A few months ago a friend and I agreed to collect some forces for the '45 and maybe play some games with them. I decided I wanted to collect the British/loyalist/Govt. forces, he would collect the Jacobites.
I like researching new periods , and picked up a bunch of Amazon downloads for cheap to get me started and over the course of a holiday worked my way through:
The Lilies & The Thistle: French Troops in the Jacobite '45 by Andrew Bamford, Bare-Arsed Banditti: The Men of the '45 by Maggie Craig, No Quarter Given: The Muster Roll of Prince Charles Edward Stuart's Army, 1745-46 by Christian Aikman, Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. Volume I. by Mrs. Thomson , Culloden 1746, Fight for the Throne by Chris Tabraham, Cumberlands Culloden Army (Osprey) by Stuart Reid, a compilation of articles entitled 1745 Jacobite Battle for Britain by Key publishing.
Whilst I was absorbing that little lot I decided to make some scenery; there was a wagonway on the field at Prestonpans and I thought it was probably the only feature not in my terrain collection. I couldn't find much info as to what it might have looked like at the time, except that it was on an embankment, so this is what I came up with.
Its just a couple of layers of foam board carved to shape, covered in filla, and with a couple of rows of matchsticks across the top! Total length is 6 feet. Its probably a bit too high I suspect, but its different, and I'll probably build some wagons for it at some point.
This kept me going whilst I waited for my first batch of Figures from CrannTara, I only put a little order of infantry in to get me started. My friend and I had decided Black Powder would probably be our chosen ruleset and that 16 figures in two ranks would do for a standard infantry unit.
The first unit off the painting table was Lascelles 58th Foot :
I then painted General Cope and Murrays 57th foot.
I'd also ordered a pack of Royal Navy types to man the guns. Alas Crann Tara don't make one of the 1.5pdr galloper guns so in the end I made my own from Matchsticks, dowel, Greenstuff, some spare wheels, and a couple of warlord games Horses.
The horses have a staple crudely wedged over their saddle to allow the guns to be towed!
The whole force so far, ready to march into the highlands and show those rebel scum whose boss! Unless theres lots of them, or they're a bit miffed…
is back from Council of Five Nations.
