25/28mm American Revolutionary War British Army

Greetings. I admit I have been neglecting this blog the past month. Why? I've been living in a historical time, coping with the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Hopefully by the time you read this, you will be sitting comfortably someplace among a group of friendly people, chatting about perhaps starting a Covid-19 re-enactors group where you can all put homemade masks over your faces and dress up with bad haircuts and such and march around with large packages of toilet paper and such under your arms, telling eager tourists about life during the pandemic, way back when. But as for me, I am doing fine, working from home at a thankless job, and, like all around me, coping.

But I'm back for the moment and hope you will take a moment to not just look at this page, but browse a bit, follow the search links, and see what else is here too. The more people who view more pages, the more motivated I will feel to blog in the future. And I have more wargaming and non-wargaming posts I hope to write and share.

An overview of my British army. Five single battalion line regiments, four artillery pieces, a half dozen figures representing dismounted soldiers of the 16th regiment of light dragoons, a half dozen more representing mounted soldiers of the 17th regiment of light dragoons (both regiments were a mix of mounted and dismounted soldiers), a separate composite unit of six grenadier figures, a separate composite unit of five pioneer figures, one from each regiment, and three mounted officers. 

In the meantime, I finished the core of my British army for wargaming. Auxiliaries, such as loyalists, Germans, and Indian allies will be covered on other pages and some already are, as will be the Americans and perhaps some day other forces too. While I hope to add other units to my British army, this is what I have painted and based so far. I hope you enjoy them. 

A second photo of the army taken from the side.

The units often look a bit odd as the figures are a mix of miniatures produced by different companies and purchased at different times. In the 1980s, this was my first wargame period and I built up British and American forces for the period. These were purchased largely from minifigs (miniature figures ltd) and Custom Cast / Iron Brigade figures. The former have a nice variety of figures and used to be produced in the USA in Pine Plains NY. The latter, honestly, were chosen because my friendly, local game store of the time (Armadillo Games, now much missed) was able to obtain them from their distributor. Units were built as full strength at a scale of 1:50 -one figure represents 50 men- meaning that a full strength British company was usually one man. 

A few years ago I decided to rebuild and refurbish the army, and do so at a 1:20 scale. I made a decision to mostly supplement the old forces with the newer, slightly larger but more detailed, and, honestly, much nicer figures of today unless I somehow was able to offer or find the older ones unpainted easily. (which happened for the Germans, but those aren't painted yet.) Many of these were purchased second hand and came from a variety of manufacturers but Perry Brothers, Old Glory, Front Rank, and old Heritage figures are all mixed in along with some others of unknown origin. The result, admittedly, is a bit odd looking at times but my experience has been that if people are really bothered by this, they most likely are a bit too sensitive and prickly to enjoy gaming with me anyway. 

On the left, one can see a couple of figures from the 17th light dragoons (old minifigs figures) and to the front are the dismounted dragoons of the 16th light dragoons (modern Perry Brothers figures) Behind them are two line regiments, of one battalion each.

My thought at the time was that if the units looked truly odd, I could some day paint a few more British regiments composed of figures from a single manufacturer with a more uniform (no pun intended) look.    

A composite unit of Grenadiers (old Heritage figures) in front of a fortification. Behind the fortification are five pioneers. Each British regiment included a pioneer, a man who was skilled in building things. Old Glory includes a pioneer figure in each British regimental pack they sell and I got these cheap from someone who did not wish them.

Finally, my books . . . 

Yeah, I've written books. Please check them out and see if they interest you.