Saturday, December 28, 2013

War of 1812 Trojan Greens


I signed up for Curt's 4th Painting Challenge, but was much later off the starting line than many others.  I plead an acute case of real life - 120 Stats papers, 30 Financial mathematics papers, swapping the furniture between two bedrooms in our house and the return of our daughter after a storm delayed flight home from University.  I swear that Curt sets the timing up to put me at a maximum disadvantage - really Curt I have both Final exams and Christmas to deal with.  

Anyway, this year I've decided to keep my submissions to bite sized morsels rather than full meals.  First up are these 8 members of the Trojan Greens, a War of 1812 Militia unit from upstate New York. Figures are kit bashed from the Perry 28mm plastic dismounted French Dragoons.  Construction wise I quite like the Perry plastics, but I am rather ham-fisted in my approach.  

In this case, the major bashing involved trimming the boot detail off of the rank and filers to represent trousers.  I left the officer in boots and breaches as this seems to be a unit composed of uppity upstate mucky-mucks, and I figured that the officers would be trumped up Johnnies who would dress like gentry.  Otherwise, I swapped in arms from the mounted figures for the trumpeter and officer.  I left them with the cavalry belts and cartage box, I'm sure a button counter will tell me that's not accurate but it works.  

I don't have a lot of info about the unit - they were rifled armed and from the Albany area.  They appear to have served along the St. Lawrence frontier and I believe that they were one of the volunteer units that existed pre-war - with the members providing their own uniforms and drilling on their own time.  I found a uniform plate here, and references here about an existing officer's coat.  The black belts on black facing and plastron always blurs details but I think that the yellow lace shows the difference well enough for my purposes.  I am not 100% happy with my lace work, but decided it was close enough and experience has told me that fussing about with yellow on black just makes things worse.  There is a similar black on black effect with the helmets and crests, but I find that a wash effect on the horse hair shows a difference in texture to get the effect reasonably.








9 comments:

  1. Andrew

    Good luck on the research - let me know if you find anything out!
    Cheers
    PD

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  2. I've never heard of these guys before - very cool name and colors! Best, Dean

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  3. They have a very attractive, comic-opera quality to them, A nice unit to be sure.

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    1. Mike
      Comic opera just about sums up a lot of the American side of the War of 1812, plus some of the British side.
      Cheers
      PD

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  4. Nice unit! I always thought that militia units would add color to wargames as they usually designed their own uniforms; but they seem to be overlooked by most people.

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    Replies
    1. Jhn
      Thanks. The DIY uniforms can be quite colourful. The War of 1812 is one of the few where these units actually got into combat. Some of my favourites come from the British Fencible units raised during the French Revolution in case the Frenchies got ashore.
      Cheers
      PD

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