Another little flurry of ACW activity. The remaining Zouaves. I only had five stands of the Zouaves in kepi which were part of the original Minifigs force. Seen in foreground here with the lone standardbearer:
Not really enough for a unit for RF&F so I managed to acquire some more of the figures via a trade on TWW.
These I managed to strip quite well using Dettol. This works quite well but you have to brush the paint off using a little washing up liquid and NO water. As soon as you add water to the mix everything turns to gunk and becomes much harder to deal with.
I had planned to use the Humbrol Oxford Blue again but when I did the first coat and compared them with the 15 original figures they really looked different. So…I applied a GW blue wash. This made it a nice dark blue. So I carefully applied the same wash to the original figures and they then matched pretty well! The red was still a good match and the rest of the figure was fine. I did add red lining on the rear of the jacket of all of them and repainted the rear pouch and the bayonets on the old figures as the yellowing varnish had tarnished these. Needed to add an extra standard bearer and added red to existing officers to blend them in. The whole unit looks very red and dark blue! But they are based and GMB flags added. For some reason the pics are a little washed out…
I also took the chance to add some flags to a couple of CSA stands missing them and make one of the existing ones less shiny.
I’ve now cleared the ACW away as I need to do some prep for next weekends To The Strongest game in Newark. But I do have another batch of Union primed and ready to go.
I’ve also just finished reading Sear’s Landscape Turned Red.
A very readable account of the Battle of Antietam. The narrative gives a good feel for the sequence of events and the maps, though few, are clear. It takes a few chapters to set up the action but this is required really. And Sears seems to not be a great fan of McClellan who does not come out of the account well! Probably with justification.
Next in line is:
Looking forward to this one as have heard good things about it.
Hopefully I’ll get another update in before the Newark game.
Have added that Kernstown book to my list…!
Marvellous stuff, Andy, you’re on fire. Keep it up.