Managed to finally get these finished off and based (well, partly anyway). These are all 10mm Pendraken Zouaves with fez, both packs (shooting and advancing). The standard bearers don’t have flags yet – those are en route. At some point I’ll get a few more figures to make up two units of these since I need 8-10 for a unit. What I’ll probably do is get another couple of standard bearer figures and another 8-9 infantry figures so I can make another three bases which will give me 16 in total. That way, I can use a unit of 10 bases for a fresh unit, then when they get a little battle-hardened (ie they receive casualties and go down to 6 or so bases) I can bring in another unit of 10 bases as reinforcements. I haven’t completed the bases yet, just put down some wood filler (Hi Dave!), because I want to wait till I’ve got all my ACW figures done then base them all at the same time so they look the same. I hate doing armies piecemeal over several years, then forgetting / running out of the same base material and paints so that they don’t match.
Anyway, here’s the unit as a whole:
Zouaves!
You can see why I gave this post the title I did, can’t you? The plain white of the wood filler basing and the red fez they wear makes them look a little like Santa’s little helpers at the North Pole.
Here are a few pics of the bases 3 at a time, and with the unit command base on it’s own.
Zouave Command
This unit is supposed to represent the 54th Ohio Volunteers under Col. Thomas Kilby Smith in the 2nd Brigade led by Col. David Stuart in Sherman’s 5th Division of the Army of the Tennessee when they fought at Shiloh in 1862 under Grant’s command.
Zouaves 1
I’ve used a mixture of 4 and 5 figures to a base, and placed them all over the base rather than in regular lines, to denote a ragged line of men – I think this looks better than formed lines for ACW.
Zouaves 2
The bases were bought from Cracker Line and are 3mm thick (I think) including the magnetised bottoms and are 1″ square.
Zouaves 3
I’ve also made sure that each base has a variety of figure poses on them, and I don’t think any one base has two of the same pose on, and I’m pretty confident that no two bases have the same configuration of poses on them either.
Zouaves 4
I have loads and loads of ‘normal’ infantry to do and some cavalry, but I want to get some more cavalry figures and I’m waiting on Cracker Line to produce their artillery range so I can get some of them. I might take a quick break from Longstreet prep though and work on some Muskets and Tomahawks figures next – they look fun too. Next week’s blog post should be the battle report of my Marlenedietrichstieners taking on von Wattsenburg’s horsemen for our Maurice campaign – so far so good, he hasn’t made any excuses and chickened out again yet. 
