How I create an AWI regiment - 2nd New Hampshire

 

The 2nd New Hampshire regiment at Trenton 1776
Fife and Drum Miniatures

I recently finished my eleventh American regiment for Washington's army at Trenton in 1776. It is the 2nd New Hampshire regiment commanded by Colonel John Stark (he of fame at the Battle of Bunker Hill).

I eschew having my AWI regiments consist of all the same or similar poses in the regiment. Why? Because an irregular, casual regiment with a mix of uniform colors and types, plus a multitude of figure poses creates the right look for American Continental armies of the American Revolution.

Using my new off-the-painting-table 2nd New Hampshire I thought that I would show you how I mix up poses and uniform styles (conventional military jacket, hunting shirt, and civilian militia clothing) to create a unique and diverse looking wargame regiment for the AWI.

Continental Regulars poses

Fife and Drum Miniatures American Continentals figures in assorted poses
suitable for a firing line of figures.

The uniforms of almost every Continental army regiment would typically be a mix of soldiers wearing uniform coats of blue or brown color; a variety of colors for trousers/pants and vests/waistcoats. In fact, it was common for different companies in a regiment to have different uniforms. This could be due to what color of coats were available (if any at all) when the company was raised, or whether a company had just received new replacement uniforms for the coming year or they were wearing last year's uniform jacket. Trousers and waistcoats could be white, tan, khaki, brown, blue or something else. That being the case, why not paint some of the figures with brown coats and some with blue coats? The same holds true for trousers. So you could have two Continentals standing side by side wearing the same blue coat, but one of them wears white/grey trousers and waistcoat while the other wears brown trousers with his blue coat. Mix and match the colors to your heart's content.

Hunting Shirts

Hunting shirt clad Continentals on the left, and Morgan's Riflemen on the right.

The Fife and Drum Miniatures figure range has Continentals in both marching and firing line poses. These can be augmented with figures from the Morgan's Rifles set of figures. The former have tricorn hats and the latter wear round hats. Hunting shirts were worn early in the war before a system of uniforms and cloth colors was established. They might also be worn by troops along the frontier or in the Southern Colonies, where state governments did not have the funds to outfit their regiments in uniform coats.

My 2nd NH regiment has five figures wearing hunting shirts. I wanted to have a few of them, but not too many because I want the regiment to be predominantly clad in jackets.

Militia or Civilian Clothing

American militia figures in round hats, loading and firing muskets.

The two kneeling firing figures in the picture above are cast wearing a sleeveless waistcoat and long-sleeved shirts. I painted the shirt the same color as the vest as a "conversion with paint" to give it the appearance of a long-sleeved jacket. Note also the mix of light blue, one green and one brown jacket in the set

American militia wearing round hats, advancing.
Note the one figure wearing a brown coat versus the light blue coat of the other figures.

American militia in round hats, firing. There is also one figure wearing a tricorn hat.
Note that two figures have brown coats and three figures have light blue coats.

These figures are the same pose from the Armed Civilian pack of  figures.
They are cast wearing waistcoats and long-sleeved shirts. I simply painted the shirts the
same color as the waistcoat to give it the appearance of a jacket.

Putting It All Together 

After all of the figures are painted it then becomes a simple task of mixing up all of the different poses onto your figure bases. For the most part, no two figure poses are side by side in the pictures.

Blue uniform coast, hunting shirts and brown uniform coats in the same unit.

I wanted the majority of the figures to be wearing round hats rather than tricorn hats.

The final result is a rag tag looking American regiment that seems informal and has a diverse number of figure poses.

That's my style.

Hessian Fusilier Regt. von Lossberg is painted

 

Hessian Fusilier Regiment von Lossberg at Trenton 1776
Minden Miniatures Prussian fusilier figures.

The Trenton Project is coming alone nicely with the addition of the 40-figure Hessian fusilier regiment von Lossberg to the Hessian forces at Trenton. I had previously painted the Rall Grenadier Regiment and some Hessian Jagers. Next up are 30 figures for the Knyphausen Fusilier Regiment. This will fill out the Hessian army for my game scenario.

The Trenton game will be hosted at this year's Seven Years War Association Convention and at Historicon 2026.

Von Lossberg regiment marching through Trenton. Minden Miniatures Prussian fusilier
figures were used in lieu of not having Hessian fusiliers in the Fife and Drum figure range (yet).
The house is made by Diabolical Terrain and is 3D printed to your requested scale. The house
model was in a partial stage of painting at the time that I took this picture. It will get some white
dry brushing and some colored window sashes when it is completed. 

What is needed to finish the Trenton Project:

1. one more Hessian fusilier regiment of 30 figures

2. paint and base three more Diabolical Terrain houses

3. paint two more 24 to 30 figure American regiments

4. paint a new George Washington figure and base him in snow

Possible project extensions:

1. I may attempt to make some of my own road sections so that I can have more roads in the game

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My Little Wars Convention Games Are Submitted

 

Jim's Peninsula War skirmish game set in 1810 Spain

Picture of the two game table set up at Fall In in November 2025
Winner of the "Best Terrain" award

CLICK ON PIX TO ENLARGE

Today I submitted three games for this year's Little Wars convention on April 23 to the 2th, 2026 at the Sheraton Hotel Lisle/Naperville.  A link to the convention web site is listed below:

Little Wars Convention

I will be running my 40mm Richard Sharpe skirmish games three times at the show:

Thursday evening at 6PM

Friday afternoon at 1PM

Saturday afternoon at 1PM

This is a skirmish level game set in 1810 Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. The custom-built terrain boards and buildings won the Best Terrain award at the 2025 Fall In convention.

