Did someone request some Zouaves?

   Aside from needing to finish my cannons to set the battlefield and adding more cavalry*, there was two more things that really got me thinking from the battle report, the first was the scenery** the other was the sheer amount of units. We play ACW using the Rebels & Patriots ruleset from Osprey Publishing and I think they are a really good evening game, we currently only play with 5-6 units a side at around 30 points, however, I reckon these rules will scale up higher. So I started talking to Neil about adding another 3-4 units of infantry per side, but having them as new detachments with their own officers and banners etc. One of the things I mentioned was that I was tempted to make one of the groups Zouaves and it just happened that Neil had a few sprues of them that he had no use for, which made the choice easier.
   I picked the 72rnd Pennsylvania, Baxter's Fire Zouaves, partly because they were from a similar area as my normal infantry and partly because their uniform looked fairly simple, although it turned out they wear non-Zouave hats which made building 36 of them a touch more interesting. I tried cutting the fezzes off and replacing them with spare caps but it was going to be too big a job for the amount of figures I wanted to do it with, so I bought a pack of the Perry Black Union heads that are wearing the correct hats to speed the process up. The uniform the 72rnd wear is the same colours as their regular Union counterparts but with the Zouave cut of trouser and jacket, although my photo makes the jacket look a bit brighter than it actually is.

*More to come
**Which I am working on

 



Thanks for reading