Roman Civilians in 54mm

A Roman farm in th Italian countryside

Click on the pictures to enlarge your view

Last year I was going to run a Roman vs Carthaginians game at Historicon 2024, but that project was superceded by Pickett's Charge from the American Civil War. I had already painted a large number of 54mm plastic Romans and Carthaginians in 2022 and so I have more than a good start on building the forces for a Hannibal game at Historicon 2025. I will be posting a lot of other pictures about the military side of the project, but today I want to present some of the civilians and vignettes that are likely to be seen "roaming" around the table (see what I did?).

I like to position villages, forts and farms in the corners of my game tables. There they are out of the way of the battle and allow me to present various vignettes of the eye candy variety. First we have a farm in the Italian countryside. The farmer is not rich by any means, but he has enough resources to work a small farm and have a few slaves to help with the hard labor.

The Italian Farm

The farmer and his wife converse with the carpenter in his employ . 
These are 60mm King & Country figures.

The farmer inspects that harvesting of the hay or wheat crop in his fields.
 He also has a grape vineyard, shown in the background.

The farmer takes some of his harvest to a nearby town market.

Overhead view of out Italian farm,

Another view of the farm,

The Italian Town

Another corner of my game table depicts a midsize town that has a river port from which the farmers in the area can ship their grain to Rome.

A view of the town with a ship floating into the dock area.
Roman soldiers do their drills on a nearby parade ground.

The boat turns out to be a Roman warship.

Wide angle view of the town  central plaza or forum, and the dockside area.

The Dock Area

I have collected a number of Playmobile Roman Greek warships and will eventually paint and covert all of them. The first converted ship is shown getting ready to land at the dock, but a small cargo vessel appears to be blocking access to the docks.

A small cargo boat unloads some fruit and grain as well as something
that looks like contraband. Roman soldiers keep an eye on things.

An entrepreneur sets up a market stall along the docks.

Here are more pictures of the activity quayside,

We can see some of the farmer's grain stacked up on the dock awaiting transport to Rome.

Roman soldiers guard the warehouses where the valuable merchandise is stored.
An antiquities trader seems to have attracted a lot of attention.

A Roman Centurian is interested in what is going on with the cargo ship.
He wants it to heave off so that his warship can land at the dock.

The Town

The farmer has delivered his goods to the dock, gotten a receipt from one of the traders, and now his is looking to quench his thirst at the local Tabaran.

The local wine tavern.

Some carpenters ply their trade in the town.

A rich landowner rides in style into the town. The wagon driver has to stop
at a checkpoint before he can enter the town.

A view of the town's forum, the center of life and activity in the region. A 
visiting Senator, with military escort for his safety, roams the forum stopping
to speak to some of the citizens to catch up with the local scuttlebutt.

The Military Post 

The town is large enough to merit the establishment of a military post to protect the citizens and ensure the free flow of commerce.

A very important person arrives at the camp.

The legatus legionis waits at his tent. He wants to finish his business so 
that he can take up other pursuits.

It is good to be a legatus in the Roman army.

---but trouble looms on the horizon as some of the Unfriendlies appear.

Most of the civilian figures in these pictures are made by King & Country and the soldiers are largely from John Jenkins Designs. Both ranges are 60mm in size.

I will be posting pictures of the Roman and Carthaginian armies in the near future.

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Battle of Antietam: Hooker's Attack

 

Antietam diorama in 1/72 scale. This is an amazing piece of work and
regrettably I can not recall the name of the individual's work so that I can give him credit.

CLICK PICTURES TO ENLARGE

I have been watching Bill Molyneaux's Battle of Antietam wargame on YouTube in recent days and it has gotten me interested in developing my own scenario for the opening battle in the Miller Cornfield. The game will be conducted using the large 54mm toy soldier figures that I painted over the past year for my Pickett's Charge game.

The Miller Cornfield at Antietam in June.

The Confederate Texas Brigade counter-attacks through the Miller Cornfield
Figures from my former 28mm ACW set of armies.

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Miller's Wheatfield? 54mm figures.

Here are a pair of links to Bill's YouTube battle of Antietam, Parts 1 and 2

Antietam Part 1

Bill's War Game World

Confederate artillery battery fires at Union troops in the Cornfield.
54mm Britains Deetail figures

Confederate artillery at Antietam, also known as "Artillery Hell".
Britain's Ltd. 1/32 scale soldiers

Antietam is a huge battle, but it can easily be broken down into a series of individual corps actions over the course of the day:

(1) Hooker's opening attack through the Miller Cornfield

(2) Mansfield's XII Corps supporting attack for Hooker's attack 

(3) Sumner's Union II Corps attack

(4) Union VI Corps attack by Sedgewick 

(5) French & Richardson's attack on the Sunken Lane

(6) Burnside's IX Corps attack across "the bridge"

(7) Arrival of A.P. Hill's division saves the day

Each of these phases of the battle could be developed into a fun and interesting scenario that reduces the scope and the number of wargame figures that one would need rather than trying to fight the whole, larger battle.

