South Carolina

South Carolina join the fight. Two regiments with their distinctive palm tree standards march onto the field. The reddish one is the 10th SC and the Blue one is the 7th SC.

 I've had the idea of trying to create brigades of four regiments of different states. I found these Standards on eBay for South Carolina at a good price. EBay doesn't allow the creator to sell any Confederate battle flags because of the imagery. However he does a full set on his website, Wargamesdesigns.com.

All the states are catered for and I have my eye on making a Georgia brigade.

The flags are a good size and the colour is good.

Above is the 22nd Alabama with its distinctive white cross on a blue field. This set are from Body's Banners from Redoubt miniatures.

UPDATE; After looking through a lot of photos of reference, I have decided to swop around my flags. I thought the state flag would take the honoured right hand place in the line, but it appears the battle flag out ranks it.

 So the battle flags go on the right and the state colours go on the left. However, it's not quite that simple it appears. A national flag of stars and bars or the two that followed it, out rank the battle flag. In this case the national colours goes on the right and the battle flag is pushed over to the left. So in terms of the honoured right position in line, so the hierarchy goes, National flag, Battle flag, State flag

.

Phew that took some research...I never managed to find any written text about it, just visual glues. The topic of the battle flag is covered in a mountain of controversy so any information is lost. I hope this helps, I'm just glad I found out before I started flocking the bases.

A few of the newly arranged command bases with the battle flags now on the right.

So this base for the 22nd Alabama is actually correct. The 'Stainless' national flag out ranks the blue battle flag, so is placed on the right in the line. I could of got this wrong of course, but this is what I've managed to work out through visual research.

Stars and Bars

I had started out planning to use generic Battle flags, but I was swayed by the beautiful selection of state colours. They are so tempting that I couldn't resist.

They certainly add a pop of colour and detail to the drab coloured regiments.

Mississippi colours are very recognisable and any student of Gettysburg, will want some of these boys in their army. The second day wouldn't be complete without them.

Armistead leads his 57th Virginia towards the bloody angle.

The Sons of Erin rush forward, I think these guys are the 10th Tennessee.

Another interesting Irish regiment with a double sided standard.

When these are dry I will paint the edges to get rid of the excess white paper.

Hopefully there are enough Battle flags to cater for most mid sized games.

A converged regiment of the 6th and 7th Arkansas.

I've run out of standard bearers at the mo, need to paint some more up. I have the whole Texas brigade to do yet.

Creating Autobot Brawn

Brawn has long been a favourite from the cartoon as he likes to get in close combat. He takes out Bots twice his size with his amense strength. He is second only to Optimus Prime in strength of the Autobots that landed on Earth.

The real trick with Brawn was not to let him get too big. He has to be smaller than the sport car Autobots, so it was handy to keep one around for scale. I used a sci- Fi head from Minimax as a starting point.

I kept adding little greeblies to add more detail.

My Brawn is quite chunky and crude, but in a way I like this. I beefed up his arms to give him strong appearance.

Here we see Brawn in a line up of Bots.

He is the first of the really small Bots to enter the field, it's nice not to waste those small bases I made earlier. Never throw anything away!

He's small compared to most Autobots but one of the strongest and toughest fighters. Brawn is also known for the amount of artillery hits he can take. He has a basic, early design, but it's made him one of the hardest nuts to crack.

 Early stages showing the sci-fi head. The body was a small droid like figure.

You've got to love Brawns basic design with it's square edges.

A later take on the character from the Bumblebee movie. This will be handy for the distressed paint work. 

UPDATE, 

I got some paint on the little Bot.

Chunky!

" Take him!"

"I don't take so easy!"

I thought I'd take a shot of the project so far. Quite a massing of Autobots.

Brawn is dwarfed by the line up of heavy Autobot warriors.

Brawn clashes with Quarrel.