Hancocks 2nd Corps ready for Gettysburg refight at last.

The Southern Strategists are hosting a refight of the 2nd and 3rd day of the Battle of Gettysburg in Christchurch, New Zealand,  this coming weekend, July 6th & 7th. (See Harpers Weekly).

After countless hours of undercoating, painting, washing, highlighting, and basing, my humble contribution to the Union cause, two Divisions of Hancocks's 2nd Corps, are finally ready for next weekend's epic refight. 50 stands in total plus guns, Corps and Divisional stands and markers.

Frankly this has become something of a chore for me as I'm not one for painting large numbers, and with the deadline looming, I was astonished at just how much effort was required to pull it all together. I havent even had time to check my favourite blogs so if anyone's wondering what's happened to me don't despair. 
I now have the utmost sympathy for those poor devils who are compelled to paint complete armies. The worst thing is one has to adopt an assembly line approach to the process and this tends to increase the tedium factor somewhat. The figures are painted to what I would call wargaming standard but probably wouldn't win any prizes in a modelling competition, anyway, enough bleating...here are some pics of 'Hancock's Boys'.

72nd Pennsylvania (Baxters Zouaves)

Corps Command

'Hancock the Superb', 2nd Corps Command stand

Divisional commander

2nd Corps, 1st and 2nd Divisions

Disorder markers

Breakthrough markers (hopefully they'll get plenty of use)

Low on Ammo markers

More Zouaves (You have to love that uniform)

 

 

The figures are mostly Perry and Dixon. I love Perry's Zouaves but am not so enamoured with the basic infanrty plastic set, poor definition and bland poses, the second infantry box are a vast improvement. The do make good rank fillers though and are well priced. The Dixon figures are a bit odd looking close up but are a joy to paint with great definition and creases that make highlighting easy. The Perry metals are all superb.
I took some liberties in naming my Zouaves the 72nd because in actual fact they wore kepis, not fez's at Gettysburg and the uniform differed in a lot of other ways as well but what the hell.  They did put up a good account of themselves however in wargaming terms. We held an ACW game the other night at Waynes place and they not only repulsed a Confederate assualt but launched a breakthrough charge that swept the damned Rebs from the field.