American Civil War on an epic scale

I am preparing a bit of American Civil War for Q2 / 2021. I don't stray often from 28mm, but there is such a broad variety of scales in wargaming (just to give you some examples from 6mm Epic sci-fi, to 10-12mm Warmaster fantasy, 15mm ACW, 28mm Napoleonics and 40mm Perry Border Reavers) that I needed to take a closer look, when something is released in plastic.

A new project? "Wait, weren't you thinning out your collection?" I hear you say. Yes, that's right, but 15mm mass combat will fit in there with my approach on retained game systems.

Warlord Games announced the big release of their American Civil War in 15mm scale for end of february. Sometimes I get a few items earlier, to have some lead time to prepare coverage, reviews and such, but with brexit and covid at the same time, that got a lot more difficult. But there would be a work-around, as the sprues were covered in the January issue of Wargames Illustrated as a give away.

But I am not the only one, casting an eye on that issue. In fact, I am already a subscriber of Wargames Illustrated, but the digital edition. So it wasn't that easy to get my hands on that issue. I called my local book store, I went to the news agent at the train station, and then I got the recommendation that a FLGS in Düsseldorf would have one in stock. And it was the Drachental, where I already participated in the longstreet demo. A brief phonecall later, we arranged something the issue was in the mail.

And here it is! So it is the print edition, covering the generic sprue with a commander, 10 strips of infantry and a cannon. Along with a second sprue for the bases.

The issue itself covers a paint tutorial to put these miniatures on the table.

Quite a large sprue with 10 strips of infantry, at 10 men each, a mounted commander and a generic cannon. Details are quite nice, casting is properly done. As for the base sprue, there is a second small and a sixth infantry base in there, that isn't needed.

The infantry has three different designs, a command line and A and B variant of the regular line up. The content of the sprue is nice to look at, a proper battle line, and I'm looking forward to see how the additional range fits in. And about the large scale discussion, 15mm is quite the open scale, as you can see from the Demonworld and Battlefront miniatures, sold as 15mm scale as well.

That's so far for the introduction, I'll go deeper into detail in the review itself. I think that Contrast Paints could go a long way on these and speed up the production, so I have to look up what colours would be the best fit. Otherwise, base colours and some mild washes, classic fast army painter technique will do at that scale and size.

To prepare for the review I'll see if I can get some 15mm ACW miniatures from other companies. If you have some spares, get in touch with me. Beyond that I am going to do some research on ressources, but expect Gregor to join in sharing his knowledge about the conflict.