AWI: Queen's and Butler's Rangers, 16th Light Dragoons, Artillery Crew

Back in the dark depths of 2013 or 2014, I sent a batch of AWI figures off to Shri Lanka to get painted. Then I started collecting more and more boxes of AWI, discovered Black Powder and started painting up an army for each side myself. There's been a few more commissions since then, and even a spread sheet to cope with colours and units.

More recently, a crazy thing happened. 

Because I'm a total geek, I colour-coded units in the sheet to show whether they were painted or not.

I'd been doing a fair effort of getting units done over the years and a couple of weeks back I opened the sheet and realised there was hardly anything left to paint (about 12 standard BP units).

Never one to shy away from a challenge I started a serious effort to finish the collection of about 6 BP brigades a side (of approx. 4-6 standard infantry, and supporting cavalry, light infantry, and cannon). I now only have about 9 units left to do of the entire mountain of AWI shame. Here's one of the first batches done recently.

Queen's Rangers

I've based these as two small units of light infantry in skirmish formation, which can be lined up to represent them going into line.

Bases compressed into line so that the BP frontage is correct.

The figures are Queen's Rangers from B and B Miniatures (which I couldn't link to at the time of writing as their website was down) and are some of my favorites from the manufacturer.

I'd started off the collection by individually mounting skirmishers but after a couple of games, it really hasn't mattered that they were on individual bases and it was a pain moving them round the table.

The flags were from warflag.com but that seems to have disappeared now as well.

Butler's Rangers

More B and B Miniatures, this time Butler's Rangers in hunting shirts. Suffice to say that their blue tassels over green hunting shirts didn't take an hour to highlight... 😡

But there's some good detail on these figs, like the Queen's Rangers above.

As per those QRs, I went for a regiment made up of two small BP units in skirmish formation.

Also as per QRs, they've been based some that they can also be compressed into line, producing the right frontage for a BP small line unit.

16th Light Dragoons

Another small unit of cavalry for the support of a BP brigade, the famous 16th Light Dragoons. These are from Strelets Set 119 British Cavalry (Egypt) and a dismounted, light infantry option from Set M071 British Light Infantry in Egypt.

Like other units painted previously, at this scale, using early Napoleonic sets as proxies works well and you'd have to look close to see the differences in uniforms. 

Artillery Crew

Finally for the Brits, another round of artillerymen from the IMEX, Set 554 American Artillery. I've used American because for some reason the American and British sets were swapped around during conversation from 1/32 to 1/72 scale, and the water bottles are a closer match for the Brits. 

Also, a big shout out Monty my stepson for helping light the figures and for providing some of the Gaslands photos on a previous post👍.