Royal Marines on the Chesapeake

I’m in the middle of reading Donald Shomette’s wonderful book on the Chesapeake campaign that resulted in the burning of Washington D.C. and the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1812, Flotilla. Though nominally it’s the tale of Commodore Joshua Barney’s gunboat flotilla on the Patuxent River, it’s really a story about the ease with which the British, with their incredible naval superiority were able to threaten, terrorize and dominate the eastern and western shores of Maryland and Virginia in 1813 and 1814.

The chief instrument of their effective campaign was the Royal Marines.  Because I am in charge of assembling forces for the 1814 battle of Bladensburg, I’ll need plenty of Marines for the battle.  There were four different units of Royal Marines at the battle, including some light infantry, as well as the Colonial Marines.  The Colonial Marines was a unit composed of freed slaves.  Though only about one in three escaped or liberated slaves were eligible for service, those who did don the uniform were quite effective at looting, burning, serving as guides, and, when rarely necessary, fighting off the local militias.  In all, some 20 stands, or eighty figures are necessary to complete all the Royal Marines at Bladensburg.

I’ve completed seven stands of Old Glory Royal Marines.  I like the figures.  They aren’t perfect, but certainly adequate.  There are some nice variations, they are well proportioned and you certainly can’t beat the price.  I painted up four stands of Marine light infantry and stuck them on half bases so they could be in extended order. I’m pretty pleased with the outcome.  The other three stands are painted as the Colonial Marines.  They’re black, with a white officer.

In addition to the Old Glory figures, I have eight stands of Marines I received from Doug Hamm.  I painted them long ago, and I am considering a repaint.  The base color I use for my redcoats in both War of 1812 and the American Revolution is Vallejo Vermillion.  It’s a shade darker than scarlet, but in the same color family.  These look to be either Hinchcliffe or Connoisseur.  They have that tall, lanky Peter Gilder look to them.  Nice figures but single poses. They are my 2nd Battalion Royal Marines, part of the 3rd brigade at Bladensburg.

I don’t know exactly what figures these are, though they seem very Peter Gilder-like. I suspect they are Connoisseur figures.

Looking Ahead to Next Year’s Museum of Flight

Tomorrow is the annual NHMGS day at the Museum of Flight.  I’ve written about it many times on my old blog.  It is probably my favorite game event of the year because we’re under an SR 71 in the Great Hall of the Museum of Flight and it’s frickin’ amazing. We have lots of time to rub elbows with the public.  There are lots of games to take a look at.  I get to hang out with Dave Schueler and Mark Waddington.  Oh, and I run the air racing game in the morning.  (Because I schedule the show and keep the list of games, I can schedule my game whenever I please. Bonus.

Air racing is the one semi-demand the museum puts on us for the show.  That and arriving early we get set up before the public arrives at 10:00.  I love air-racing.  It’s a lot of fun.  I have a collection of planes built and painted by Paul Hannah, Dave Schueler and myself.  They are 1/48 scale kits, and the planes look great.  Some are the old Testor’s kits that were introduced by Hawk fifty years ago.  Some are a bit more upscale and include the Minicraft Seversy racer, and I even have a nice resincast Me-209 which was a test bed world speed record holder.  I really like the racers.

Unfortunately they are a lot to transport, and because we have to transport them quite a distance from the parking lot, they can be a lot to schlep.  It will rain tomorrow, and with several trips to get everything in from the car, it will be an unpleasant walk in the weather. Worse than that however, is my constant fear that we’ll have accidents on the tabletop.  Mounted on flight stands 1-7″ tall, the planes become top heavy.  In a crowd, watchers can inadvertently brush them and knock them to the table or the base, and if that happens, it’s over. That happened once at Enfilade with our seaplanes and that was pretty much the show. They haven’t been out of the box since.

Dave and I have often talked about our wish that someone could make the planes in a more manageable scale, say 1/144th.  The racers are relatively tiny at that scale, small, save weight and all that.  John McEwan at Reviresco made a nice mini of the Travelaire Mystery ship ten years or so ago in that scale and I always hoped he’d follow it up with more planes, but none have been forthcoming.  At that size the bases would be heavier than the planes and they’d be smaller to transport though they wouldn’t be quite so eye-catching.  If only they were available.

I was very pleasantly surprised when Dave sent me an e-mail last week with a link to Shapeways.  Shapeways is a 3D printing company that converts designs submitted to them into 3D miniatures.  Lots of game topics, but amazingly one of their designers, Arctic Skunk, supplied them with some air racing designs in 1/144th scale. The Howard Ike and Mike are available.  The Gee Bees are available, models R, Y and my favorite, the Z, and more. I don’t know how they’ll paint up, but they look pretty basic and interesting.  There are pretty close to a dozen planes in the range.  (Don’t get stuck on the category for Golden Age Air Racing, more are available.) They aren’t cheap, though not bad. The smallish Ike and Mike are four bucks, while the bulky Gee Bees are more than twice as much.  Of course, if you want the super detail material instead of the basic white and flexible resin, you pay more.  About three times as much.  I’m pretty sure I’ll stick with the basics and paint in the detail with the help of Mendenhall’s The Air Racer.

Clockwise from left the Shapeways designs by Arctic Skunk are 1. Hall Bulldog; 2. Howard Ike; 3. GeeBee R 1-2; Gee Bee Z

Welcome to my new home

If you stumbled on this blog by accident, or if you are a long time follower of my blog, Northwest Historical Miniature Gamer over on Blogger, thanks for coming.  Have a seat, make yourself comfortable.  A couple weeks ago I got locked out of my Blogspot blogs by Google.  It’s a long story, some of it my fault, some of it Google issues.  Let’s just say that Google isn’t very helpful at resolving some very resolvable problems or I would still be there.  So here I am at WordPress, which will just eliminate some of the conflicts I was having between my school-related Google accounts and my home -related Google activities.

Here is my guarantee to you, the reader.  If you want to know what’s going on with me and my gaming activities, I will share once week.  Sometimes more, sometimes less.  Many friends suggest my wargaming interests are not traditional, not boring, and occasionally pretty weird.

If you’ve followed the Shastapsh Chronicles over on Blogger, that’s one I’m going to allow to die.  It was great while I was playing tons of Space 1889 games, but today I’m painting little for that project and we are only playing a few games per year.  I’ll update that here on A Gamer’s Tales.

It’s going to take a while for me to figure out the formatting here, which is much different than Blogger.  I’ll get my blog rolls up and include some links I haven’t updated in years. So please I ask your patience, and I thank you for coming for a visit.