Thin Blue Line

No, I wasn't expecting this either.

I've returned to a project I haven't touched for almost exactly eight years and finished off almost the last few unpainted 6mm American Civil War miniatures for my Union army.

Almost a decade ago our little gaming group got very briefly grabbed by 6mm gaming following attending the Joy of Six show in Sheffield.

We opted to dip our toes in by painting up American Civil War forces, with two of us building Union forces and two doing Confederate armies, using Bacchus Miniatures as our supplier.

At the time we played through a brief Vicksburg campaign using Black Powder rules, in which, despite starting well, Matt and I got out manoeuvred and defeated.

The campaign can be read about here and here.

I suspect that's why it's been eight years since I did anything with them.

However, I was lacking a bit of motivation yesterday and had some time on my hands, so I went with something that seemed easy.

6mm miniatures, especially in the regular uniform blue of the Union army, are incredibly easy to do.

The trick is to remember that the aren't meant to be looked at up close and so there's not much call for more than dabbing paint on in the appropriate places.

With the miniatures and bases I had left I've put together two regiments and two stands of skirmishers. The skirmishers have a couple more models on each base than the ones I've done previously and so will be good for representing regiments that have been deployed as pickets as opposed to the skirmishers put out in front of a regiment.

I still have five strips of infantry, with no command, that I'm not sure what to do with, but it was a nice change of pace and removes a healthy chunk from my backlog - I originally counted each strip as a single miniature when I started on Lead Mountain, and so this bunch qualifies at 16 miniatures.

Acquired: -84
Painted: 75
Lead Mountain: 498