Many, many years ago friend Tim McAlpine told me about an American Civil War unit he had a hankering to model. Back in those days it would have involved converting Minifigs 25mm models. The unit, he said, was called "Ellet's Mississippi Marine Brigade" and they wore conventional ACW uniforms but with distinctive round-topped caps. For some reason the memory of that brief conversation has stayed with me. I wonder if Tim ever got round to building the unit?
Now, I've never had a great interest in the Civil War but recently watching the Youtube video The American Civil War Oversimplified (and its follow-up) has given me a handle on the broad sweep of the war that puts the bits I did know into some sort of context. Getting into gaming the ACW now seems less daunting somehow.
And then along comes an article on the very Mississippi Marine Brigade that piqued my interest nearly four decades ago!
It turns out that the unit was even more fascinating than I'd imagined. I'm not sure I'd want to organise a Sharp Practice game about marines kidnapping aristocratic Southern belles to use as hostages to engineer for the release of captive New England school ma'ams but there are plenty of ideas there for SP2 games!
It also turns out that Thomas Brandstetter (whose Star of Bravery campaign I've been enjoying of late) has also had this idea and produced SP2 lists for the force.
And yes, I have some as-yet-unused Perry plastic ACW artillery. And no, I don't need another Sharp Practice project!
7 comments:
Another project! 😂 😂
Fascinating subject matter.
You’re not helping!
That's my job :-)
Deploying on horseback directly from the decks! Now there's an idea for a game.
Thanks StuRat. Don’t Warlord do some Hanoverian infantry in hats rather like that? I’ll have to check. Or I would have to check if I were going to do this. Which I’m not. No.
Hmm. Looks like there are only one or two more heads than figures on the Hanoverians sprue. The Franco Prussian figures may be the way to go….
Have a look at the new Wargames Atlantic Prussian Reserve Infantry 1813-1815.
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