Brother Against Brother

A morning in early summer 1863 somewhere in the Blasthoff valley...
The Union army of General Abner Badday has been blundering around for some time trying to track down the Rebel army led by the hard-fighting Hiram P Fudpucker III. At last it seems the two armies may well finally get to grips with one another and both sides send forward scouting forces to probe the enemy defences. As the early morning mist clears Lieutenant Rufus Hudson leads a small force of men into lightly wooded  terrain on one flank of the Union army, little does he suspect that a small band of Texans has been sent to scout the same area...

I've been painting some Perry ACW Blue and Grey men recently and the boys wanted to play a game of soldiers after school last week, so I set up a simple fight for them. I thought I was going to have to play, but in the end they decided to take each other on in proper brother against brother tradition.
We used the Legends of the Old West rules, using the infantry list from Blood on the Plains but with equipment restricted to muskets and bayonets for the men and heavy pistols for the officers. To keep is simple I ignored all the Fate and Might (or whatever they're called in LotOW) and assumed that the officer just had an extra pip of leadership. Sadly I'd fallen behind with painting so the elder offspring had to make do with a mere seven of the grey men against his brothers nine including an officer. To try to off-set the difference in numbers I declared that the Rebel Yell meant he'd get +1 on his combat rolls as long as he charged.
With that, we were off.

Johnny Reb

Johnny Blue

View from behind Union lines

View from the Rebel side

On their right the Union advanced on the rock formation known as Webster's Knob 

To their left Hudson led them to the fence

The rebels made for a wood on their left

And hugged the treeline on their right

 Leading from the front Lieutenant Hudson advanced behind a large rocky outcrop

 And was shot at. A lot.

Meanwhile his men siezed the nearby hill known as Little Flat-Top

Fierce hand to hand broke out near Webster's Knob

After a sharp exchange of fire the Union forces charged from Little Flat-Top and got stuck in!

Repeated pot-shots kept Hudson pinned down behind the rock that now bears his name

In the end numbers told. The Rebs got lots of hits but few wounds. Hudson kept failing his pluck and hiding behind the rock but the Union men managed to pick off a couple of confederates with just a single loss themselves. When it came to hand to hand the rebels rolled so low that even +1 for charging didn't help, so they soon lost the four required to start testing and had to "head for the hills" not long after.
The rules were fun and the boys seemed to enjoy it, though eldest son (who took the rebels) has clearly inherited his dad's knack with dice.

Teeny Tiny Huscarls

I painted these some time ago, but only just got round to basing and photographing them. And I'm rather pleased with them, especially the shields, hence the plethora of rear shots (ooer!)
Pendraken Miniatures Huscarls. Bringing the total painted units up to three!. Though I did spray another unit brown last week - should be finished early November then.
A pleasure to paint, though the pose is a little odd and hunched up. I also put ten on a base for these which is a bit crowded in retrospect.
(Click the pics and they'll probably get bigger. Photographing these is a bit of a pain TBH)

All Kinds of Stuff

This week I've finished off and taken pictures of a pretty eclectic bunch of models. So here they are, you lucky, lucky people.

The Dwarf with Inferiority Complex miniature. I owned one of these when it first came out back in the early 80's. This is a more recent casting. I started painting him for the Old Skool competition over on the Warhammer Forum but I missed the deadline and only finished him up this week. Really fun and characterful old model.





Fishman!
Classic Citadel model from the old Night Horrors range. Another one I started with half a mind to enter in the Warhammer Forum competition but only just finished. I've left him gloss varnished to, ahem, reflect his slimy nature but it's making him hard to photograph. I may try again tomorrow under natural light.




From a Mordheim civilans pack, the sulking/stubborn girl known throughout Mail Order as "Alison". I've painted her as a generic Dark Age or Medieaval peasant girl.





Gruzkup, my Warboss for my (slowly) forming Orc and Goblin Army. A Games Day model from a few years back, love the pose.





A Black Orc Warboss. I think also a Games Day model, but I'm not sure.
He'll eventually join my Orc and Goblin Army when I get round to painting some regular Black Orcs for him to lead.

Federals, Five of 'Em!

Flitting from project to project I bring you ACW. Some of the blue ones.
Jolly nice Perry plastics that the twins (well, one of them, Michael I think) gave me when they were released. Thanks Mr Perry Twins Sirs. So it's only taken me what, three years to get some paint on them.

I have some plans to play Blasthoff Bridge with them, then graduate onto the games from the Wargames Companion before finally playing a game of BlackPowder. I suspect I shall get old and die before completing this project.

I painted these using a simple basecoat and wash. For some reason I decided to use a white undercoat. It's very unforgiving compared with black (i.e if you miss a bit it shows), so I won't be doing that again in a hurry.

I've got a few more blue uns and some of the grey ones on the go at the moment, so unless I flit to another project stay tuned for updates!