Monday 2 February 2015

From Curt - (Proof of Concept) 3mm ACW Regiments at 1:1 Scale (84 Points)


Okay folks, welcome to a wee bit of madness from me.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by miniatures and their relative scale. I frequently packed my Airfix plastics out into the garden and placed them at distances relative to their size (or the best I could determine as math has never been my strong suit). So when the British were deployed amongst the peas and potatoes and the Germans settled amongst the corn and cabbage they all somehow related to one another and therefore seemed more real to me. 

Anyway, when I started getting into historical wargaming in my teens I understood the need to abstract scales in order to fit scenarios onto tabletops, but I still held a desire to see these historical formations in their true form, at distances that reflected how the men of the various periods gathered, moved and fought.

Don Troiani's work seems to capture what it must have been like to live within the chaos of black powder battles...

These 3mm (1:600 scale) ACW figures (yes, they are very, very wee) are from Pico Armor. I picked these up a few years ago in a fit of madness knowing I could finally indulge my fascination with 1:1 scale and formations. I started working on a few bases but got distracted by other projects (I know, how typical). Nonetheless, I found them tucked away in a drawer the other week, so pulled them out, the spark took light once again and so here we are.

What you see here is two American Civil War Confederate regiments. The one regiment on the left is made up of close to 500 figures while the other is about 340. These numbers align roughly to the historical strengths of average, campaign-strength ACW formations.


Each regiment is made up of 10 bases, with each base being a complete infantry company at 1:1 scale.


Below is a great educational photo. You can clearly see the incredible length of a mid-sized regiment drawn up into line (with another regiment in the distance). When I see this I’m immediately struck by what must have been a huge challenge of command-and-control for officer to exert their will over such a strung-out formation. I look at this and understand that having a good cadre of experienced NCO’s and junior officers was an absolute necessity for having any kind of battlefield effectiveness. 

Both regiments drawn up in line.
When you see the same regiments drawn up in open and closed columns it illustrates why so many generals (certainly in the Napoleonic period) liked to keep their soldiers in more compact formations as it enabled them to be better controlled and also it had a morale effect as they typically gained confidence by the closeness of their comrades. 

Column of divisions, two companies wide at full intervals.
Close column, two companies wide. Highly inefficient for combat but much easier to control.
Column, one company wide and at full intervals for ease of maneuver.
The 3mm farmhouse is from Pico as well. I’ve placed it on a pill-shaped base and made a snake-rail fence out of cut card ('Nells' the workhorse is in the paddock). 




Painting in such a tiny scale required me to rethink how I approached the whole process. The sculpting detail is surprisingly clear so it would be easy to go down the rabbit hole and attempt to paint these figures as individual models. But that way madness lies. Instead you have to think of these strips of figures merely as components of a mass and not get drawn into details that nobody will ever see. So with this in mind I primed them black, drybrushed them light grey, thin coat of brown wash, popped in three blobs of flesh for their faces and hands, brown for the musket stocks, bright silver for the bayonets and then put in some varied colours for blanket-rolls and hats. That’s it. Done. 

My first base. I has the Regimental Colours as part of a company (which is incorrect).

To me, the trick to doing microscale figures often comes down to the basing. It has to be minimalist enough for the figures to be clearly identified, but not so stark as to leave them looking simply like little nubs on strips. These come in strips of eight figures, so I mounted them in two ranks, but situated them off center on the base so players have a better sense to place facing the same direction (more on this in a moment). Then I used a smooth gel medium to build-up the base roughly to the edge of their bases so they are better masked. Once the gel medium cures I then drybrushed them shades of light brown and then use a green semi-opaque emulsion to infer grass. The only basing material I’ve used with these is a few traces of clump foliage to mimic bush and brush.


When I first started basing these I quickly realized that players needed some sort of visual queue to which way the units were supposed to be facing. So with this in mind I decided to design a special base for the colour party. As you see here it’s shaped roughly like an arrow with a rectangular tab at the rear in order to place unit identification (thanks to Martin at Warbases for manufacturing these for me). As an experiment I’ve tarted up one of these bases with a small piece of L-shaped plasticard and rare earth magnets so nameplates can be easily ‘clicked’ into place but otherwise be stored separately.

