ponders nirvana.
Continuing with my ACW project, I sent some Union cavalry figures off to Fernando Enterprises in Sri Lanka for painting. And now they're back, and I've based them.
The set provides both mounted and dismounted cavalry figures. It is apparently no longer produced by the manufacturer, but seems easy to pick up from retailers still.
There are apparently different versions of this set out there. Mine came with two 'guy carrying a saddle' poses, which I placed on the back of some bases out of some crazy idea that maybe those cavalrymen just dismounted (but why are they carrying their saddles into a fight?). From pictures I've seen online, some sets also have a 'guy forking hay' who is not going to be useful for wargaming.
I've based the dismounted troopers in the same manner as the previous infantry, organized in groups of two or three figures. From one boxed set, I was about to build five dismounted cavalry bases.
I've also made command stands with the only suitable dismounted figure, of which there were two in the set. To form units for the tabletop, a command stand will be combined with the appropriate number of dismounted cavalry bases.
As I did with the Union infantry, I determined a convenient size for the mounted cavalry bases, and based the figures.
One challenge is that many of the mounted troopers are firing to the side, so I tried to mount figures on each base so that they did not look like they were firing at each other! Still, when you put the bases side-by-side, they look rather fratricidal…
Again, the idea is to combine a command stand with a cavalry stand to form a cavalry unit.
There were two examples of a 'follow me' rider pose which I used for leader figures. The pistol-armed figures could have been used as leaders, but I chose to mix them in with the other cavalry. I've also seen photos of a flag-carrying rider (as shown on the box cover), but I don't have one in my set.