Getting My 28mm ACW Underway

With all this ACW Action Going On it’s finally motivated me to resume construction of my 28mm ACW forces – I’ll be building both Union & Confederate Forces to provide opposing armies, and as originally mentioned I was looking at building these forces initially for Fire & Fury (for both Brigade & Regimental level games). However now that Sam Mustafa has Longstreet due as the next game in the Honour series I’ll be looking to build them principally for that but still compatible for Fire & Fury as well (and obviously they will be usable for Black Powder and similar if needed). I started this project about 4-5 years ago and got a portion of the troops painted up but then ground to a halt – however I’ve now started basing the painted troops and have more under-way, so here’s some photos of the initial portion of my Union forces…

Union Firing Line Command (sans Standards).

The figures I have gone with a principally Sash & Saber Castings, with a few Perry Miniatures & Foundry Miniatures mixed in – however there’s also a handful of assorted Redoubt Enterprises figures as well (incl. some personalities), although the Redoubt chaps are virtual giants compared to their Sash & Saber comrades… I especially like the S&S chaps animation and character, and while the Perry figures also have great animation there is just something about the S&S guys and the combination of their animation and how they are cast that really feels very ACW. My initial Union force will end principally two-thirds S&S and one-third a mix of Perry & Foundry figs (my Confederates will be the inverted ratio, as I plan to use a lot of Perry Plastics for their Infantry & Cavalry so they’ll be two-thirds Perry and about one-third Sash & Saber).

My initial objective for the Union is about 60+ bases of Infantry (incl. Command bases for 8-10 Regiments), 16 bases each of Mounted & Dismounted Cavalry (incl. Command bases for 2-3 Regiments for each); and about 12 Guns with Crew. This should be plenty to cover what I’ll need for Longstreet, and will be a good army to expand in future if needed for larger games. I’ll then build a similar sized force of Confederates but with just a few less infantry bases & guns than the Union (originally, for Fire & Fury, I was aiming for about 90-120 bases of Union Infantry, and about 70-80 of Confederate Infantry – albeit with minimal cavalry for both – as it was based around the Gettysburg Day 2 orders of battle in the original F&F rulebook).

I have opted for 40mm x 30mm basing for the Infantry & Dismounted Cavalry (with 3 & 2 Figs in a single rank per base respectively) – this is essentially the same basing but with less figures as adopted by another AWC (Auckland Wargaming Club) member Roundie, as described and illustrated in my earlier post about building these armies. I am hoping to fit the Artillery Guns onto 40mm x 60mm bases (but this may be impractical and they may need more depth to fit a gun & 3 Crew figures), but I haven’t yet confirmed the mounted cavalry base depth (it’ll likely need to be 40mm x 50mm deep I think to fit 2 mounted figures).