Thursday 8 December 2011

American Civil War with Airfix - part 1



As the start of a short series on American Civil wargaming with Airfix, here is an article by Malcolm Knott entitled An Airfix Army, from the Subaltern's Corner feature In Miniature Warfare Magazine from February 1969.

As the article itself states, the importance of the Airfix ACW range (Union Infantry, Confederate Infantry, Artillery, US 7th Cavalry, plus Cowboys and Wagon Train) was to provide the basis for a complete wargame army of all arms plus logistics at a reasonable cost.

I'm sure lots of people must have started off with these figures, inspired by articles like these, the ACW ones in Terry Wise's series in Airfix Magazine on Buildings for Wargames and his Airfix Guide no 24 American Civil Wargaming (though this last was published five years after this article).

The figures though basic still are reasonably available and can be turned out very well - have a look at Matt's Command Group converted from two of the Cowboy figures here. Matt has a project to build Airfix ACW armies which will be interesting to follow.

I'm intending to mine the Airfix ACW seam from Miniature Warfare further with a few more posts, including a battle report and some more photographs.





3 comments:

The Wishful Wargamer said...

Interesting article...I've actually been rebasing my Arfix ACW for Regimental Fire and Fury and certainly still refer to Terry Wise's Airfix ACW Wargaming Guide!

cheers WW

Stryker said...

I remember reading this article at the time - it influenced me so much that a bought a whole load of Airfix ACW and even started to paint some. I think it was the modular terrain system that appealed although I never attempted to build any!

Anonymous said...

This is one thread I will follow avidly! Cracking stuff!