15/18mm American Civil War: Update 3, Command Stands.

Next on the agenda were some command stands. Whilst the painted second hand troops I had acquired included some of these I wasn't perfectly happy with them and had some ideas of my own brewing.

Wasn't really happy with these command stands.

I had also acquired four AB generals in another purchase and wanted to use these superb sculpts as my Corps commanders and these were painted first.

AB Union Generals

After that the existing miniatures were removed from their bases and repainted to match my Union colour pallet, this included two of the turncoats mentioned in an earlier post switching back to blue.

The Idea I had kicking around was to include Corps and Division identifying flags on the command bases. As I am doing Union forces there is quite a bit known about these flags as the design was "somewhat" formalised. Quick intros can be found here on Wikipedia and here at Archive of the Colors. The other part of my plan was to make these flags removable and interchangeable to enable me to represent any force I required. I had thought of including identifying Brigade flags as well on the unit command stands but decided this was a bit much (for now anyway). After a bit of thought I decided to go with fixed flag poles and removable flags.

Original 2 Corps HQ Flag

1st Division, 2 Corps

Two of the mounted figures I had looked like cavalry troopers with arms outstretched and sabres drawn. After removing the swords and repositioning the arms, holes were drilled in the hand to take a flagstaff. These two were painted as cavalry sergeants and allocated, one each, to the Corps command groups.
Two of the AB generals were picked to be Corps commanders, the other two I have put aside for now.
The other mounted officers, I have worked out they are Blue Moon figures, were split, one each, between the two Corps bases and three Division bases I was doing. The Division bases also received a foot colour sergeant, also by Blue Moon, with the spear point removed from his flagstaff to allow a change of flags.

The flags themselves were home made. Images were downloaded from the internet and opened in a graphics package, I use GIMP . After mirroring the image to give a reverse side, and correcting any text on this side, they were resized to suit and printed out. They were then fitted around surrogate flagstaffs and glued together with Pritt Stick making sure they didn't stick to the shafts. Shaping was done at this point. So there I had interchangeable flags.

All I had to do now was base them all up, and that was completed this weekend.

Completed Corps and Division command stands

II Corps: Corps command and 1st - 3rd Division commanders

First outing will be this coming Friday.

Tony.

Edit: After further research I have gone for smaller Corps flags and downloaded them from Wargame Vault to get a better print resolution.