I decided to gin up a scenario for Hooker's Attack In The Cornfield suitable for my 54mm ACW figures. The Union attack by Hooker's I Corps is one of the iconic pieces of fighting in the Civil War and appears to be evenly matched so that either side, Union or Confederate, could win the game. Presenting the game at the regimental level would be a huge undertaking in the number of troops that would be needed and, more importantly, would require more table space than I have in my basement wargaming room.

So I decided that one of my 30-figure regiments would stand in for one brigade of soldiers. With approximately 3 brigades per division in Hooker's I Corps, and 3 divisions, I would need 9 of my painted "regiments" to represent the Union side.

The Confederate side is a little more difficult to understand because brigades were scattered all over Stonewall Jackson's battle line, rather than finding all of the brigades in a Confederate division deployed in an orderly side by side formation. 

Here is the order of battle for the Confederate forces on the left wing of the army, commanded by Stonewall Jackson. Some of the original brigade commanders have been replaced either from becoming a casualty during the fight, or in the cases of J.R. Jones (for Jackson) and Lawton (for Ewell), elevated to division command. Ewell was back in Richmond, VA recovering from his leg amputation suffered at the Battle of Groveton while Lawton was elevated to replace Stonewall Jackson when the latter moved up to wing command. Note: each battery of artillery will be represented by one cannon model with crew.

Stonewall Jackson's Left Wing Command

Jackson's Division (J. R. Jones commanding)

Jones's Brigade (Grigsby commanding)

Starke's Brigade

Taliferro's Brigade (J. Jackson commanding)

Jones' Brigade (Penn commanding)

Division Artillery (6 batteries)

Ewell's Division (Lawton commanding)

Early's Brigade

Hays' Brigade

Lawton's Brigade (Douglass commanding)

Trimble's Brigade (James Walker commanding)

Division Artillery (6 batteries)

Reinforcements - Hood's Brigade

Wofford's Texas Brigade

Law's Brigade

Ripley's Brigade (from D.H. Hill's division)

Thus Stonewall Jackson's command begins the game with 8 brigades of infantry and 12 batteries of artillery, represented by 12 cannon models. You could make the arrival of Hood's two brigades and the detachment of Ripley's brigade from D.H. Hill's division to Jackson's command optional.

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Hooker's Union I Corps

Hatch's Division (Doubleday commanding)

Hoffmans' Brigade (replacing Doubleday)

Gibbon's Iron Brigade

Patrick's Brigade

Phelps' Brigade

Division Artillery (4 batteries)

Rickett's Division

Duryee's Brigade

Christian's Brigade (Lyle commanding)

Hartsuff's Brigade

Division Artillery (2 batteries)

Meade's Division

Seymour's Brigade

Magilton's Brigade

Gallagher's Brigade (Anderson commanding)

Division Artillery ( 3 batteries)

So Hooker's I Corps will have 10 brigades of infantry, each represented by one of my "regiments" of painted figures. There will be 9 cannon models, each representing one battery in the I Corps.

The Game Table and Battle Map

I based my scenario and game table map using the map that I found on Wikipedia, which I believe uses the map created by The American Battlefield Trust. I hope that I got the citation correct. I enlarged this map as much as I needed on my desktop computer and put a piece of light see-through tracing paper over the screen. Then I traced the terrain features onto the paper and used the drawing to create my game table map.

Here is a crude map of the Cornfield terrain features that I will transform into a table top map. The Union I Corps attack will  deploy in the north at the top of the map and attack south towards the "V-shaped" intersection of the Hagerstown Pike (running north to south) and the Smoketown Road (running diagonally from NE to SW). Where the two roads meet lies the iconic Dunker Church which was a landmark that became the focus of both armies during the battle.

Map depicting the terrain for my table top layout.

Other terrain features are the North Woods at the top of the map; the East Woods at the right side of the map; the West Woods on the lower center left part of the map. The Miller Cornfield is in the center of the map surrounded by the North, East and West Woods.

Here are two photos of the Dunker Church, one taken just after the battle and the a more contemporary image.

Contemporary photo of the Dunker Church after the battle. Confederate casualties are shown.
Union forces wouldhave attacked from the right and moving to the left in this picture. You can
just barely make out the position of the Hagerstown Pike by the location of the fences.

