Roughly 1/2 vintage Airfix, nearly 1/2 Italeri and a mere handful of others, a Jacklex Reb Cavalry General, 3 of what I believe to be Hinton Hunt troopers in the Blue ranks and an Airfix cowboy or two. The infantry regiment of permanently dismounted Reb cavalry, Kentuckians or toy soldiers by the look of their caps, are all Airfix.
They are all now safely tucked away in their respective boxes. I want to work on writing up some rule ideas that are bouncing around in my head before I send them into battle again.
After some thought, I don't want to disrupt my old 3 stand regiments and do want to be able to field regiments of various sizes and show more tactical detail such as skirmish lines again yet still use the grid for measuring movement and ranges though not for determining unit integrity.
Its a challenge to myself for the winter.
Ross - I love these! ACW is my second period after Napoleonics...
ReplyDeleteHard to avoid it :)
DeleteHi Ross,
ReplyDeleteIt really is great to be able to "re-discover" these old figures and begin thinking about how to use them. First, each mounted base represents a third of your regiment. You could decide to have your skirmishers in front of just the regiment or protecting the front of your brigade. In the former case, it looks to me that you might want to dismount one base's worth and deploy one base to the front. In the case of fighting the whole regiment dismounted like Custer did at Gettysburg, you deploy your figures as shown in the picture. In the latter case, you probably would want to cover the front of the brigade with dismounted skirmishers all drawn from the same regiment. Again, you deploy as shown in the picture but you might want to place one dismounted base in a separate square. Of course, there is the issue of firepower: since a quarter of each base is actually a horseholder, would you reduce the firepower or would you allow for the aimed, steady fire to compensate? Lastly are you going to differentiate between Union cavalry with their faster firing breechloader carbines and rapid fire repeaters or will you, for simplicity sake simply have everyone fire in the same manner?
best wishes for a warm, productive winter season.
Jerry
Jerry, not really intending to get down to that level at this point. The numbers of figures/stands was based mostly on what figures were available crossed with what fits and the rules are based on over all effect like a board game stand rather than on a precise ratio of miniatures to real men.
ReplyDeleteStrictly speaking, 2/3rd isn't the right proportion but the 2 stands dismounted with one mounted stand will represent the dismounted troops and horseholders.
My intent is to rate troops with repeaters as "superior firepower", muzzleloading carbines as "inferior" and rifle armed cavalry as mounted infantry. However, at this point most or all of these will be fielded as average for simplicity in playing generic scenarios. If I get deeper into this and maybe do a campaign or some historical actions that can be adjusted but I continue to average 1 or 2 games a year, I'll probably leave the details and accuracy to my reading.