A Regiment A Month Part 2

Hello all,

It's almost the end of the month, so it's time for the next regiment in the "A Regiment A Month" series.

As my second regiment for my Confederate Army, I picked the Alexandria Riflemen. Ok, they weren't a regiment as such, more like a company in the much bigger 17th Virginia Infantry Regiment but let's not get picky.

Despite having so much time at the beginning of the month, due to unexpected events at work I actually had to rush to get them finished in time. Not willing to go just half way, I decided to make this regiment a bit smaller than I had in mind, just to have enough time to get them finished without delivering sub-par models. All that needs to be done is give them a coat of varnish to protect them from handling. They are after all gaming models.

Now the first thing you may notice about them is that they are green. Aren't Confederate troops supposed to be grey? Well most of them where, at least most of them where supposed to be grey late war. Early war most regiments used their old uniforms. Some Unionist troops had grey uniforms while some Confederate troops wore blue, then there were the colourfull Zouaves, some dark green sharpshooter regiments and some other odd combinations. After some very bloody friendly fire incidents and overruns because commanders had mistaken an approaching enemy regiment for reinforcements, both sides tried to supply all their troops with the same uniforms. However due to supply issues, or stubborn pride, not all of them got to change their uniforms. The Alexandria Riflemen were one of those regiments. Throughout the war they stuck to their dark green uniforms.

The Alexandria Riflemen were organized on March 10, 1856. Originally choosing the name "Alexandria Sharp Shooters", they quickly reconvened their meeting when some realized how the initials would look painted on the back of their knapsacks. The change of name to "Alexandria Riflemen" was unanimous. They were organized, with the Mount Vernon Guard, into a volunteer battalion under the command of Major Turner Wade Ashby.

  
The Alexandria Riflemen were one of 10 companies that made up the 17^th Virginia Infantry. They took part in :Bull Run, Va. (Blackburn's Ford),Williamsburg, Va.,Seven Pines, Va,Gaines' Mill, Va.,Frazier's Farm, Va,Second Manassas, Va., Boonsboro, Md. (South Mountain), Fredericksburg, Va, Cold Harbor, Va., the defense of Petersburg, Va., Five Forks,Va., Sayler's Creek, Va., and surrendered at Appomattox. 

You've got mail.

Yes indeed. The postman had something for me today. A package from Hongkong.
A few weeks ago, the (in)famous Tomsche had yet another one of his great ideas. As if "A Regiment A Month" didn't put enough pressure on us and our precious and limited painting time, he just had to introduce something new. And so Gundanium was born. It is supposed to be an quick and easy to learn, fast playing game involving everyones favourite Japanese robot warriors, the Gundams. It was decided to work with the High Grade 1/144 scale Bandai models as these models are easy to find (just type 1/144 gundam on eBay and see), easy to construct, have a nice level of detail  and are quite cheap as opposed to the huge, expensive and complicated 1/60 scale Perfect Grade models.

The next big question was, what gundam should I go for? I decided to go for one of the less seen Gundams, ruling out the usual suspects such as Wing Zero, Freedom and Impulse. As I don't like the way the solar furnace sticks to the back of the gundam, any of the de OO gundams were removed from the list as well. As I think Seed and especially Seed Destiny are the best gundam series so far I narrowed my list further down to gundams from those series. And so I came along the princess of Orb, Cagali and her gundam Strike Rouge. Ok, she may not be as hot as Lunamaria Hawke, and she lacks Lacus Clyne's distinguished style, but the temperamental blonde tomboy certainly has something special making her one of my favourite gundam characters. So I decided to go for Strike Rouge.

The kit contains Strike Rouge and the additional IWSP system
Much to my surprise the box contained several multi-color sprues, allowing the kit to be finished without painting, should you choose to do so.  However as I believe painting is a very important part of the hobby, I intend to paint Strike Rouge. After all, Cagali deserves the best for her gundam :-)

As for my other projects, here's a small update.
I had to restart my work on Mary from scratch after a rather disasterous crash. An unpleasant contact with the floor chipped some paint off, leaving me with no other choice than to strip the paint off and start all over again. At the moment she has been reassemble, primed, given basecolors and I have started shading and carefull highlighting.
Also the work on my next ACW regiment for "A Regiment A Month" is going great. I have decided tomake them the Alexandria Rifflemen, a company of the 17th Virginia Infantry. The models are assembled, primed and given their basecolors. So I'm pretty sure they'll be ready by the end of the month, even with the extra workload provided by Tomsche's great idea's :-)

That's it for now. As soon as I have some more progress to report, you'll be the first to hear about it.

Happy painting and  happy gaming to all!