American Civil War - Stonewall

ACW 15mm Epics

The Stonewall Brigade

This week I want to introduce an army I painted over COVID. Warlord Games had just released their range of ACW epics or 15mm, and I had time on my hands. So I plunged right in. I had never painted anything smaller than 28mm up until I did these and it was a massive learning curve. 

First Completed Strip

First I started with the Stonewall brigade, these were painted in the generic style of the period of a mixed style and colours of uniforms. During ACW the Confederacy had many issues from reusing old Union kit, through to massive supply shortages later in the war. The uniform was often varied sometimes bright, and wild in places, right through to a ragged look later on. Here I have gone for middle of the road mix of butternut and light blue grey, or Confederate grey.  

First Completed Regiment

When I first got the box with over 100 strips in, I was a bit daunted at the prospect of painting all these. I quite quickly worked out that I didn't want to do five bases, 10 strips, to a regiment as this makes for quite chunky regiments on the table top and most rulesets flex on sizes of Regiments. In addition to this historically in ACW nearly every American regiment was Battalion in size when compared to European counterparts, and spent nearly the whole war universally under strength. The last thing to consider was there is only one command strip, and one brigade officer to a sprue. Meaning too little and too many. So I knew mini conversions were the long term goal to make the most from the box, that coupled with the range of painting possible on the uniforms, resulting in artistic licence to play around a bit as will become apparent.    

2nd & 33rd Virginia Infantry Regiments

In this picture above, the completed 2nd and 33rd Regiments of the Stonewall Brigade, you can see some of the first trials of what can be achieved from cutting into the command strips. There is a really nice change of look and feel with the replacement of one model. Both units carrying early war flags and Virginia battle flag. Now I know from feedback that I have had already, that Confederates didn't always carry two flags, but they were available on the strip so I did it anyway. 

The Stonewall Brigade in full (4th, 5th forming larger Regiment) 

Here is the full brigade of 5 Regiments, another conversion that is hard to see here is the 4th and 5th both have officers in the front row but only the 4th carry flags. This allows the two to go together to form a bigger regiment if required. At this point I was still feeling my way and trial and error is a great way to learn. 

Mixed Brigade

Virginian Millitary Institue Cadets

For my second brigade, now well into COVID lockdown, I called in the reserves and got myself a handful of Peter Pigs(PP)....no that is not a reference to some late night debauchery, though to be fair it crossed all our minds during lockdown....rather another great 15mm manufacturer that supplied me with a multitude of extra command figures. Here in the VMI unit I have removed all of the command save one and added a Peter Pig Officer to act as 'Old Billy' Lt Col & Commandant of Cadets Scott Shipp. If you look closely you can pick out more PP in the front row and the blend in size is good because they are only boys after all. The uniform is all a sky blue with yellow piping to make them stand out. 

Confederate Marines

The next Regiment, or Batallion, is that of the Confederate Marines stationed at Portsmouth Virginia. While the whole Corps never reached much more than 1000 men all told, they were station at various places along the coast, and offered me yet another variation in uniforms. Here they are all converted to Kepis hats using a sharp knife, and painted with white trousers to reflect a maritime feel. In reality this is very similar to the Union Navy uniform of the time.   

Hamptons Legion

Col, later General, Wade Hampton was a rich land owner who raised his own unit early in the war, paying for most of the equipment and uniforms himself. The unit did quickly escalate into a whole brigade, hence the 'Legion', however I focused at first on the infantry companies raised early in the war. Again I converted the hats to Kepies, adding to the command with a mounted standard. The paint scheme here was confederate grey with uniform blue trousers to represent the money spent.  

The Full Brigade

This mixed brigade is very artistic in nature but was fun to paint, as one mass of grey would have been well...grey... To finish the fun I added one converted Naval Gun, much larger than your standard cannon of the time, these were mainly used for static emplacements and engagements. This is a Warlord epic wheels and crew, mixed with PP Officer and standard. The piece can serve as Artillery HQ for larger engagements too.  

Naval Gun or Artillery Command