The Dunker Church at Antietam National Military Park
Sharpsburg, Maryland. Photo: NPS
The Hagerstown Pike is in the foreground.

Brigade Deployments

Brigade deployments are shown in the map below. Union brigades are in blue and Confederate brigades are in red.

I haven't finalized the map of my game table layout, but I would imagine that on the lefthand side, I will not have Nicodemus Heights on the table. The righthand table edge will probably be at the eastern edge of the East Woods. My game table is 6ft wide by 15ft long and I can, and probably will, use a parallel table measuring 5ft wide by 12ft long so that I can have more table width. The Hagerstown Pike will probably mark the edge of both tables with the aisle running in between along that road. And then imagine that the map will tilt or rotate several degrees to the right. Of the two game tables, the smaller 5ft by 12ft table will be on the left side of the maps above and the larger 6ft by 15ft table will be on the righthand side.

Here is the math with respect to the width of the tables:

Each regiment of mine is 15 to 18 inches in frontage. I don't have the exact measurements in front of me because the figures are packed away into their storage containers at the present. But my recollection from my Pickett's Charge set up was that a brigade of two regiments in the front and one supporting regiment in a second line took up approximately 36 inches of space. 

Another table layout to consider is to play the game out on the horizontal axis. A 15ft wide by 6ft deep front table could encompass the entire Miller Cornfield and the East Woods. The back table would have most of the West Woods, the Dunker Church and the intersection of the Hagerstown Pike and the Smoketown Road. I find myself leaning towards this option because (1) I can place the entire frontage of Hooker's attack on one table and (2) the fighting in the West Woods and the Dunker Church are really not the focus of my game.

Comments on deployment, below, relate to the table option of playing the game on the vertical axis with two parallel game tables.

Union Deployment

In my Antietam game the brigade will now be represented by just one of my painted regiments and three regiments will now represent the three brigades of one division. So Doubleday's Union division, comprised ob Gibbon and Phelps' brigade in the front, supported by Patrick's brigade in the second line, will take up a frontage of approximately 36 inches or 3 feet. This includes a little bit of spacing between units so that the brigades are not lined up end to end in a perfect linear formation with no maneuvering space. Next to Doubleday, we have Rickett's Division comprised of the brigades of Duryee, Hartsuff and Christian. Meade's third division has the brigades of Magilton, Anderson and Seymour and it would be lined up behind Doubleday's and Ricketts' divisions on the tabletop. Thus a two division frontage takes up 6ft, which is the width of my primary game table.

Now I am going to make a slight change to the Union order of battle that will facilitate the play of the game. You will note that one of Meade's 3rd Division brigades, Seymour, is located far away from the rest of the division as it is deployed in the East Woods whereas the other two brigades are positioned in the North Woods at the start of the battle. At the same time, one of Meade's other brigades, Magilton, managed to slide its way into the front line of the ICorps' attack. So I am going to give Rickett's 2nd Division the brigades of Magilton, Duryee and Seymour and Meade's 3rd Division will now own Anderson, Hartsuff and Christian. This places brigades under a command closer together and thus easier to manage during the game.

Just kind of eyeballing things, Doubleday's 1st Division on the right of the I Corps line will have Gibbon's brigade and Patrick's supporting brigade deployed on the smaller 5ft by 12ft table on the left table. Phelps' brigade will be on the larger 6ft by 15ft right table, just above the Cornfield. Rickett's Division will see  Duryee lined up north of the Cornfield, with Magilton's brigade behind him; while Seymour's brigade will start in the East Woods. 

Thus the larger righthand table will have Phelps, Duryee and Seymour in the front line and taking up a frontage of 54 inches out of a total of 72 inches of table width. This should allow room for Union artillery to deploy and give the infantry some space to maneuver on the table. Magilton will line up behind Duryee. Meade's three brigades will form a third battle line behind Magilton.

On the smaller lefthand table we will deploy Gibbon's Iron Brigade on the front line with Patrick's brigade deployed behind him. This table has 60 inches of width with only one brigade in the front occupying 18 inches of space. This provides a lot of maneuvering area for Patrick to move forward and line up to the right of Gibbon and present a two brigade frontage on the smaller table.

So far it looks like we will have plenty of table space for the opening attack on the Cornfield. Of course, the Confederates have a say in all of this too.

