2nd Battalion Tarnopol Regiment

 I finished the 2nd Battalion of the Tarnopol regiment.  These are Perry plastics and this time I went with the soft caps.  With 2 battalions the regiment is ready for battle!

1812 Russian Tarnopol Battalion

 As has become the norm around here, I have been very bad about blogging my gaming and modeling progress.  I have actually been having a pretty good year on both fronts, but I have been too lazy to document it. 

My most recent completed paint project is the 1st Battalion of the Tarnopol Regiment.  This is my first unit of Perry miniature for the Napoleonic era, and I must say, they are very nice.  I selected the Tarnopol regiment using the same reasoning I have used for all my Napoleonic units, I have the flags.  I do not know a thing about this unit or its history.

I also painted a commander for the musketeer brigade, also a Perry model.  Finally, I have my second  Russian gun.  This is a 12lb cannon from Warlord games.

Perry Plastic Russians.  Excellent figures that are not really a great match for my Warlord plastics but should be OK in separate units.  The kit allows for building earlier (1807-1812) or later (1812+) units.  It also has heads with soft caps.  There are way too many figures in the box for the size units I build so I ordered some separate command frames from Perry to build more units.

I am following my painting standard for Russians of red for collars, cuffs, shoulder straps, and turn backs.  These should have shoulder straps colored based on their seniority in the division.  I don't know this info so they gat red and that's that.  I might paint some units in the future where I use the regional color for the cuffs and collars.

This is a Perry Russian Officer that I will use as a brigade commander.  I don't have a good uniform reference so he got a fairly generic paint job.

The Perry miniatures really are the gold standard for the period.

This is the same model that my friend, Tim, painted for me a couple of years ago.  The Warlord stuff is good solid and functional stuff that will not wow you.  This is a half-battery so with the two I now have a full battery of artillery.

I expect this will be the last Warlord gun I paint.  Future artillery addition to this army will be Perry.

My Russian Napoleonic collection is nearing the point where I can play a game.  I now have 4 Grenadier battalions, 2 Musketeer battalions, a battery of cannon and 2 commanders.  On the paint bench I have the 2nd battalion of the Tarnopol regiment as well as the army commander.  After that I will paint the 2nd battalion of the Narva regiment and I will have 8 battalions.  That is enough to get these guys on the table.

Future plans will be to add a second battery (Perrys miniatures) and a brigade of cavalry.  That, I think, would complete this project.  The next Napoleonic army on the list will be British.  I really don't want to do them, but like the French, hard to do do the period without them.

ACW Union Camp

I have completed another ACW vignette project.  This time we have Perry Miniatures Union Camp set with Renedra bell tents.  This is just a fun little piece that will help spice up a large table.  I might find some game function for it in a scenario.

Perry Plastic American Civil War Confederate Artillery

The work on the Black Powder American Civil War project continues.  This time we have Perry plastic artillery models.  I have painted these as Confederate artillery units.  I really love these models and I think they are and excellent value.  You get three guns and limbers that can be built in any of 4 different guns and as either Union or Confederate. 

The group shot.

3" Ordinance rifle

10lb Parrott rifle

12lb Howitzer

5th New York Volunteer Infantry

Yet another unit for my American Civil War collection is ready for battle.  This time we have some Perry Miniatures plastic Zuoave figures.  These are painted up as the 5th New York Volunteer Infantry regiment.  This is probably the most famous Union Zouave unit though they really weren't much of an elite unit.

21st Mississippi Infantry

My second Confederate unit completed this year!  I have already reached 25% of my painting total for all of last year, wow!

OK, this time we have my take on the 21st Mississippi regiment.  I have no idea if this unit ever looked like this but the unit names are just place holders anyway.  For this unit I decided to go with Columbus shell jackets in Butternut with blue collars and cuffs.  This is a well documented jacket from this depot.  I also went with M1862 caps.  These have blue bands and crowns, also in Butternut.  This cap was not very common but did show up from time to time it seems.  The trousers are black British imports.

Again, I have no idea if this unit was ever equipped in this particular fashion, or in fact, if any unit was.  This is, however, a very plausible combination of equipment.  This unit was a blast to paint and I really like getting away from the stereo-typical gray of Confederate troops.

17th Mississippi

The first painted figures of 2018.  I am pretty stoked about getting off to a good start.

