thinking about the WW1 Prussians I had painted  there were a number of advertisements on TMP by North Star for their 1866 Austro-Prussian War figures, which they bought from Helion.  I know that Matt has painted a number of these (beautifully) but I had always resisted them (despite the appeal of the Prussians' pickelhauben) because the whole war was over in six weeks.  Again, a battle from this was featured in one of the magazines recently but looking at some of the new figures, especially the Jaeger, I  am starting to wonder if this might be a new option.

North Star 1866 Prussian Jaegers

Hmm, maybe I need to give in to my Austro-Hungarian ancestry but I'm not sure how much uniform information is available for this war.  So, I've still not made up my mind on this.  Maybe I need to finish my next batch of Zulu War British before I order anything new, but then it's Salute next month!