Game sign up begins on April 1, 2026 using the Table Top Events system.

The Coa River spans the width of two 6ft by 15ft tables.

40mm French Lancers

Spanish hacienda

Game tables set up at Fall In convention in November 2025. The Spanish monastery was the 
focal point of several of the games.

The bridge over the Coa River

French and Spanish Guerillas fight to the death in the vineyards of the monastery.

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Introducing the Rall Grenadier Regiment at Trenton

Hessian Rall (not von Rall) Grenadier Regiment at Trenton in 1776.
Fife and Drum Miniatures figures in 1/56 scale (approximately 28mm)

Click on all images to enlarge

I have been very busy with my Trenton 1776 Project, accumulating a lot of painted Continentals - ten regiments as a matter of fact. At an average wargame figure size of 30 figures per regiment, that is 300 figures in my newly painted Trenton Winter Army. I decided to paint entirely new American and Hessian armies for Trenton and base the stands in Winter snow, rather than using my existing armies with their green grass bases.

A couple of weeks ago I finished 20 Hessian Jagers and while there were only about 60 Jagers in total at Trenton, I decided that the Hessians needed a few extra figures in their wargame army so that I could have at least two Hessian game players versus four (maybe five) American commands. As a result I painted 20 Jagers which equates to 200 men using my standard figure to man ratio of 1:10.

Rall Grenadiers (top) and American Continentals )bottom). 

Next I turned my attention to the Hessian regular regiments. The army will have the Rall Grenadiers, (50 figures)  and the von Knyphausen and von Lossberg fusilier regiments (40 figures each). Poor Colonel Rall apparently didn't qualify for "von Rall" status, just "Rall".

Grenadiers are more interesting to paint so I started with them:

The Rall Grenadies pose in the town of Trenton. I have ten figures on each stand.
Buildings, trees, fences and roads were made by Herb Gundt.

Fife and Drum Miniatures Hessian grenadiers in firing line poses (first and second ranks).
I use a deeper base for firing line units to protect the extended muskets. 60mm deep by 80mm long.

So as of today I have 20 Jager, 50 Rall Grenadiers and two 6-pound cannons, each with four crewmen. I can swap out the cannons for Prussian 3-pounders. I don't want the artillery on both sides dominating the tabletop game.

And finally, I finished the personality and command stand for Colonel Rall.

Colonel Rall at Trenton.  I used the von Knyphausen personality figure and the 
Hessian Jager officer holding a telescope for the command stand, which is 
approximately 40mm round. We are looking up King Street towards the Continental
artillery in the distant background.

For my fusilier regiments I plan to paint one unit marching using the Minden Prussian fusilier figures and one unit of fusiliers in a firing line pose. The latter will be conversions using AWI torsos and SYW fusilier heads. If there is enough interest, I might add the Hessian fusiliers to the Fife and Drum figure range.

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I Have Set Up My Trenton Winter Terrain - Wowzers!

 

The town of Trenton, New Jersey on Christmas Day 1776
CLICK TO ENLARGE

Yesterday I decided that it was time to bring all of my Winter terrain for my Battle of Trenton wargame and see how it all looks out on the table. I was pleased to discover that I probably have all of what I need now and there are only a few pieces that I would want to have when I run the game. The Trenton game will be hosted at this year's Seven Years War Association convention in South Bend, IN at the end of March 2026. I will run the games again at Historicon in July 2026.

Here are some pictures of the table layout. Nearly all of the buildings were made by Herb Gundt. Herb also made the road segments, stands of trees and post and rail fences. The game mat was made by The Terrain Guy (no longer in business).

You Tube video link added: Battle of Trenton video

Looking down King Street on the left and Queen Street on the right. Alexander Hamilton's artillery 
battery is seen in the distance as it is ready to roll round shot down King Street towards the Hessians.

Overhead view of Trenton taken from one of the Montgolfier Brothers' hot air balloons.

Looking along Queen Street in the background we see (left to right) the Post Office and the Printer's Store 
from Williamsburg and one of the taverns from Williamsburg on the right.

The large stone house is actually a model of the Chew House at Germantown, Pennsylvania.
The Williamsburg Courthouse model is on the right.

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A Hessian 6-pound cannon sets up in the middle of Queen Street

Looking down King Street towards Hamilton's Battery

General George Washington watches the Delaware and Maryland regiments on the march.

Hamilton's Battery as Washington looks on approvingly.

I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures of the miniatures, which do not seem to photograph very well on a white background. I am still working on my photography technique for Winter pix and hopefully I can post some better looking pictures in the coming days,

I created a short 4-minute video tour of my Trenton game table and I posted it on my Facebook page. It is also posted on the Facebook group AWI Historical Wargaming FB Group

I will try to upload the video to my YouTube page so that I can provide a link for your viewing.

UPDATE    the YouTube video link is now added:   Jim's Trenton Video on YouTube

Winter Snow and Winter Roads - Trenton Project Begins

 

What does an 18th Century road look like in the Winter? How about like the path shown below at our local dog park:

This is probably the look that I would like to achieve when I make my own roads.

As  you can see it is a stew of black and white. The black is the underlying dirt/mud showing where many a foot has trod and the white is the snow. It is a pretty interesting looking pallet of neutral colors. The brownish dead brush grass and the black bark on the distant trees conveys a rather cold and shivering feel to it. 

Here is Don Troiani's version of a winter road showing the American army on the march to Trenton. I'd imagine that there would be more black footprints in the snow after 3,000 men and horses walked over the ground.

Here are a couple of pictures of my new Winter snow basing. What do you think?

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