From the archives

The bad weather across the UK has led to the regular Friday night club meet being cancelled for safety's sake. I'm taking the chance to update my blog, sadly neglected for a couple of weeks for various reasons.
 
Another foray into my shed turned up some Darkest Africa figures along with my ACW collection. The six naval ratings and officer will be welcome as crew aboard my Colonial vessels, and I have a hunch there might be a few more sailors lurking somewhere. These are Reviresco figures. As much as I admire the company's ship fittings range, the crew figures aren't the best I've seen. Even so, they have a certain charm and they'll be put to use.

I'm not sure how the three British infantrymen came to be overlooked when their fellows of the Barsetshire Regiment marched off to America. I'll put it down to an administrative mistake instead of desertion. Two officers of German persuasion also appeared, along with a solitary seebattalion chap. The rest of their troop was sold last year, but I'll press these fellows into service as adventurers in the service of the Kaiser.

The explorer's camp is 25CL9 from those fine folks at Frontline Wargaming, built onto a thin ply base, with the cooking pot being part of 25CL8 African village. Some of you may be familiar with Frontline's excellent 25CL1 "African Princess" steam riverboat.
 
Next up are my Killer Angels, the 2nd, 3rd, 7th & 8th South Carolina regiments of Kershaw's brigade, McLaws' division, 1st (Longstreet's) Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. These fine fellows have won every game they've taken part in, putting to flight a regiment from the famed Irish Brigade and taking a battery. The cannon is a 12pdr Napoleon.   

Up against them is a largely generic brigade of Union troops, the sole named regiment being the Garibaldi Guard. Composed of Italian immigrants, often recruited straight off the ships in New York harbour, they saw extensive service. They wore the distinctive Bersaglieri-style hat, and fought under a tricolour in the Italian national colours with the legend Garibaldi Guard in the centre. I made the mistake of accepting one pundit's view that the flag had horizontal stripes. I found out later they were vertical. It goes to show the value of extensive research...

The Union cannon is a 10pdr Parrot rifled piece. All figures and models are Dixon's Miniatures.

We did get good games in at the club last week. In a French-Indian War game, my better half took command of a native American force allied to the French. Being of Blackfoot and Cree descent, she's probably better qualified than most gamers in the UK to handle such forces! Much to her delight, her side won the game, completing their objectives of destroying the British blockhouse and several settlers cabins. The rules used were Musket & Tomahawk.

Over on the other table, my fellow commanders and I had difficulty leading the Macedonian army to victory over the Indian army of Poros. Our canny opponents used their infantry to soak up the brunt of the Macedonian attack in the centre, giving them a chance of weakening the phalanxes to the point they'd be easy meat for their elephants.  

The phalanx and hypaspists crushed the poor quality Indian infantry quicker than our opponents expected, but I balked at taking on the elephants until the closing moves, when victory hung on a whisker. A number of poor dice rolls on both sides led to interesting results at times, but in the end Alexander's personal leadership saw a win for his army. The end of the battle presaged the victories of Pyrrus by a good few years! The game was fought to Impetus rules.

More in a few days, as farther figures come to light...