Confederate Deployment

The Confederates will have three player commands in the game consisting of Jones' Division on the left and Ewell's (Lawton) Division on the right, with Hood's Division in reserve. As with Hooker's Union I Corps, I need to make some adjustments to the CSA order of battle to keep proximity of brigades in a division. The main problem is that Lawton's Division has Early's brigade is deployed on the far left while the rest of Lawton's Division is deployed on the center and right of the table. So I will add Early's brigade to Jones' Division (deployed on the left table) and transfer Starke's brigade to Lawton's Division. Thus the CSA has two division commands on the front line with a third division command under Hood in the rear. Since Hood only has two brigades (Wofford and Law) I will add Ripley's brigade to Hood's division.

Conclusions and Summary

I am looking forward to setting up my game tables and giving this scenario a go. I will use my 54mm ACW armies and employ the set of rules that I used in my Pickett's Charge war game at Historicon. I have never set up a game where a regiment/battalion takes the place of a brigade so I am keen on seeing how this mechanism works out.

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That's not an Artillery Battery. This is an artillery battery!

This is an artillery battery!

A Prussian artillery battery of seven cannon. Most of the figures and equipment
are from Minden / Fife & Drum Miniatures. Some of the limber horses and the 
riders are from RSM Miniatures.

I had a lot of fun making this "little" presentation of a Prussian artillery battery in the Seven Years War. When I paint a Prussian cannon and crew, I also paint a small stand of two helpers with drag ropes. Eventually I will also paint a limber with a team of four horses and a rider. Because all of the bases are 60mm wide I can fit two, three, four or more gun teams together that fit like pieces to a puzzle.

I wanted to depict the idea that there is a lot of stuff going on behind the cannon when an artillery battery is set up. So I added a row of squares behind the stands of drag rope men in order to put some distance between the cannon and the ammunition wagon. The limber team for each gun is placed on the other side of the ammo wagon, sort of out of harms way.

That's not an artillery battery:

Crocodile Dundee

That's not an artillery battery.

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At the Check Point Vignette

 

A Prussian officer in the von Zieten hussar regiment hands over his identification
papers to Feldwebel Gertz at a road check point outside the Prussian encampment.

Click on all pictures to enlarge

Today's fox is a vignette of a Prussian check point. It brings to mind the Prussian Captain Potzdorf in the film Barry Lyndon. Potzdorf and his company of dragoons are traveling in the opposite direction as Barry Lyndon, who was posing as Lt. Fakenham of the British army. Of course Potzdorf is immediately suspicious of Barry's story and "invites" him to tag along with him. Barry really has no choice but to oblige and so he rides with Potzdorf towards the Prussian lines. Potzdorf gradually susses out Barry Lyndon's real identity and places him under arrest, offering him the choice of being shot as a spy or joining the Prussian army. To which Barry says, "then I shall volunteer to join the army."

It is best to have one's papers in order when crossing through a Prussian check point.

The Fife & Drum Miniatures AWI Hessian range of figures includes a musketeer in tricorn hat and a grenadier in a miter hat, both in a pose with the musket held upright. This is a great figure pose that can serve a multitude of purposes: the second rank in a firing line, an outpost guard, or a guard outside the general's tent in a camp.

Minden Miniatures "Zieten personality figure pack (rider and messenger) is the center piece of this story.
The grenadiers guarding the check point are Fife & Drum Miniatures Hessians for the AWI period.
The guard house was made by Herb Gundt and the cheveau de frise pieces are from Warfare Miniatures.

Close up view of the Zieten personality figure.

Here we have a Prussian jager officer and a messenger being stopped at the check point.
They have dispatches to deliver in the Prussian encampment.

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Opinion: On the merits of firing line poses in wargame armies

Prussian regiment in firing line pose

I really like firing line and second rank figure poses because, gee, I don't know, soldiers fire their muskets in a battle. IMHO it looks rather boring to have every single figure on the table in the same pose. Anyone can field nothing but marching figures on their game table, but it takes an artistic, dare I say Bohemian, mind to add some battalions or regiments actually firing their muskets.

It is time to start thinking outside of the box and give some serious thought to doing something different with your SYW battalions.

I suppose that I could take things to the extreme and have every marching battalion also having its doppelgänger as a firing line battalion. That would be rather crazy, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it? Maybe? Nah!

Another idea would be to have half of the battalions in marching poses and half in firing line poses. Thus the tabletop general could place firing line battalions in the front line of battle and a supporting battle line all in marching poses.

But Fritz, what about...

Common reasons advocates of the marching pose typically use:

[1] But firing line bases look silly when you form them up in march columns! That is trite basis response that is usually heard from people who defend the marching pose against the firing pose battalions. Hmm, that might be, that might be, but I ask you: how many times during a wargame do you have the battalion in a march column and how many more times is the battalion deployed in line.

[2] All of those bayonets at the end of the muskets are more likely to break off when the figures are leveling to fire. To this baseless argument I say, "and you think that muskets sticking straight up in the air are less susceptible to breaking off?" If you think about it, the answer is a definitive NO.

