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So to keep a short story really short I bought this monster from Perry Miniatures.



I bought it despite at the time of ordering having essentially little to no interest in the American Civil War. Since I placed the order I've done some reading (chapter 1 of Shelby Foote's huge 3 part Civil War series) and watched some TV (Ken Burns's The Civil War) and am now pretty obsessed by it. Hurrah for plastic crack leading to something other than getting high from glue fumes and lots of little cuts on my hands.

This thread will hopefully contain lots of photos as I slowly work my way though this simply huge set (physically the box is about GW starter size and it's literally full of plastic). Though I am quite forgetful so feel free to badger me if there's no updates for a significant period of time. Anyway on to the minis....

I've made a start on building a few bits and pieces, so far I've focussed on the Confederates building a general, infantry regiment, cavalry squadron and artillery piece (I believe I've built a 12pdr Napoleon, but I'm not certain). Still to go for the CSA are 3 more infantry regiments and another artillery piece. After that I'll move on to the Union side. Have a slightly blurry photo of what I've built so far, zoom in on it in the gallery to fully appreciate the blurry cannon and cavalry.



I intend to undercoat and possibly start painting some of that lot today though I will have to go out and buy some paints before I can do that as I'm lacking most of the paints needed for the uniforms of both sides. BTW nothing is actually stuck to the bases, they're just held on with blutack at the moment just so I can get and idea of what everything will look like.

Subbed in expectation of awesomeness! The ACW is fascinating historically and Perry miniatures are great, so what's not to love?

Out of interest, how 'historically accurate' are you planning to go with this? Are you going to be basing the painting/composition on any specific period/theatre of the war or just keep it generic?

I'm going to keep things reasonably generic, possibly with a trend towards the Army of Northern Virginia and Army of the Potomac, for the Confederates and Union respectively.

Anyway I've now got a list of paints to track down. So I should be good to go once I can get my hands on them.

EDIT:

My paint hunting trip was mostly successful, couldn't find a couple of the paints I wanted but I should be able to substitute some others instead. So this afternoon I used said paints to whip up a quick test paint job on the commander of the infantry regiment I've built. Brace yourselves for a pretty poor paint job.



Like I said not pretty however in a tightly packed group (18 in 2 ranks of 9 for the Firepower rules which I will be using) I don't think that will matter too much plus close up photos like this always show up errors that I can't actually see and certainly won't be seen from a few feet away. So I'm pretty happy with this fellow and bar a few minor corrections (missed a spot on his mouth, gold on the coat etc) I think he's finished.

I intend to paint the rest of the first infantry regiment in a fairly similar manner, so they should look like a pretty rag tag bunch. I'm not sure yet if I'll stick to purely grey (with a bit of blue on a few of them) for this regiment or mix a few butternut uniforms in there too. Anyone got an opinion on that?

Time for an update on what I've done this past week. Not much is the honest answer.



These three fellows are pretty much finished apart from a few small touch ups and possibly a change of hair colour for the bloke on the left as his blond hair seems to have blended in with his skin colour which is annoying. Aside from those three I have done about 50% of the base colours for the rest of the regiment. Hopefully the whole lot will be finished by next weekend.

Nice variation in schemes there.

Cheers, I'm aiming to get something of a ragtag look to the Confederates. I know I'm probably over egging it to an extent but I think it captures something of the spirit of the Confederate army. You can expect to see at least one more pair of "acquired" Federal trousers and quite a bit of variation in hat colour once the rest of the regiment is finished.