Saturday In The Park

In the fall of 2012 I was the grateful recipient of several boxes of painted 1/72nd ACW troops (98% Airfix) including more than enough of the artillery that I was desperate for. I managed to reorganize and rebase most of the infantry along with my most of my own into a single system but that's as far as I got. Some of the cavalry and guns have made occasional  adhoc appearances on the table now and again but the artillery in particular has been in need of some sorting, basing and repainting.

I was at loose ends today and being unable to decide on what to play. In the end I decided to finally turn my attention to the ACW artillery park instead.

(Click here for a series of 1/72nd ACW posts and battle reports)

Early afternoon break time. Progress, but...not done yet!

First off, to all those nay sayers (PSR is a wonderful and useful site but every now and then .......) the artillery piece is a pretty fair model of a 3" ordinance rifle and better than most of the plastic 1/72nd ACW guns that are available.

3" Rifle From wiki.

The donation included 7 limbers, a number of crewmen and 17 guns inc 1 metal Parrot.  That's more guns and fewer limbers than I needed, especially since I already had 4 guns. This is what come of the old 2 guns, 1 limber sets that 1/72nd manufactures like. The bulk of these figures like my own are 30 - 40 years old or older and some of the plastic has gotten brittle so I now have several damaged battery markers and some artillery crew casualties. That leaves me with enough gunners to man 12 guns, 6 per side with a few guns left over for future use. I also have 6 good limbers, 3 for each side or 1 per 2 guns.

If I were to field 2 gun batteries as originally envisaged then I could give each battery a limber to mark when it was in travel mode or to show the vehicle park and ammunition wagons behind the guns when deployed. However, I have been using 1 gun for a battery and already they take up as much room as 2 Confederate batteries. I could call the 2 gun units artillery battalions and lose some of the flexibility in order to get a meaningful distribution of limbers. Still thinking on that.

Apart from numbers, the guns and limbers were painted in various shades of brown with gold barrels and light grey iron fittings with a noticeable amount of flaking, especially on the horses. So the main task this afternoon has been repainting the limbers and most of the guns in a rather too green dark olive with black iron fittings. About 1/2 the guns have been repainted black as rifles while I have left a few as bronze Napoleons to flush out my handful of actual smoothbore guns. I've also glued the limbers onto bases in an attempt to keep horses and limbers together in one place.

As received in 2012

At this point the guns are ready to play and the limbers nearly so apart from some flocking to match my crews. The 2 new crews per side and the outriders need some work though. I hate to touch up the old figures but the Union gunners are done in a dark bluegrey jacket and grey pants while a number of Reb gunners represent the Lousianna Washington battery in their dark blue jackets but with red kepis. I'll keep them as is but need to touch up enough other gunners to make them more easily identified as Union or Confederate during deployment and pick up. Realistic battlefield confusion is one thing, game room confusion is another thing and one I can live without. Hopefully I can get that done tomorrow morning and still play a game.