Paper Armies of the American Revolution's Southern Campaign - Crafting

Introduction

I've always had a fleeting interest in the American Revolution, so as part of an effort to be more familiar with local history, I recently read John Buchanan's excellent book on the AWI's Southern Campaign titled The Road to Guilford Courthouse. It has rekindled a strong interest in the American Revolution and I've recently made trips to the battlefields of King's Mountain, Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse. In tandem with my reading and tourism, I decided to put together some armies representative of the Southern Campaign to play around with on the tabletop. I find the Southern Campaign especially compelling due to the small size of the armies involved, the personalities (Morgan, Tarleton, Greene, Cornwallis, Marion, etc.), and the attrition-based nature of the campaign. Neither of the armies are representative of any singular battle, but are rather an amalgamation of units involved in the campaign. 

Basic Conventions

I've made these armies compatible with The Portable Wargame. Each unit was constructed using Sean McDonough's excellent AWI paper miniatures. These can be found on Junior General, along with a massive collection of other paper figures from all eras and conflicts.

I rescaled the figures to fit on a 25mm base made for paper miniatures which I purchased on Amazon. These clear acrylic bases are made by LITKO and are of excellent quality. As a result of the rescaling to fit the bases, the height of the figures came out to around 15mm. 

A sample of the 71st (Fraser's Highlanders) Regiment of Foot.

As you can see in the image, each figure has a front and back view. After printing the figure sheets out, I cut out the figure and folded it. Then I laminated them for durability and to seal the fold. Afterwards, I trimmed the excess lamination, leaving a tab at the bottom so they would fit in the bases. As each base is 25mm, two will fit easily in the 2x2" grid spaces I use.

The Armies

As mentioned above, the armies are modeled somewhat after Nathaniel Greene's and Cornwallis's forces circa 1780-1781. I will probably be fighting mostly imagi-battles of the campaign, but they are good starting points for creating specific OOBs. I'm not convinced that all of the uniforms are exactly accurate to the unit they represent, but consistency of uniforms was not really a thing at the time anyway so it's not a huge bother to me.

The American Army 

  1. General
  2. Delaware Regiment 
  3. Maryland/Delaware Regiment 
  4. Maryland/Delaware Regiment
  5. Lee's Legion Infantry
  6. North Carolina Militia
  7. South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia Militia
  8. Morgan's Rifles
  9. Lee's Partisan Legion Dragoons
  10. Artillery

The British Army 

  1. General
  2. 23rd Regiment of Foot
  3. 23rd Regiment of Foot Guard Battalion
  4. 33rd Regiment of Foot
  5. 23rd Regiment of Foot Light Infantry
  6. 71st (Fraser's Highlanders) Regiment of Foot
  7. The Volunteers of Ireland
  8. The King's American Regiment
  9. British Legion Infantry
  10. Regiment von Bose
  11. British Legion Dragoons
  12. Royal Artillery


This was a fun, quick little project and I look forward to fighting out some Southern Campaign battles perhaps using David Barnes' Horse and Musket rules from the PNW Compendium.


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