SYW Highland Foot Regiment

It's been a long while since my last post, which indicates the small amount of painting on my part and lack of games being held at the Mess. However, just prior to Christmas I finished painting and basing a unit of 25/28 mm Seven Years War Highlanders. The battalion mainly consists of 25mm Dixon figures, although it also includes some 28mm Front Rank troops as well as 'Big Wully' who arrived at the Mess with my copy of the 'The Last Argument of Kings' from Warlord Games. Actually, two 'Big Wully' figures are included in the unit as Warlord kindly supplied me a second figure after the original had arrived with a bent and broken sword. The Front Rank figures were included in the command stand as the Dixon standard bearers were too small to accommodate the favoured GMB flags that I use.

I originally intended this unit to portray the Black Watch for my '45 and SYW projects, hence the buff coloured facings. The regiment didn't get royal blue facings until 1758 so I figured I could get away with the facing colour for the early part of the French & Indian War. However, several other Highland regiments had buff or yellow facings during the period which allows me to make the unit fairly generic. GMB currently don't have the buff regimental flag for the 42nd Foot (Black Watch) so I've just used one that I already had from my AWI collection.

Most of my battalions for this period consist of 6 stands of 4 figures, but in this case I have gone for 8 stands of 3 figures (apart from the command stand). I did this so that I could portray the regiment as skirmishers as well as making it a bigger unit numerically. The Highland battalions were historically larger than normal foot battalions in the British Army as many Highlanders flocked to the colours to avoid starvation and poverty in the mid 18th century. There are also more officers in this unit than I would normally include, but again this was historically correct.

I've also painted an individual dismounted senior officer. The Front Rank figure is of Lord Loudon but could be used as a generic commander.

I'm currently working on finishing a warband of Perry Woodland indians, as well as Canadian militia and Coureur du bois. Despite friendly pressure from other Southern Strategists, this year I'm determined not to be side-tracked into other projects until I have finally complete my own projects.....this could take a while!