"Starting into AWI... dare I say, inspired by the OFM!!!" Topic

So with my WW2 painting for Flames of War winding down I was looking for a new time period. The Muskets and Tomahawks rules set caught our groups eye as the initial start in is not that bad. Looking for inspiration I happened upon John the OFM's past post:

TMP link

It was a good start on to how to get a decent force up and running and get the figures to give you a nice variety of coats and facings.

So far we have 12 figure units and will expand from there. For the Continentals I took John's advice to heart and painted 2 continentals in brown coats one with red and one with white facings and 1 with blue coats and red facings. I think the 4th continental unit will be a Blue with buff facings just because I can't steal John's idea entirely since he suggested white. :)

As for the British I have one unit in the 1768 warrant with blue facings and a unit of light infantry in chain hats and blue cuffs to serve as their lights. I am working on some of the new Perry plastics which will have a green cuff, a buff and a yellow facing battalion. These perry figs will get placed in the 1777 slouch hat variant. Supplementing these will be some lights from that marvelous new fife and drum line.

When these guys are done I am going to focus on some run of the mill uninspiring militia types and perhaps some Tory regiments in green or Hessians.

Please use this link to start, it helped me a lot and just wanted fellow TMP'ers to know about it.

His stuff is fun to look at. :-)

Glad to know it was helpful.

Oh, dearie me…

Eric

Get some Highlanders.

You can never have too many Highlanders.
Once you have all the regiments, then work on the 2nd battalions.

Highlanders eventually. Gonna do some grenadiers early as well. This way I can field an "early" British force of lights with line and grenadiers all with blue facings. I figure if I game later on the tricorne cut guys can act as a provincial unit.

Going through the different painting guides I think Dearborn might be a must build. The brown coats with yellow cuffs and green trousers look awesome.

The AWI claims another victim.

Thanks for the post.
Was going to ask about starting in the period, this has saved me from that.
Thinking of using Pendraken 10mm.

If you go 10mm then you can go 1:1 ratio. :)

Don't forget the Hessians.

Question is do I build straight Hessian's or go for a smattering of just German mercenaries? I like the Hessian units but didn't the Anspach-Bayeuruth wear a white uniform? Also the Brunswickers are cool but very limited to their Saratoga campaign.

Don't forget to add some Continentals in hunting shirts. They were fairly common:

Here they are in a firing line:

More of the individual Fife & Drum Continentals in hunting shirts:

Fife & Drum Miniatures: superior quality with no flash on the figures and no assembly required.

And freaky fast delivery too!

The Hessians were employed both in brigade strength, (mostly in 1776, 1777) and tag along units--von Bose regt with Cornwallis being the most famous example. But there were various operations out of New York that included single Hessian battalions.

Also, if you paint up units of British Grenadiers, you ought to also do Hessian grenadiers, as they never seem very far apart, particularly in '76 and '77.

Anhalt Zerbst was in white coats, but they got sent to Canada and probably never fired a shot. Ansbach-Bayreuth wore blue coats and garrisoned Philadelphia, and later were at Yorktown.

You should paint up some jagers, as they got employed everywhere.

And don't forget the Loyalists.

Anspach wore a "normal" Prussian style uniform.

The white uniform was worn by the Anhalt Zerbst regiment, who were a garrison unit that never left Canada.

Ah, someone was here ahead of me!

Ah…. good info guys. So here is another question guys. When it came to continental regiments did the entire regiment wear the hunting frock? Or did the regiment have a smattering of frock coats and then some guys in their regimental coat with cuff Colors? One last question… if the entire regiment wore hunting coats were they all the same shade?

There are two extremes in painting Continental regiments.
One is to make them all exactly alike, and the other is to make every figure different.
The truth lies somewhere in between.
All the Continental regiments were assigned a uniform color and facing color. Those were the regulations.
However, the congress and the states were notoriously niggardly in providing the necessary funding for this.
A COMPANY was more likely to be uniform than the whole regiment.
If you want to outfit the entire regiment in hunting shirts, painting one stand as white, another light buff, another gray, etc would not be out of line.

Both Eureka and Dixon make "campaign dress" uniforms for Continentals. The eureka ones are really ragged. If my "research" indicates that a unit was blue with red facings, I would mix raggeds with Perry or Foundry in the same pose, and try to stick with the blue/red theme, and even mix some civilian and hunting shirt types in with them. This is for a unit that is seeing hard service, like at Trenton or in the South.
A more "uniform" look if you want to base them on the New York or Monmouth campaigns.
Either way, only a cad would call you inaccurate, and shooting him is justifiable homicide in 45 of the 50 states.

Yep, as stated by the OFM.

DAF has great stuff to look at as well. :-)

I agree with you history, DAF will be getting an order from me sooner than later. First for some British "light bobs" then after I do a little more research on these blasted hunting coats I will be ordering some of them as well.

Another question for the peanut gallery. I own Lefferts as well as Mollo. Are there any other good books to pick up as painting guides?

Love all this talk of building
AWI regiments! I'm slowly working on some 25s for FIW, as well as some continentals. All based individually of course. DAF, your stuff looks fantastic!

Lefferts and Mollo are fine.
I also recmmend Troiani.

My Lefferts is a black and white reprint.
Here is a site with the plates in color, and a lot more than are in my book.
link
The usual caveat for Lefferts is that he was published in the 1920s and "further research…" blah blah blah.

Based on Lefferts, I am assuming that different uniforms in different companies of the same regiment was not uncommon through 1777. The uniform lottery coats start arriving from France in 1778 so I am inferring that there might be a little more, ahem "uniformity", in the uniforms of a regiment.

For my 1777 campaign armies, I like to pick a basic uniform scheme, say blue coats with red facings and white small clothes, for a regiment and from there, about one-third to one-half of the battalion will be clothed in a variety of uniform colors. For example, I might use some of the Fife & Drum militia figures to represent "new recruits" who have not yet been issued a uniform, or I might paint a few Continentals in brown coats with red facings, etc. Then throw in a few figures wearing hunting shirts for even more variety. If I keep at least half of the regiment in a common color scheme, then that conveys the identity of the regiment in some respects, but also has variety of uniforms for the other half.