A Miniature MacPhee Woman

Here's the newest edition to our line. Born today and doing marvelously.

Regimental Fire and Fury: Iuka

Last Saturday the fellows came over to refight the Battle of Iuka. This was the first game I have hosted at my new home. My son helped me set up the battlefield the night before.

Iuka was a classic meeting engagement, and I am surprised it doesn't get played more often. Jon started us off by moving his Union brigade to occupy the high ground in the center of the board.

Don brought up the lead Confederate brigade while Scott R. menaced his flank with a small regiment of cavalry.

As soon as Don's guns came within range, Scott's cavalry charged! He quickly eliminated one section of artillery.

Jon shook his Union brigade into line, while Don moved forward to engage him.

Jon withdrew from the hill, leaving it to the Confederates. Scott's rampaging cavalry destroyed the other Confederate gun section, then tied down two regiments of dismounted Confederate cavalry.

By now the battle lines were pretty well formed. I had moved my Confederate brigade out to threaten the Union left, but Jon had deployed to meet me. Scott R. had moved his Union infantry brigade up on Jon's right, and Jon had a third infantry brigade moving up in reserve.

Don threw his crack Confederate troops into a series of charges on the Union center and right. He succeeded in pushing back portions of two Union brigades, but the Union troops did not break.

Scott R. kept lengthening his line, always presenting Don with a solid front.

By now my flank attack was starting to make headway. I had three regiments up and one in reserve, and I was driving the Union left back on its main line.

After twelve turns, both sides reached "heavy casualties," and we both started failing maneuver rolls. Almost all the regiments were worn, several were spent, and the troops started backing away from each other.

Our Iuka was a drawn battle, although the Confederates had a slight edge on points. They destroyed two Union regiments and lost one battery. The Union had five spent regiments at the end of the game compared with two spent Confederate regiments. But nether side was able to meet their objectives.

This was one of the better games we've played, and we like Regimental Fire and Fury well enough that I doubt we ever play the old version again!

Moving Moving Moving

So the blog has gone dark for the past month. It's unlikely to get updated any time soon. My wife and I closed on our new house at the end of May, moved in two days later, and have been feverishly busy getting our old house ready for sale.

I haven't painted a thing since the beginning of May. With our next child due to be born around July 4th, I'm unlikely to have much painting time until August.

I promise this blog is not dead! I will return to painting and posting as soon as I can.

1/72 Civil War Armies for Sale EDIT: SOLD!

I'm unlikely ever to game with these armies again, so on to the selling block they go.


These are 1/72 scale American Civil War armies. Figures are a mix of plastic and metal. I have most of them based on 60mm bases for De Bellis Civilus, but you can base them for whatever rules you like.


These figures have seen hard service, and there is some breakage (especially flags) and paint flaking. Nothing too severe, though. If you don't mind spending a weekend touching the figures up and rebasing them, you'll have two complete armies to play with.


There are a total of 333 foot figures, 26 mounted figures, and 9 guns. Email me at smacphee at frontierdotcom if you're interested.

Wargames Accessories Metal Bases

As you may guess, I have a great many painted figures. It's a challenge to store them all. I don't host many games at my house, so my figures need to be portable.

In 15mm, my solution has been to store figures in scrapbooking drawers. Each plastic drawer container has three 12" square drawers. I bought some one square foot linoleum, stuck two together, then stuck some magnetic sheeting to the top. The result is a square foot of magnetized surface, stiff enough to hold figures without bending, but light enough to lift out of the drawer.

The idea is to have all the figures secure in their storage. Each base gets a metal bottom so that they will stay put during transport.

I love Litko bases, but I have found that their "flexible steel" adhesive base bottoms don't form a strong enough bond with sheet magnets. Instead, I use Wargames Accessories' solid metal bases.

When my gaming group adopted an unusual size for our Regimental Fire and Fury infantry, I had to ask Wargames Accessories to whip up a custom sized metal base for me. Fortunately they were able to do so, and at a cost of only $.145 per base.

I ordered 400 of the custom cut bases, so I will have plenty on hand as I continue to paint my armies.

As you can see, the metal strip doesn't add much to the base height. If I worried about such things, I guess I could go with a shorter Litko base.

Here are the Confederates in their storage shelf. I can hold that linoleum upside down without any bases falling off. That's how good the bond is.

If I wanted to speed up game play, I could make movement trays for my Civil War armies. I already use magnetic movement trays for my WAB armies, and I stole this light cavalry tray for this shot.

15mm Napoleonic Portuguese Line Infantry

One of my projects is year is to complete enough troops to fight any General de Brigade Peninsular War scenario. For this, I will need four battalions of Portuguese line infantry.

All the figures are Old Glory. Flags are from Napflags. I painted these in block style, only using highlights on flesh.