Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Oldies but Goodies: A Union Infantry Brigade in 22mm

Below are a number of pictures of Union ACW units that I painted about 30 years ago. Yeah, I'm that old.

The figures are 22mm Musket Miniatures (now out of business) but in 1984 they were called Stone Mountain Miniatures. Today a company named Stone Mountain makes similar miniatures but in the popular scale of 15mm.

A number of years after I painted these I got out of miniature wargaming for a number of reasons and sold off most of the thousands of metal miniatures I had painted and war-gamed with.

Although I have no memory of it one of my friends ended up with my ACW collection. I had roughly 4-5 regiments of USA and CSA and a couple of batteries. They were organized for a set of rules titled Rally Round the Flag.

In 2014 I reconnected with two of my old wargaming friends including the one who now owned my old collection. He had kept them in a box for roughly 20 years.

When we decided to war-game the ACW period again he dusted them off, remounted them and brought  them out for our first ACW battle in that scale in more than 20 years.

I was surprised how well they held up.

The added touch is that the flags are all hand painted by the other friend I reconnected with. I'm not sure he could do them now but he still is an excellent painter so who knows.

The brigade I painted was meant to model a brigade from the western Union armies. Each brigade had an attached artillery battery. A small unit of Union cavalry on the right rounded out my collection at the time (1984ish)
Close up of the firing line of the 26th Wisconsin. I had to paint at least one unit from my home state! Historically, I believe it was the 10th Wisconsin that was part of the brigade. Note the cavalry horse holder in the left background. Musket Miniatures was a very comprehensive line of 22mm figures. 
The 94th Ohio! I know that Union Regiments rarely carried a State flag so forgive the artistic license. 
The 33rd Ohio! Note the painted on Battle Honors. Onward Buckeyes!
Historically the 33rd Ohio saw a lot of action in some of major battles of the ACW.

Another view of the 33rd Ohio.
The majority of the units in this brigade were from the Buckeye State.
The Hoosier's of Indiana contributed the 38th to  the brigade. The Union Army frequently mixed units from the northern states into brigades while the Confederates after Antietam tried to maintain a State character to theirs.
In the meantime I'm painting new units of ACW. Most of the new units are plastic but I did manage to obtain a good number of Musket Miniatures before he went out of business in June of last year (2015)

Watch this space for the Texas Brigade ANV organized for Black Powder.