1st Quarter Update for 2026: A Great Start

 

Ah yes Spring. Nothing like great weather and a healthy dose of Vitamin D to get you away from mustering the troops. What a great start to 2026. So, how are we doing?

1. Phase 3 of the Boxer Rebellion Project for The Men Who Would be Kings. To complete my Chinese Field Force for the Boxer Rebellion I'm going to add two Boxer units of 16 figures each. The Boxers will be from Crusader Miniatures Boxer Rebellion Range. I anticipate doing this in the 3rd Quarter.

2. The American War for Independence in the South. Wow. This was the big progress so far this this year as I jumped into the AWI again using the Epic Revolution figures from Warlord Games. I spent an inordinate amount of time pulling out my old papers and research as I purchased and designed the armies I wanted:

a. Army Commanders:

Continental Army Commander based on MG Greene.

British Army Commander based on Lord Cornwallis.

b. Other Commanders:

c. 1st Maryland Continental Line. How can you do the Southern Campaign without the 1st Maryland?

d. Light Company, 71st (Frasier's Highlanders) Regiment of Foot:

e. Continental Artillery:

Coming very soon will be (Okay they are done I just haven't posted yet!) are some British Line. the Royal Artillery and American Militia/State Troops/Continental troops.

3. The Search for Charlie. Listen up! The Quest is on for 2026. Yep . . . finally. And the bad guys are wetting their pants.

First up is a bug eyed monster:

I also have some additional goodies to post for the campaign that are complete.

4. Terrain. I just realized I have no 15mm terrain for the AWI. Hmmm . . . In addition a key piece of terrain will be built for "The Search for Charlie" that will be needed later in the adventure. I have started some buildings and trees that I will post on how I did them.

One of the prepainted MDF buildings from Micro Art Studio and the first batch of trees.

5. Games, Games, Games.

It's been a Warhammer 40K Fireteam campaign so far! The Ultra Marines are pushing back against the deadly menace of the Necrons.

 

In addition to our Pulp Campaign "The Search for Charlie" there will be action in the Peninsular during the Napoleonic Wars, China in the 1900's, back to the NW Frontier in 1897, the English Civil War, some Unmatched and why not - some WH40K action.  Depending on progress maybe even the AWI.

On with the Second Quarter!

Epic Revolution, Part 14: British Army Command Base

The British Army commander inspects the position of his light infantry.

I initially planned to have all of my commanders mounted the same and decided - nah. I now will have an army commander for the British and the Americans mounted on a circular base with some extra figures. I am really surprised at myself for not doing this earlier as I have done this will all of my other massed battle collections.

One of the nice things about the Epic Revolution range is that most of the packs and boxes come with a few extra figures which give some options of the presentation of the units. For the above I've added an extra figure from the 71st Regiment (Frasier's Highlanders) and (see below) and extra infantryman from one of the sprues. The mounted general is the Warlord resin figure of Cornwallis and was painted based on Cornwallis.

The Army commander discusses the situation with the Hessian general.

Epic Revolution, Part 13: Continental Army Command Base

 I don't know what I was thinking when I was going to originally mount all of my commanders on the same type base. In games and collections where there is an army commander, 99.9% of the time I make the stands different sizes and different amount of figures for two reasons; too make them easily recognizable on the gaming table and because it looks cool.

The original basing.

The army commander is my interpretation of MG Nathaniel Greene. I've added a rifleman based on a display at the National Museum of the United States Army and a flag bearer based on specifically the reconstituted 2nd Maryland of the Continental Line.

General officers at this time did not have a personal flag; but heck, I needed to add one. The flag is Gostelowe standard #2. The Gostelowe Standard refers to a series of flags created by Major Jonathan Gostelowe for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, specifically a set of thirteen standards that included various designs and symbols representing the colonies. Whether all of the standards were issued the Continental Army is unknown but a fact is that Standard #7 belonged to the 3rd Virginia Regiment which was captured by Tarleton's forces after the Battle of Waxhaw, South Carolina, on May 29, 1780.

I sketched out the flag, scanned it and reduced it using PowerPoint. I had painted it by thinning out acrylic hobby paint to give it a weathered look but you can see that there are some black lines that I may have to repaint. I believe in the 3 foot rule or what does it look like at gaming distance and I do think it looks great at that distance.

I've been painting the commanders while I do the units. For the American War of Independence Division commanders (no such organization yet!) so all of the other commanders will be Brigade commanders.

Epic Revolution, Part 12: Light Company, 71st (Frasier's Highlanders) Regiment of Foot

A light company of the 71st (Frasier's Highlanders) Regiment of Foot lead the way and harass the Continental Infantry.

During the American War for Independence, the 71st (Frasier's Highlanders) was unique in that two battalions served in North America. It is a great unit to have on the tabletop as they fought in many major battles both in the Northern and Southern theaters.

