How To Build A Continental Regiment With Fife & Drum Miniatures

1st Pennsylvania Regiment - Fife & Drum Miniatures

I thought that it might be helpful if I focused on one of my Fife & Drum AWI Continental regiments and provided a list of all the different figures from the range in that regiment.  This will provide a template for anyone else interested in building and painting a similarly posed regiment.

I chose one of my regiments that is in a firing line pose, the 1st Pennsylvania Regiment circa  1776, when they were issued with green uniforms with red facings. After the retreat of Washington's army from New York in late 1776, the regiment was supposed to pick up new uniforms, as depicted in my regiment; however, the retreat across New Jersey happened so fast that the supply depot containing the replacement uniforms was captured by the British before the 1st Pennsylvania could get their new uniforms. Thus this regiment is a sort of "what if" regiment in terms of the uniform colors.

I like my Continental regiments to look like a rag tag unit out on campaign. Nothing accomplishes this look better than using a wide variety of figures, to eliminate any appearance of uniformity. I used a mix of Continental and Militia figures to create the regiment. Here (following) is a list of the figures used in a 25 figure regiment:

Continental Firing Line in Uniform Coats

1 x A20  Continental Officer, Marching

1 x A21  Continental Standard Bearer, Marching

1 x A22  Continental Drummer, Marching

1 x A23  Continental NCO, marching

6 x A24  Continental Standing Firing

3 x A25  Continental Standing At the Ready

2 x A26  Continental using ramrod

3 x A27  Continental Cocking His Musket

1 x A1    Militia Officer holding sword

2 x A5   Militia Standing Firing, Brimmed Hat

3 x A6   Militia Kneeling Firing, Brimmed Hat

1 x A7   Militia Cocking His Musket

25 total figures

If you are interested in ordering a similar regiment for your Continental forces, then visit our web site at the following link:

Fife & Drum: Continentals & Militia

I wanted to add in some figures wearing brimmed hats rather than kit out everyone with tricorn hats, so using the American Militia figures fulfilled my needs in this respect. I used the A1 officer holding his sword in his hand to give me a second officer pose;  I used the A5 Militiaman standing firing and wearing a brimmed hat instead of a tricorn hat; and finally, I used the A6 Militiaman kneeling firing to add pose variety, and finally, an A7 Militiaman cocking his musket.

You can see how the whole regiment of 25 figures looks, below:

1st Pennsylvania Regiment - Fife & Drum Miniatures

An overhead birdseye view is also shown below:

Overhead view of the full regiment.

Wtih respect to basing, I use a 20mm square footprint for each infantry figure, so my normal 6-figure stand measures 60mm frontage and 40mm depth for six figures arrayed in doube ranks. For the 1st Pennsylvania, I used a 25 figure regiment, but kept the same 60mm x 40mm base. If you look closely in the above picture, you will see that the regiment is largely deployed in a single rank so as to accomodate the greater depth of the base needed to hold a standing firing figure so that wear and tear and mishandling of the stand leads to a broken musket. 

I created the illusion of two ranks by taking several figures and staggering them forward a couple of paces. I like the A27 Cocking His Musket pose and I turn the figure sideways and place him in the front rank on his base.  Some of the Militia kneeling firing figures (A-7) are useful in the front row beacsue they do not have a bayonet and thus the musket barrels do not extend beyond the size of the base.

The next time I will do the same with a regiment of men wearing hunting shirts. This will be posted tomorrow on this blog.