French marshall Maurice de Saxe at the Battle of Fontenoy with his Uhlans de Saxe escort Minden figures all sculpted by Richard Ansell.

I was browsing through my photo library today and I came across this wonderful photo Maurice de Saxe at the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745. The marshall was suffering from gout on the morning of the battle and so he traveled around the battlefield in a wicker carriage. His Uhlans de Saxe bodyguard escorted him during the battle.

The uhlans and the Maurice de Saxe personality figure are available in the Minden Miniatures figure range. The wicker carriage was made by Westphalia Forge in a joint venture with Minden Miniatures back in 2016 or 2017, thereabouts. I only have about 8 to 10 sets of the carriage/Maurice/a pair of horses with uhlan riders. The uhlans with the lances are sold as a different pack of figures.

Fife and Drum webstore link to Maurice personality figure

I have a modest SYW or WAS army that I have been building over the years, but it has yet to fight a table top battle for me. Perhaps I should take care of that after the Historicon convention is over. 

Minden Miniature Cuirassiers du Roi

Minden French Fusiliers painted as the Royal DuPont regiment. These figures are in another collector's army and were painted by "Mischa" in Germany.

Minden French Fusiliers painted by a customer in the UK

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Minden Miniatures Agricultural Workers Set figures carrying ammunition  from a British ammo wagon

I am working on several vignettes to include in my Historicon games in July. The components of the ammunition cart vignette are not all painted or based yet, but I wanted to show a work in progress photo.

It is difficult taking good pictures on winter terrain. Everything is too dark even though I am using extra lights to improve the lighting.

British battery of 6-pound guns

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Prussia Forever !  (painted by Der Alte Fritz) The charge of the Zieten Hussars Minden Miniatures figures

Today I was scrolling through some of the pictures in my iPhotos library (there are nearly 28,000 pictures in all) and I found this one in my album of "Favorites". It is my recreation of the famous painting by Lady Butler called "Scotland Forever!" which features the epic charge of the Scots Greys at the battle of Waterloo in June 1815.

Instead of British Napoleonic figures I used Prussian Seven Years War hussars from Minden Miniatures.

Inspiration: the original painting of the charge of the Scots Greys at the  Battle of Waterloo by Lady Butler

Here is an overhead view of the figures that I set up for the photo shoot a few years ago. The figure leading the charge is Hans von Zeiten, Himself, and he is one of the special personality figures that are available in the Minden Miniatures range of Seven Years War figures. The H2 von Zieten Hussar Regiment leads the charge. I added some H5 Black Hussars in the background to pad out volume of cavalrymen to make a better picture.

Heroic Zieten Personality Figure   (PER-011 stock number)

PER-011 "Heroic Zeiten" personality figure from Minden Miniatures

This exceptionally animated figure was sculpted by the late Richard Ansell as part of a Kickstarter campaign that we did a long time ago. An individual donor's award at a high level was the ability to have several figures of his choice sculpted for him. He chose this highly animated hussar officer leaping into a charge as his figure of choice. In my mind, this is probably the best figure in the entire Minden Miniatures figure range.

So that is the story behind this exceptional figure and he looks quite spectacular when painted and leading the charge of Prussian light cavalry into a tabletop battle.

Lt. Colonel Charles Mawhood Fife and Drum Miniatures

Here is a picture of the command stand for the British commander at the Battle of Princeton, Lt. Colonel Charles Mawhood (pronounced "Ma-Whooo-D"). One of the books that I read mentioned that his dog accompanied him into battle. 

The mounted officer is the Fife and Drum Miniatures Briish mounted officer wearing a round hat. The dog is from one of the Perry Miniatures AWI vignette sets of figures.

I have not done the snow basing for the command stand yet.

Click on the link to the brief biography of Mawhood on wikipedia.

Charles Mawhood Wikipedia bio

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Perry Miniatures dismounted 16th Light Dragoons

I needed some figures for the 16th Light Dragoons at the Battle of Princeton, and since Fife and Drum does not make these figures, I purchased the dismounted figures from Perry Miniatures. Yes, Old Fritz does use some of the Perry AWI figures from time to time in his collection. They are a tad more robust than my figures, but to my eye the two ranges fit together quite nicely.