[3a] But Fritz, those leveled muskets extend over the front of the base and, again, are more likely to break off. Well, for starters, if you use Minden Miniatures or Fife & Drum Miniatures you are getting a figure that is stronger than your average metal wargame figure because of the secret sauce that is the formula of the metal alloys used to cast the figures. Also, the figures are cast by Griffin Moulds who is the premiere caster of metal figures in the industry.

[3b] A simple fix for the perceived base problem with firing line figures is to simply use a deeper base/stand than your normal marching pose bases, but retain the same frontage for both units. My old standard marching pose battalions have bases measuring 60mm frontage by 40mm depth (approximately 20mm by 20mm per figure). My firing line pose battalions retain the 60mm frontage but use a deeper measurement of 80mm.

The 80mm deep base provides enough room so that I can glue the figures to the base, setting them back about 30mm, so that the leveled muskets do not extend over the edge of the base. A little bonus to this size of base is that it leaves room to set up a third line of file closers at the back of the base. I liked this so much that I started building a new Prussian army with 60mm wide by 80mm deep bases for both marching and firing pose battalions.

Prussian grenadier battalion in firing pose format and 60mm by 80mm bases.

These grenadier battalion bases have some extra room to set up an officer a few millimeters forward of the firing figures and I think that it is a nice and different look. The picture below shows a battalion of Austrian musketeers on the same size base 60mm x 80mm as the firing line grenadiers shown above.

A battalion of Austrian musketeers in line formation use the 60x80mm base
and you will note that the base provides room to have a third line of figures,
mostly drummers, NCOs and officers.

Prussian grenadier firing line

Final Thoughts

I have never understood the bias that most war gamers that favors marching poses over firing poses. I have to admit that Minden figure sales are strongly favoring marching poses. Yes, a table top full of marching figures in tight line formations look good and epitomizes the look of 18th Century linear warfare.

On the other hand, some consideration should be made to add some battalions with firing line poses. These have a more dynamic look to them compared to the static looking marching poses. Adding some firing line battalions will make your table top game look better as firing is what the soldiers did in battle once they had marched into place. The usual arguments against firing line figures: figure breakage and the look of the figures in march column, are rather weak in my opinion. I have stated what I think are mitigating responses to the bias against firing line poses and these mitigations should ease one's mind about the perceived (and false) arguments.

Finally, this post is a little bit tongue in cheek in its premise, but nevertheless, should give you something to think about and consider when you are building your war game armies.

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Camp Life: Morning Inspection

 

Prussian captain inspects his company at morning parade.
Fife and Drum Miniatures Hessians painted as Prussians
with Minden Prussian officer with pole arm.

Every morning in the Prussian army the soldiers all assemble on the parade ground for the morning inspection. The pictures in this post depict a company of Prussian soldiers being inspected by their captain on the morning parade.

While the soldiers are getting ready for the parade, we note that the senior officers of the army have already been awake since first daylight preparing for the day's activities, assuming that there is no battle today.

Prussian general has his batman help him in putting his coat on. These two
figures were made by John Ray and painted by me. The tents etc. were made
by Herb Gundt.

Prussian senior officers. This set is the PER-001 "Duke of Brunswick and Staff"
set of figures (4 per pack)

This scene takes place in the village of Gross Kammin in Silesia during the Seven Years War. I like to put villages and related vignettes in the corners of my game table, where they are out of the way from the action in the center of the table. It also provides an opportunity to display all of the civilians and military vignettes in my SYW collection.

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John The OFM in miniature

Over on the Fife and Drum Miniatures forum one of the members commissioned a 3D printed sculpt of that famous cad and rapscallion known as John The OFM (of TMP fame and other web forums). "Little John", as we called him, was mailed around the world to Europe, Australia and back to the United States. The figure was mailed to various forum members in those parts of the world with the mission of taking a picture of Little John and then finally presented to John in person.

John is the fellow mounted on the horse on the right hand side of the picture above. For my picture, I placed him outside of the Savage Swan Tavern where he is seen quaffing some ale before heading off into battle. General Nathaniel Greene, mounted on the horse on the left hand side of the photo, appears not impressed by the presentation of the liquid "award" to JTOFM. It wouldn't be the first time that one of Greene's generals fortified himself with some liquid courage ahead of a battle.
 

This project provided a great deal of fun and merriment on the forum and so I thought that I would share the picture with you.

The tavern was made by Herb Gundt and the various civilians are from Front Rank and Foundry, while General Greene and his standard bearer escort are Fife and Drum Miniatures.

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