The Colour Party with arrowhead front and rear tab.
Magnetized rear 'L' tab.
I’ll be up-front right now in saying that this project is largely just a silly aesthetic and intellectual proof-of-concept, but who knows, if I get enough stuff accumulated I may try using something like ‘Black Powder’ to do a clash of brigade-sized forces in 1:1. Otherwise I think I may use four of these bases along with a colour party base to serve as a regiment in ‘normal sized’ games like Longstreet’. 


I have an artillery battery that I’m working on but more on that later. I’m not really sure if I’ll expand on this collection as what I’m really keen to do is Napoleonics in this scale. I have a suspicion that massed cavalry formations would look amazing done at 1:1 scale…

Alright, with around nine hundred 3mm figures what do we do about points? Hmm… Right now we give half a point for a 6mm figure but simply going to a point for evey four seems too generous as they are very easy to do. Okay, what I’ll do is award myself one point for every strip of 8 figures. As I had four bases done prior to the Challenge this will give me 84 points. Done! 

Thanks very much for sticking with me through this overly long post!

47 comments:

  1. Curt, the Challenge does serve to bring the truly bonkers out of some of us. This is proof (if any were needed) that it brings it out in you as well! ;)

    This is a truly splendid entry :)

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    1. Thanks Tamsin! It's good to know I'm in good company. :)

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  2. Your eyesight must be better than mine! I take it they are forage caps, hard to be sure in the photos. I thought they were shakos at first look! (That's my vision for you). I am not sure if you are BONKERS for doing these OR the company are for making them. Either way I know I am for thinking I could get some!

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    1. Actually they are a mix of kepis and slouch hats but that was with a magnifying glass. Really who cares at this scale, just get the basic uniform colour and any specialized feature which would set them apart (ie. with Confederates their use of homespun blankets and irregular coloured headwear).

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  3. If this is madness then colour me crazy as a loon. I love it!

    Napoleonics at this scale would look amazing in theory but I'm not sure how well in practice. The uniforms are a lot more complex and I think you'd struggle to get enough detail to distinguish troop types.

    Of course I'm crazy as a loon, so what would I know?

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    1. Yeah, I think with Naps it will largely be Red for Brits, Blue for French, White for Austriants, Green for Russians. With these figures you're not interested in the uniforms as much as the formations and overall spectacle.

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  4. Holy moly! Great, erm small ones!

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  5. I complain that 10mm is difficult to see, but these are true miniature scale! Well done Curt!

    Christopher

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  6. Speechless. To quote Father Ted "These are small and those are far away".

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  7. For those of you not familiar with Father Ted see this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFTgkibl7DU
    I can also strongly recommend Black Books, in a similar vein

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  8. Wow... The illustration of how broad a regiment is in line is great really brings home the challenge of that formation for non-reenactors I've lived the challenge of moving 500 or so people in a formation two ranks deep but for those who haven't this is a good approximation.

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    1. Yeah I spent almost 2 years doing the re-enacting 'circuit' in the deep South and the West so I know of what you speak. It was only in the 'tactical' events that you really got a vague sense of the full size of these formations though. The smaller events were pretty much worthless in this respect (ie. 'companies' of 12 men / 'regiments' of 75).

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    2. Its true but at big events you sometimes fine it... I certainly saw it at the 225th of Battle Road, Saratoga and Yorktown and on a smaller scale at other events.

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  9. As a gamer this is very cool. As a painter this is awesome. As a person who works in the spatial sciences (mapping) this is very, very interesting. A most excellent post and it's this sort of unexpectedness that makes this challenge a great place to hang out. Cheers

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    1. Ah, birds of a feather then. I love maps as well. I'd love to do a proper Kriegspiel game someday done up as a formal map exercise with scads of players and multiple umpires. (These model formations would come in hand for illustrating to players what they see...)

