American Civil War – The Regiment from country roads West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River

While working on this project I have been researching the American Civil in more depth. I had settled on Jackson’s Division at Antietam with a plan to do two of his Brigades, one being his own Brigade.

However with more research on the battles, along with some of the generals, I have been really enjoying the history of the Texas Brigade. I tried to fight the temptation to include the Texas Brigade, but I needed to reign this project in and get it finished.

Instead I decided to reassign my regiments with just a quick flag swap. I want to cover the full Texas Brigade and be able to field it with both the early and late war regiments.

I’m now fielding the below regiments – the only regiment not being converted is my Louisiana Tigers (photos in an older post)

1st Texas Infantry regiments

4th Texas Infantry regiments

5th Texas Infantry regiments

Regiments before Antietam

18th Georgia Infantry Regiment

Hampton (South Carolina) Legion

Regiments after Antietam

3d Arkansas Infantry Regiment

I just trimmed the old flags, tidied up the flagpole with the original paints and painted the white edge of the new flags with roughly matching colours. Inside each flag is PVA and tinfoil to help shape the flags. Flags are washed in watered down PVS to help stiffen them.

Below is one of the more recent ACW battles fought on a wet day in Belfast. This is a recreation of the scenario from the Black Powder Glory Hallelujuah supplement.

We played this battle 3 times with me being present twice. Once holding the centre against relentless Yankee Attacks and the second holding the right flank and rolling up the Yankees left flank to hold up Union reforcements and help break the their main formation.

A few photos from one of our previous end of the month game. The Confederates Advance to the mid board to confront the Union and a bloody battle ensues. My forces in the centre performed well with the lines moving back and forth the whole game; with the Confederate left flank prevailing and rolling up the Union line. Unfortuntely the battle ended there with the Union still in possession of their objectives (the buildings).

As you can probably tell I have little affinity for photography but it is hard to resist snapping such an epic looking scene. The above photos show the area of intense fighting on the outskirts of Kernstown. With Union infantry and Artillery on the hill being held in place by one brigade of Confederates and being outflanked by another. Out of shot a Union Brigade was being prevented from reinforcing by a small force of confederates and some bad dice roles from the Union commanders.

This was a practice game of the battle of Kernstown; with the aim of seeing what exactly we need to run the proper battle, mostly this will be more roads.

The rules and scenario used are from Blackpowder 2nd Ed by Warlord Games, using the secial rules from their Glory Hallelujah supplement,

The battle was a technical draw, the Union were harshly handled by the Confederates, with one Brigade routed after being driven from their defensive position on the hill . Despite this victory was not assured and a second fresh Brigade was bearing down on the town and a 3rd due to arrvive on the board .

A few shots from the confederates reforming outside the town drove of the Unions cavalry element and the Confederates were preparing to recieve the fresh infantry.

The battle ended prematurely as time was up and objectives had not been achieved by either side and it was anyones game.

It was a fun game and the scenario made it more interesting than our usualy line up and advance battles thus far. We now know what we need to complete the battlefield and make a few adjustments to the battlefield i.e. Kernstown was too far to the left-hand side of the board

Above is pretty much the contents of the Perry American Civil War army box.  This the start of two brigades of Jacksons Division at Antietam. So far I have half of the Virginian Regiments under Winder and half the Louisiana Regiments under Starke.

So far they have performed well on the field of battle against their Union brothers. The battles so far have been straightforward brawls but for our latest battle we did a test for Kernstown from the Black Powder Rule book. The test battle was so much fun, we added the extra rules, had a unique set up and while we did not have all the terrain we know what we need to do.

So with a practice in between, we have set the date for the full battle of Kernstown in all it’s glory set for two months time.

I’ll post some photos from our battles over the next few days.

Note to self: I better not be rereading this months later and not have posted anything!

The regimnet of Zouaves had been staring at me needing painted for months. I knew I wanted to do the Louisianna Tigers and would have to paint striped pantaloons. After painting most of my other regiments I took the plunge, but first some research.

Spending a few hours on the internet I found that my intial impressions of how to paint this regiment may have been wrong. Sources seemed to be contradictory about what colour the uniforms are. Everything from blue to brown due to poor quality dyes.

Another problem was which regiment they were talking about. I am writing this from memory months later but the Original Louisana Tigers were first a company, then the regiment took the name, then other regiments wanted to be Tigers. As well the 1st Louisana Regiment was the origins of the Tigers but then the officer in charge (Coppen) forms his own regiement (Coppen’s regiment), I was getting the impression that some of the info I was reading was mixed between Coppen’s Regiement and the new 1st Louisiana.

Anyway I didn’t have the time to untangle all this as I had already spent considerable time researching it. Ultimately I’m happy with my results. I want things to be accurate not perfect.

After a long hiatus of trying to keep this blog up to date, I’ve finally made time to bring this hobby project up to date.

I’ve been able to have a few games with The Giant’s Big Game Group based in Northern Ireland. we’ve been keeping to our commitment of a bigh game at the end of everymonth. A mix of Civil war and War of the Roses.

I’ve had a great time fighting for the South. The South mostly wining our battles and I feel like I’ve had an important role holding the line or turning a flank. So a good time all around, even our defeat felt epic.

See below for a few photos from one of our battles.

We have been using the Black Powder 2nd Edition rules from Walrord Games. We half the distances and ranges which gives us enough room to manouver on the 6×4 foot tables.

We have had anything from a four to a seven player game, allowing us to have epic conflicts with several brigades per side.

This rule set has been fun to use, it is easy to understand if someone teaches you but the rule book has alot of unecessary prose that makes the rules seem less concise than they are. I am currently in the process of condensing the rules to a spreadsheet with just the data we need, which I will share with our group.

This has been my first attempt at painting horses and I am pleased with the results. For these I have used Zandri Dust from GW and Mahognay Wood form Vallejo, with a thinned wash of Army Painter Dark Tone.

I have no highlights as I am dealing with quantity in this project and have lots more planned. I’ve found Dark Tone does not overly darken the miniature and settles well in the recesses, perfect for me wanting to skip the highlight stage.

I added a few spare infantry from my Perry starter set to the general’s base to make them more interesting. The bugler is a spare from the artilleryman sprue. The sharpshooter was a freebie with an order for a Black Powder supplement for the ACW.