28mm Italian Risorgimento Project

 

Running multiple social media platforms can get a bit confusing and for reasons discussed before I've not been doing blog posts as frequently as a few years ago. There was a time when most new units would have their own posts, something which I now tend to do on Facebook, the outcome of this is that I've hardly covered my 28mm Italian Risorgimento Project on here.

Above is a picture of the Project to date 6 units of 24 Garibaldi, 1 unit of 16, a battery of 3 guns and a Command Stand plus a unit of 36 Papal Troops. The end goal is both sides for the Battle of Mentana which is just over 30 units so I'm about one third of the way through.

The majority of the figures are from Gringo 40s who do a good range of Garibaldi Infantry (along with Piedmont and Neopolitan troops which I'm not using), the figures have great detail and provide a great base to build a project around. A link to the range is below,

http://www.gringo40s.com/28mm-garibaldis-war-1860.html

Outside of that range Shako 64 in Italy do a decent range and some English language uniform guides, worries around delivery from Italy has limited my Shako 64 purchases to date, the Garibaldi Artillery are from that range.

One of the challenges of the period is sourcing figures and their has some fun improvisation along the way, these Perry Miniatures British Intervention Force figures have doubled up as a unit of the Dunne Battalion, its reminded me of the old days of wargaming in many ways !

Look out for some more wierd and wonderful figure use over the coming months. Half of the Papal Army were French and I am currently waiting for the Perrys to release their Franco Prussian French plastic box set, if that doesn't happen in the next couple of months (I'm looking at doing this as a display game at FIASCO in October) then I will need to get some from another company.

My favourite unit so far is definitely my Papal Zouaves, a mixture of Perry Miniatures plastic ACW Zouaves and metal, kepi heads from Steve Barber Models and 36 figures strong to me it looks the business, I have another unit the same size to do along with Skirmish bases and a Commander to form a Zouave Brigade which I am really looking forward to getting on the table.

I will try and keep the blog updated a little bit more with this project as it goes along, I'm still not sure what rules I'm going to use as I've struggled to get anything specific for the period yet. I'm going to pick up a copy of Pickets Charge and see if I can Italian Risorgimento them !