Here we have the 17th Mississippi regiment for Black Powder.  The figures are Perry plastic Confederates.

January Work in Progress #1

So far this year I have been working frantically on painting Perry plastic Confederates.  I have one regiment nearly complete and another regiment mounted on tongue depressors ready for base coating.

Perry British 8th Army Support Teams

I added a few support teams to my British 8th Army.  These Perry minis have really grown on me and I am looking forward to working on more of these great WW2 models.

First up is the Vickers team.  This is a four man set but for Bolt Action you only need three.  This will allow me to re-purpose the extra figure for some other function.  These figures are so small the gun and both crew easily fit on a 40mm round base.

Next is the 3" mortar team.  Like the Vickers team this is a 4 figure set where only 3 are needed in the game.  I will be using the spotter figure as an artillery observer and the Vickers commander will fill in as the spotter for the mortar.  Again, the figures are so small I was able to easily fit three figures and the mortar on a single 40mm round base.

Lastly is the Perry 6 pdr gun for the 8th army.  This model is really beautiful but a little fiddly to build.  The gun and the entire crew is on a three inch base.  For Bolt Action I only need three crew but I decided it looked better with all four figures.  Make no real difference for game play, just treat the team as having three wounds.

I have a few other items for this project so stay tuned for more Perry goodness.

Perry French Hussars

For the last couple of weeks I have been building an prepping lots of models.  One set that I have been wanting to build for a long time is the Perry French Hussar set.  I have known for a long time that these are really great models but it wasn't until I built some that I truly appreciated just how great these are.  I have built and painted lots of Perry plastic miniatures as well as from some other manufacturers.  Plastic has lots of advantages and a few disadvantages.  One of the big disadvantages of plastic is the inability to do undercuts and the loss of detail towards the sides of pieces.  These minor disadvantages can be overcome by good model design.  In the case of these Hussar models the design is just about perfect.  Outside of an actual model kit built by one of the large model company, I don't think I have seen a better design or execution of a plastic kit.

The kit has some really nice features that allow you to build a huge variety of uniform styles.  There are four different styles of head gear with enough heads to do the entire box in a single style.  You also get two sets of legs, one in dress style and the other with the coveralls for campaign dress.  I am not a Napoleonic uniform specialist, but to my relatively untrained eye you should be able to do just about any unit from 1798 to 1815.  There might even be uses other than French for these as well.

You also get an amazing set of painting guides that cover more than a dozen different Hussars units and shows uniform differences in different campaigns or periods.  This set is so well done that I feel like, as a complete Napoleonic novice, that I can built great units and have a very close uniform accuracy.

This first set has been built as the 4th Hussars sometime around 1812.  This is one of two units with banners included in the box.  Unfortunately, since I am not really focusing on Napoleonics this year I am not sure when I will paint these figures but they are so nice I just had to share. 

Perry 8th Army Squad 3

I finished up the last of my Perry British 8th Army figures last week.  This completes one box of figures.  All things considered this is a really cool box that makes one complete platoon.

I nearly finished the project before I realized that I had not built any soldiers with the ubiquitous bayonet attached.  These turned out great and now I wish I have done more of them.

I have plans for one more box which will be more troops and specialists.  I also plan to order the support teams from Perry. 

Perry 8th Army Squad 2

Second squad for my 8th Army project is done.  One more to go.

Perry 8th Army Squad 1

Making a little more progress on this project.  First squad done only two more to go.

Perry 8th Army Platoon Command and Weapon Teams

I have finished the first batch of figures for my Bolt Action North Africa project.  All of these figures are from the Perry Miniatures plastic 8th Army set.  The figures are great but they are much slimmer than most other 28mm figures.  To me this means they will not work on the table with anything but Perry miniatures.  In fact, the size difference is so great that I almost didn't paint these.

This is the Boys Anti-tank Rifle team.  A must for early desert battles.

This is the platoon Lieutenant and the platoon runner.  This is the command team for the army.

This is the platoon Sergeant and radio operator.  This team will be the artillery FO.

This is the 2in mortar team.  I don't really like how BA handles mortars for army construction.  This little mortar was in every platoon but if you want to take a 3in you can't take this one.  I guess they trade them in or something.

These are really great miniatures.  They are a little fiddly to assemble but not bad.  I still have three squads to finish so stay tuned for more Perry action.