Continental Infantry - New Work on my American War of Independence Collection.

Hull’s Detachment charges the British Line at Freeman’s Farm, September 19th, 1777 - Keith Rocco
I like the way the Continental infantry are portrayed here, with the odd uniformed individual among most in civilian attire, but with bayonets fixed indicating their regular status and not militia.

It was way back in March 2022, just over three years ago that I posted on the latest addition to my Mohawk Valley Collection using Perry's 28mm range of AWI figures, and in that post looking at my conversion work on the plastic Continental Infantry box set to convert them into militia types more suitable for my irregular American forces.

The last addition to my AWI Mohawk Valley Collection were these militia using conversions
of Perry's plastic 28mm Continental infantry figures.
JJ's Wargames - Mohawk Valley Collection, Albany and Tryon County Militia

After that, work on my Age of Sail collection of models took centre stage as far as my modelling and gaming was concerned and other work went on hold.

The recent refit of my wargames room together with a general clearing out of 'stuff' in the house as Carolyn and I lighten our lives caused a hiatus in my modelling activity in the first quarter of this year, only just getting back to a modicum of normality but allowing a marvellous period of reflexion and assessment as to where I want to go with my hobby in the next few years, and part of that was to return to previous projects put on hold.

JJ's Wargames - My Refurbished Wargames Room

As well as looking at my AWI collection too date, the Romano-Dacians and Wars of the Roses fell into that consideration, and I may do some future posts looking at my thoughts and ideas for progressing those later two collections, but to start with I decided to pick up work on the AWI project that needed a set of rules to be decided upon to work the collection around, as the large skirmish sets at first considered didn't quite excite my passion, a passion reignited with my recent reacquaintance with the British Grenadier rule set.

JJ's Wargames - AWI Fun with British Grenadier

As AWI gamers know, the fundamental issue with wargaming this very interesting war is that actions and battles feature forces of quite variable sizes, anything from tens to hundreds, to tens of thousands of men, reflecting the need for a flexible figure scale to be able to cater for that variety, a fact reiterated in the forward to British Grenadier, which is vary capable of incorporating that flexibility.

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2018/09/rise-fight-again-new-rules-for-fighting.html

I like the ideas behind much of British Grenadier but find the mechanisms of play a little 'clunky' for my own tastes and so went back to looking at the myriad of other AWI rules I have collected over the years and in my collection and found my eye drawn to a set that I had played just a few times back in 2018 and not returned to since, with a few reflections around the way militia were handled in them, but very much liking the 'fatigue' concept reflecting disorder and casualties to units in battle, namely Rise and Fight Again (RAFA) by Stand to Games.

One of Steve and my first games using Rise and Fight Again (RAFA) by Stand to Games.

I recall having finished work on the sister set of rules for Napoleonics, Over the Hills, with my Peninsular War scenarios, and remembered Steve and I working through them to test all the chrome that the Napoleonic set includes, built around the concept of a typical battalion size or indeed unit size if the game were at a lower level and then fixing a fatigue level to that 'typically' sized unit around which other units could be modelled with a higher or lower fatigue rating determined not just on the number of men but other factors that would include quality and training.

Another test game of RAFA using my Napoleonic Brigade Morale record cards used to determine when a brigade would be forced to break off the action, the dice seen being reduced as units within the parent brigade suffered fatigue loss.

So with an idea of the rules to work up my growing collection with, I then, as I am want to do, focussed on the size of the collection and what sort of games I primarily wanted to create with it.

My King's Royal Regiment of New York (KRRNY) can also double up to yield two blue faced Royal regiments of British infantry when I have added two new command groups with colours.

Much thought had already been invested with the building of my first units to build my collection to facilitate recreating the raiding war that was fought in the Mohawk and Hudson Valley area, that lead me to base my figures individually and use the superb range of low profile sabot bases from Supreme Littleness Designs.

My first showing of my new sabot bases from Supreme Littleness Designs.
https://shop.supremelittleness.co.uk/shop

My plan is to continue with that basing method so that I can model these irregular forces, with many of the infantry formations fighting below a full battalion and those that were often not carrying colours into action.

 

My new look big-battle battalion, this one a Continental unit based around what will be a standard battalion for my RAFA games of about 320 men, a scale easily flexed up and down as required by any given scenario.

However these sabot bases will also allow me to flex my units up to a battalion level big-battle scenario where colours being carried might well be more appropriate and more visually appealing and so my need to construct colour bearers and additional command figures to add into my current units, that together with a more regular look to the sabot bases as seen above with my New Hampshire Continental battalion, easily converted into a Massachusetts battalion by swapping out the ensign figure with a more appropriate colour.

JJ's Build Plan for my Army level Collection

This idea of being able to flex the size of my units up to a more traditional battalion look will also facilitate my plans to be able to play through several of the British Grenadier scenario books that have also provided the inspiration to get on with this project.

As well as that, I have long toyed with the idea of fighting a We The People (WTP) grand campaign resolving battles that boardgame creates out on the table with a figure collection and the plan above reflects those ideas based on the smaller force in a given battle fielding twelve units and seeing the larger force gaining extra units according to force-size differential and a couple of other factors built into WTP, up to a maximum of eighteen units and a battle on a 3:2 ratio.

I can't be doing with using my Napoleonic 'Force Morale' cards with my new AWI collection and so I have already redesigned the look of them for future games.

The plan envisages a typical unit size, and I have an idea of replicating four of my British battalions and a couple of guns to be kitted out in Saratoga campaign dress to facilitate actions generated along the Canadian border, and similarly, a Tarleton cavalry unit and a few shirt sleeve militia units will add flavour to battles generated in the south.

This smartly dressed unit of sixteen figures is using the plastic set of Continental Infantry from Perrys, and I already had twelve of them done when I set about building my new command group with a new drummer and ensign.

As you will see above with my build plan, I will need to construct another eleven such units, and by working with this size of battalion I can create five battalions from two boxes of plastics plus three extra command sprues.

With a bit of scratch building and using parts from the British plastic infantry box, together with the odd few packs from the metal range I aim to add quite a bit of variety of look to the units created that will give quite a varied appearance to my rebel battalions.

The colour carried by this unit is from the excellent range of GMB Flags, whose wonderful products I made good use of with the build of my 18mm Talavera collection, but I must say that using them in this larger scale really shows off how wonderful they are and how they finish the look of the unit perfectly.

At the moment I intend to focus on upgrading my command stands for the rest of my Mohawk Valley collection which will generate four battalions of militia, two battalions of blue-faced redcoats (King's Royal Regiment of New York), a British light infantry battalion and assorted Indian, Jager and Butler's Rangers skirmish groups at this battalion level look.

The battalion sizes work just as well for my British battalions, likewise using the plastics and a judicious mix of metals, with only the larger six base, 24-figure, German and French battalions planned, needing to be all metal.

Along with this new work, I am also planning to try a change in my usual way of doing things by working in different genres and themes over the course of a year's modelling work, something I have never done before, preferring in the past to the focussed deep-dive approach to collection building, and so my next post will see some new additions to the ship collection in time for Trafalgar at Exeter Legionary next month, before coming back to this work.

As always, more anon

JJ