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  10. Really an excellent and most interesting post. I was curious how long does it take you to do one base of figures with the ground work.

    John

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    1. I finished my last base the morning that I photographed this: It took me about an hour to complete a 6-strip base, with about a third of the time waiting for things to dry enough for me to proceed to the final steps. But in reality I did around 4-6 bases worth in an evening (after priming and mounting them on sticks).

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  11. Curt
    They're wonderful and you're a complete loony!

    Cheers PD

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  12. Fantastic post and a great experiment. That looks amazing an certainly give a much greater perspective of the command and control challenges

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    1. My thoughts exactly Paul. I really enjoy deploying the figures into their 'real world' formations to get a sense of scale and distance. Dorky but very interesting!

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  13. Great stuff dude - I recall seeing this concept on the shelf, great to see it realized!!

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    1. Thanks Greg! Yes it's nice to get some more of these completed and on the blog.

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  14. A very interesting scale exercise.One of my desires is to play black powder games at 1:1 scale, but with only a battalion per side!
    Amazing, the size of the units!

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    1. Exactly! I have a mock set of rules drafted up. I should put them on the blog sometime. Scott Bowden wrote a set several years ago titled 'Chef de Battalion' but they seemed almost unplayable because of their complexity and fiddlyness. To be fair I should actually pull them out and give them another read...

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  15. That's definately suitably mad for the challenge! I salute you for being able to paint 3mm so well. 6mm is already tiny and that's just half of that! Great job!

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  16. I've found that the more insane a person is, the more they try to justify that madness using complex rationale. You sir, are as loony as a toon :)

    Seriously, this is most impressive and it had to take perseverance to complete.. Just holding one of those figures in your hands in order to mount it had to be difficult. Also that house has an impressive amount of detail. Good on you Curt, for doing this!

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    1. Thanks Anne! I always think a bit of benign madness is good for the soul.

      BTW, these little guys are on strips - I couldn't imagine trying to work on them individually!

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  17. Madness. Beautiful, beautiful madness.

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  18. Mental. Completely mental. Hats off to you sir, an excellent project :)

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  19. Ah Curt, as other have said, you're quite, quite bonkers. 1:1 scale, whatever next?! Impressive though - and point very much made on C&C.

    Maybe I should get some and try to squeeze my 8 highlights on... ;-)

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    1. Haha. If anyone could pull highlights on these you could.

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  20. Wow! Sincerely Wow! That is really slick with the formations! For wee lads, they are very well done. The color party bases are an inspired genius( or utterly mental) way of denoting direction. I'd have to add my lunacy to this though....you should have stretcher party bases for moral and casualty markers and skirmisher bases for combat modifiers! I can't count this as completed until you get that completed....and federal counterparts completed as well! ;)

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    1. Thanks David. I have a couple of Union regiments in the works. That being said I think I'll probably shift gears and do Napoleonics for these (my first love in wargaming) That being said I do like your ideas for figure markers to denote varying status/modifiers.

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  21. Well, what else could I say than: You'recompletely NUTS Sir and I pretty much admire it!
    I never really thought about doing anything in 1:1 wargaming wise. But now I'm certain one day we'll see first bullrun or ghettysburg in 1:1 presented by you Curt.

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    1. Haha! Well, I doubt that I'll do more than a brigade's worth for each side. Even at that it will be enough to fill a good sized table!

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  22. These just look the dog's danglies, had a load of 2mm forever ago but lost them, no where as nice as these

    Ian

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    1. Thanks Ian. Yes, these 3mm castings are quite remarkable as they are definitely NOT impressionistic blobs approximating ACW figures - they actually have slouch caps, kepis, blanket rolls, etc. What we see here is another example where computer technology has completely changed the figure-making industry.

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  23. Amazing work, Curt!! Really beautifully done. It's crazy, but it makes such brilliant sense when it comes to looking at the actual formations. Most excellent!

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    1. Cheers Sidney! Now, if they would only come out with Franco-Prussians...

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