Wednesday, July 8, 2020

That Devil Forrest

The lockdown has shut down gaming for me except for my solo efforts. On the other hand it's given me more time to complete or work on projects.

One such project has been having enough ACW cavalry units, both mounted and dismounted, to do battles and skirmishes that feature a lot of cavalry. My intent has been to produce enough units to work with either set of rules I use for the ACW.

I use Rebels and Patriots for small games and I use my version of an old set titled Rally Round the Flag for larger scale games.

One sub-project that I recently completed was a mounted CSA cavalry brigade for Rally Round the Flag although it's obvious that scaling down makes the figs usable for Rebels and Patriots.

By necessity, the brigade has to pretty generic but for the purposes of this blog entry I've chosen to call the units the units of Nathan Bedford Forrest's command in the Western Theater.

At various times Forrest had under his command cavalry from Tennessee, Alabama, Texas and Kentucky. The pictures below represent all of the commands generically. For  a game I'll do the research to see who fought at the historical engagement and name them accordingly.

The vast majority of figures are Musket Miniatures (22mm) while one unit is from the rare Gulliver plastic set. Gulliver also supplied most of the figures for the large command stand. The exception is NB Forrest himself who comes from a Strelets command set.


With these first two pictures I was trying to highlight Forrest's command stand. The Strelets pose of Forrest seems to be based on a well known painting of Forrest hacking his way through Union lines. The luckless Union figure trying to stop him is from the plastic Revell set, I think.

This is a little better shot. I had to cut away the flag from the Gulliver set as it was molded to the rider's head. The rider's hat is a bit worse for wear but the simple conversion works well enough.

This is the Gulliver set. The poses of the horses and riders are excellent but the plastic is very soft. It's a cool set and very collectible given how rare it is. I believe it's the only set Gulliver ever made.


This is one of the three units of Musket Miniatures. Musket Miniatures is an excellent line. I believe it's still available with a new owner but my luck with him has been mixed.

Another Musket Miniatures unit this time with a standard bearer.

The brigade on parade.

I had a lot of fun making the larger command stand. I try to make units look like small dioramas that fit into a much larger diorama during a game.

I added two more command units to the whole. The small one on the right could be Joe Wheeler,  Wade Hampton or Jeb  Stuart depending on the game. The one of left features a Tennessee type flag. Quite a few of Frorest's cavalry came from Tennessee. 

Another angle

I have the dismounted figures as well. The total number of figures for the brigade is over 100 when I add the command stands and battery.

The reason for the post---That Devil Forrest!


https://www.irishbrigade.com/products/general-nathan-bedford-forrest-civil-war-print-by-don-troiani

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