Since the 71st had two battalions, they also had a two light infantry companies. It is rare to see light troops of the Highland units on the AWI tabletops and I, for one will remedy this! In fact, half of the converged light infantry unit at Cowpens were from the light companies of the 1/71st and the 2/71st.

The Highlander unit pack from Warlord Games Epic Revolution comes with 10 light infantry figures that are molder individually instead of the normal strips. My unit has 9 figures as one of the figures fell from a great height and was stepped on by a giant during recovery operations. Sad to say, repair was impossible. The figures are "Warlord Resin" which is superior to Warlord Games' first attempt with resin figures. They needed just a little bit of clean up with a hobby knife. I primed them (of course!) and attached them to old bottle caps for the painting process.

For figures this small, I anticipated that the diced band on the bonnet and their wings would be a challenge. Fortunately both are molded on the figures making this stage of the process doable. The unit pack also comes with six wood bases that are 60mm x 20 mm.

I will be also using the figures for One Hour Wargames and this is how they will deploy with stands back to back.

Now it's time for me to decide what unit to do next. Currently the American's have one Continental Line unit and one artillery gun while the forces of the Crown have one Hessian Musketeer unit and the now competed light company from Frasier's Highlander. I'm either going to do the 33rd Regiment of Foot or a unit of militia.

Epic Revolution, Part 11c: Heck! Designing two Armies!

Baron Friedrich Adolf Riedesel zu Eisenbach. Warlord Resin figure from the Epic Battles: Revolution Commander's pack.

On to the cavalry! Oh . . . it's the American War for Independence (AWI)! If you want to deploy a lot of cavalry for the AWI, you are better off doing some of the raids or smaller actions. My previous collections of 28mm AWI had more cavalry as I deployed Butler's Rangers, American Continental Dragoons, the British Legion and Lee's Partizan Legion (plus militia) on daring raids and actions. For the scale of battles I am doing, I will not need copious amounts of cavalry on the gaming table. But using the Warlord Games Epic Battles: Revolution range may pose a financial issue for British Cavalry.

Colonel Banastre Tarleton.

I understand the limitations and challenges in producing sprues. It is a lot easier if a period has a wide variety of figures allowing smaller sprues to be produced or more figures of 1 - 3 units on a larger sprue. With the small amounts of cavalry, and the variety of other units, the British Cavalry was relegated to the Hessian Army sprue. As a reminder, I'm planning on focusing on forces for the Southern Campaign. In order to get the mounted element of the British Legion (or paint them as the 16th Light Dragoons) and the 17th Light Dragoons I would need to buy the Hessian & Allies box or one of the larger bundle boxes. I am not prepared to do that yet and may look for alternative figures. It's not an issue for me for the Americans as there are enough figures to represent the American cavalry. My cavalry will be represented as either 1 stand of cavalry or 2 stands for a larger element. 

Head swap to give some variety to the American Cavalry.

On to what I am planning on building!

The 1st Maryland Regiment of the Continental Line.

My forces will be (for the most part) be based on the units that fought during the Southern Campaign on  the free sprues from Wargames Illustrated, the Continental and British Army Brigade Boxes, the Highlander pack and the Commanders pack all from Warlord Games.

British Army:

Commanders: 6 British Commanders and 1 Hessian.

British Line: 4 Regiments.

Highlanders: 1 Regiment.

Hessian Line: 1 Regiment.

British Light Infantry: 1 unit of Highlander light infantry.

Hessian Jägers: 1 unit.

British Grenadiers: 1 unit. (Wargames Illustrated bonus!).

Hessian Grenadiers: 1 unit (Wargames Illustrated bonus!).

Indian Warband: 1 unit (Wargames Illustrated bonus!).

Artillery: 1 gun.

Light Infantry from the 71st (Frasier's Highlanders) Regiment. Warlord Games resin. I need to repaint the leather straps black.

American Army:

Commanders: 7.

Continental Line: 2 units and maybe a third.

Militia: 4 units. One militia unit may find itself as a Loyalist unit from time to time.

Rifles: 1 unit.

Cavalry: 2 units or 1 combined unit.

Artillery: 1 gun.

I'm holding on to the British Light infantry (10 figures) for now as I am convinced that the British Legion infantry, at least at Cowpens, for light infantry caps. How I'm going to get the rest that I need I haven't figured out yet.

The technique I use when painting an army (or two) when I have all or most of the figures is adopted from Bruce Quarrie's Napoleon's Campaigns in Miniature:

1. Line Infantry.

2. Artillery, Cavalry or Specialty Unit.

3. Line Infantry.

4. Repeat.

I'll be doing the above and also alternating between the British and Americans and also other projects I am doing.