Note: Fife and Drum does have the mounted versions of the 16th LD, but not the dismounted or foot dragoons. Early in the AWI there was actually a battalion of dismounted dragoons, or foot dragoons, comprising the 16th LD. There weren't sufficient horses transported from England to the Colonies when General Howe's army landed in New York. Undoubtedly the plan was to secure the mounts in the Colonies.

At any rate, these are fun figures to paint and there is a nice variety of poses, four in all. They will be fighting for King George at Historicon this year when I host The Battle of Princeton.

Perry dismounted 16th Light Dragoons Colonial Williamsburg gunpowder armory made by Herb Gundt.

Here is a picture of the armory that Herb Gundt made for me. It hasn't made it  out on the table for very many games so I thought that I should post a picture of  this fine work of art. It is modeled after the building in Williamsburg.

I have been busy painting figures for a small British army at the Battle of Princeton scenario that I am running at Historicon this year. There will be more pictures posted over the next several days.

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The town of Trenton, NJ in the winter

After looking at various pictures of winter terrain, specifically the roads, I decided to change the look of my roads from a light brown under color with snow flock to a black underfloor with snow flock. I think that the black roads give the desired effect of a cold, dark and freezing winter environment.

Closer view of the streets with the black and white snow motif

A view of my game room

I have two game tables in my basement and now that Trenton is nearly buttoned up, I am turning my attention to the terrain and figures for my Battle of Princeton game. This one features my colorful Redcoats against the Continental army.

This is not the final tabletop set up, just a mock up to give me an idea of the spacing that is needed for the game. I only have one table at Historicon so I will have to tear down my Trenton game and then set up the Princeton game on the same table. Thus I will be able to use all of my winterized trees and roads in both game.

The pictures below show the brown roads that I previously had. You can compare the brown and black styles by clicking on the pictures in this blog post

The British 27th Regiment using Fife and Drum "Continentals" figures in tricorn hats for the British.

Battle of Princeton: the Clarke Farm. Both sides will fight for control of the farm area.

A small detachment of British 16th Light Dragoons

The 42nd Highlander Regiment Fife and Drum Miniatures

I am not using British regiments that are specifically set for the British order of battle at Princeton, but rather, I painted units for which I already had the GMB Designs flags in my stock of flags. And of course, I had to have the 42nd Highlander regiment in the game.

I recently purchased some of the Perry dismounted 16th Light Dragoons to use in the scenario since Fife and Drum Miniatures doesn't make these particular figure - yet  LOL!

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British 20th Regiment Fife and Drum Miniatures

I decided that I would need several British Redcoat regiments wearing cocked hats for my Princeton 1777 game that I am running at Historicon this year. They had to be Fife and Drum Miniatures figures to maintain the consistent look of all of the figures in the game. While we don't officially have British wearing cocked (tricorn hats if you will) it occurred to me that we had something very close in appearance.

And that would be the Fife and Drum Continentals figures, as shown below:

British center company infantry from Fife and Drum Miniatures These are actually some of the Continental figures painted in red coats.

To my eye, the Continentals look very similar to the British 1768 Regulation and so I thought that I would paint a unit of them in red coats and see how they turn out.

I think that they look pretty good as shown below.

I am no expert on the 1768 Regulartions uniforms other than to notice that they wore breeches and hosiery and some half-gaiters at their ankles whereas the early 1776 campaign uniform has them wearing the one-piece "overalls" and the tricorn hat. The Fife and Drum British wear the overalls but sport the round hat, which was more practical to wear in the field as it provided better protection from the sun. I noticed that the Continental uniforms of the 1776-1777 period look very similar to the early British uniform so I think that it is perfectly fine to use them as British soldiers.

Now we do have the British grenadiers that would be correct for 1776-1777. I painted a small unit of 16 figures using the Fife and Drum grenadiers in firing line poses. I don't see many AWI firing line painted regiments on the internet and my own unit of grenadiers are marching, so I decided to use the firing line poses for my winterized Princeton British Grenadiers.

British Grenadiers in bearskin hats Fife and Drum Miniatures

In conclusion, if you are already using Fife and Drum Miniatures in your British armies and you would like to have some of the figures wearing the cocked hat, then consider using the Continental soldier figures in our figure range.

One of these days we will be adding "official" redcoats wearing cocked hats.

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