Tuesday, February 21, 2017

I'm Doing Cowpens!


Tarleton's British Legion figures from Fife & Drum Miniatures. Click pix to enlarge.

Last night it was fish or cut bait time as I had to choose a couple of scenarios for my games at this year's Seven Years War Association Convention. The Convention will be held in South Bend, Indiana again on March 30, 31 and April 1st, 2017.

So after a little bit of noodling about the convention games, I decided that it was time to change up the usual games and get back to running some AWI games, using the Fife & Drum Miniatures for the American Revolution.

 I settled on running Cowpens all day on Friday and then my Winter Trenton scenario on Saturday.

Cowpens is a small game scenario that should realistically accomodate no more than four player in the game. The downside is that this does not allow many convention goers to participate in the game. So I decided to run the Cowpens game virtually all day Friday in one continuos stream.  One of the versions of the Cowpens game might be to run it as a SYW small action between the Austrians and Prussians at a little place called "Kuhstahl" (do you get it?).

Cowpens features the destruction and demise of Banastre Tarleton's independent command at the hands of Daniel Morgan and his mixed force of militia and Continentals plus a handfull of cavalry. Tarleton's army of about 1,000 men included the vaunted and feared British Legion.

The one problem for me is that I don't have any painted British Legion figures on hand, other than some samples mounted on single bases. The obvious solution is to paint the British Legion ahead of the convention. With about five weeks or so to go, I think that I can complete 24 cavalrymen divided into two squadrons of twelve figures.

So last evening I spent some time gluing the arms to the British Legion figures and cleaning up the horses just a tad. Most of the BL cavalrymen have a separate weapon arm (swords of pistols). It doesn't take too much time to do the assembly work: this consists of drilling out the existing hole in the torso, just to ensure a clean bonding, placing a small bit of epoxy putty into the hole, and then finally gluing on the arm. Then I let this sit overnight to let the expoxy putty harden.

Below are pictures of some of these bad boys: 24 figures to be exact.

British Legion (24 figures in two squadrons) castings are prepared and ready to be primed with grey primer.
One of the squadrons will consist of walking horses with the riders either hacking or shooting pistols at some unfortunate Americans.

The "Charging Squadron"
The second squadron consists of 12 figures charging at the full gallop. Tarleton's favorite tactic seemed to be just charging into the enemy and then hacking them down if the broke and ran.

The "Hacking & Shooting Squadron" for close in work.
Today, I glued the riders to the horses, adding a small ball of epoxy putty to the underside of the rider to create a stronger bond between rider and horse. I will let the figures harden overnight and give them a coat of grey primer tomorrow. Then two days hence, I can start painting the first squadron.

I will post updates through each stage of the operation so that you can follow the progress of the British Legion.

I will also need to add six to ten Continental 3rd Dragoons commanded by William Washington. Fortunately, six of them are partially painted already, which gives me a bit of a head start on the unit.


6 comments:

  1. Eager to see these take shape under your brush, Jim! What brand of epoxy putty do you recommend?

    Best Regards,

    Stokes

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    1. I use the yellow-blue mix that turns green after you knead it together. A number of companies make it given that it is a generic product. Try the Last Square web page- they probably sell it.

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  2. I look forward to watching this project develop. good luck.

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  3. The number of players is over-rated. Most board games ( which have superior rules), are two -player games. Still, Cowpens is a classic ! Carry on !

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  4. I'm eager to see how these look painted up; mad, bad and dangerous! The Kuhstahl game ought to be fun, I like the name and your plan for running it. Not sure you need to worry about how many play at a time and thank the heavens above that you are playing it with Fife and Drum figures!

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