Latest ACW additions

Among my recent birthday presents was a pack of Perry Armed Civilians from Jamie. Now completed they look like this...

They are nice clean castings and paint up well. They should be useful for Confederate guerrillas in Sharp Practice but I also have some thoughts about how I might use them with the new What A Cowboy rules from Too Fat Lardies.

Another recent addition to the collection came about when I started considering what to do with the spare drummers left over from the Perry plastic ACW boxes. With Sharp Practice I'm very unlikely to ever need more than one drummer per side.

Looking at Philip Katcher's The American Soldier (I've mentioned it here before; it's a compilation of plates from various Osprey books), I found a picture of a US Army signal corps private and decided I could produce something similar to make use of the drummer model.

The basic drummer body is used as-is. I removed the locating lug for the drum on his thigh and carved back the metalwork on on the drum strap to allow the smooth attachment of a cartridge case to represent the signal cartridge pouch. The strap is a bit fictional but I'm prepared to live with it.

The signal pistol was produced using an arm from the cavalry box. I cut the barrel and cylinder from the existing pistol in such a way that I retained a strip of plastic forward of the trigger guard. I then removed the barrel and glued the cylinder back on further forward than it originally was. The whole thing is painted in brass colour with a dark brown grip (where visible) and a black dot to represent the large calibre barrel for firing flares.

There's no obvious in-rules use for this kind of figure but I reckon I can come up with a scenario that uses him. Perhaps if Union troops were assaulting a Confederate fort they might use flares to signal to off-table gunboats to cease firing as the attackers crossed the parapet?