Saturday, January 15, 2011

The 60th Regiment of Foot (Royal American Rifles)


Well, here they are. The 60th Rifles. It seems that due to the popularity of the "Sharpe's" series of novels and the TV show (starring Sean Bean), the 95th Rifles are the way almost all wargamers building a Napoleonic British army go for when it comes to their skirmishers. It may well be that because I've never read the books or seen more than an episode of the show, that I was completely comfortable with going for the 60th instead. That, and it was companies of the 60th who were attached to the Guards Division at the Battle of Salamanca, our starting point for all of this madness.


I showed you all some of the conversions I did to get a lot more variety out of the Perry Riflemen plastics here. I'm happy to report that, once painted up, you can't really tell that they're conversions : )

The chap below, leaping over a GW Fence, was the most fun to pose. And amusingly enough, it wasn't until I had primed him that I realized there was a little Snotling head poking out from under the log. After chuckling about not having seen it earlier, despite photographing it and putting it on this blog, I clipped of the Snotling's nose and filled in the hollow with putty and a small stone. Job done.



In the game Lasalle you don't remove casualties as you go, but instead your unit suffers Disruption points (DISR) as it goes along. Under certain circumstances you can reduce the number of DISR your unit has taken, but if the number of points you've taken equals the number of bases in your unit, then the entire unit is removed from play. Way back when I first met Sam Mustafa (Lasalle's author) and did a report on the game for Wargames Illustrated, I met Jay Laura, a great painter who had done up some cool DISR markers for his 28mm figures.

What you see above is my first homage to Jay's work, the DISR marker for my 60th Rifles. As the unit has 6 bases (50mm x 50mm) I used a hexagonal base. Once I've put together other DISR markers for my army, I'll go through and put little numbers on the edges so that I can show exactly how many disruption points each unit has taken. Sure I could use dice, but we all know how that goes...

Cheers
Dave

PS. You may have noticed a new item on the right column of the blog. I thought it might be fun to track a few things throughout the year. See how my hobby progresses. Enjoy : )

12 comments:

  1. Dave, I absolutely love your painting style... SO clear and crisp... and the extensive, yet subtle, conversions are fantastic. Huge fan!

    Lord Ashram

    http://lordashramshouseofwar.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good job Dave, I dare say though if you haven't read any of the sharpe's novels then you are seriously disapointing yourself. They are suprisingly well written, and do an amazing job really portraying the time, and the rise through the ranks of sharpe. I believe their are close too 17 books starting in India and going through to Waterloo.I loved them so much I read 9 of them in one year while in Iraq.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Really great stuff and keep up the wonderful historical work you've started!

    Cheers
    Christopher

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think I blushed at the end of your post! I hope you don't mind me nabbing your awesome basing idea when I do my rifles. After the last post I started scoping out the GW fence at the FLGS. Really inspirational Dave.

    Jay

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your work is a tutorial in basing. I have a tendency to work a little too closely to the norm, ignoring the fact that so long as the units are manageable on the table, there is nothing you cannot do with the basing. The Napoleonics are eye-opening, as are the Empire pikemen in an earlier post.

    Thanks, more than happy to steal your ideas.

    Cheers
    PC
    http://callan-tinpotmichelangelo.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've never given historical much of a thought other then in FOW scale but seeing how your project is turning out I may have to give it a second look.

    ReplyDelete
  7. These look fantastic - I particularly like the riflemen jumping over the fence.

    Tony
    http://dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  8. I love seeing the historical stuff. I've been thinking of switching to historical lately.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi guys

    Thanks very much for your comments. Certainly nice to know the work is appreciated.

    I think it took me a good 100+ models to get in the swing of things, so my first four units are very "by the book", but over the last year I've learned quite a bit and feel more comfortable messing around with the basing.

    More to come. This adventure isn't over just yet ; )

    Cheers
    Dave

    ReplyDelete
  10. I would say Mr Taylor that your Historical Mini's are becoming quite popular ;)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Great job and what did you use for the bases? Wood or plastic?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Superb painting and conversion work on these. Will be trying to work my way through your Historical posts as and when I get time. Very inspirational.

    ReplyDelete