So for Altar of Freedom I decided to go cheap, very cheap, 2mm lets me do that, especially in an ACW setting where most of the troops are infantry. The beauty of 2mm infantry is that a couple of matchsticks provide the basics of an infantry line. As AoF uses brigade bases four blocks of infantry on a base looks like a brigade. The base frontage is 60mm so four regiments on 25mm frontages deployed in two lines of two regiments works nicely.
The massed matchsticks of a Federal Infantry Brigade |
Artillery and Generals are trickier and I will probably limit myself to top down pictures or maybe a portrait taken from the OOB in the rules for Generals. Cavalry will be bigger blocks, well horses are bigger then men after all. I have tried out a couple of modelling styles for cavalry but haven't decided which I prefer yet. One thing I do know is that the beauty of 2mm is that it isn't that much extra work to do mounted and dismounted versions.
For First Manassas (or Bull Run if you prefer) I need 23 infantry brigades as against two cavalry brigades, eight artillery batteries and three command groups. The total costs costs will be measured in pennies rather than pounds which really pleases that cheapskate streak that I have!
That’s a good idea. Reminds me of the hair roller armies article in Miniature Wargames in the 80s.
ReplyDeleteI’ve got a bag of matchsticks too. Bought as likely looking material in search of an idea.
These are a development of those ideas of Andy Callan. I used to work with his brother back in the 80's and he gave me one of Andy's ECW matchstick armies. The key improvement is the ability to print up the wrapper on a home PC. that simply didn't exist back in the 80's so we had to do what we could with paints.
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