Thursday, December 26, 2013

!5mm Peter Laing U.S. Cavalry vs Indians Battle

   I must admit when is started looking for Peter Laing figures a few years ago I got lucky. Besides some kind people giving me figures they weren't using, there seemed to be a boom on Ebay. There weren't many people bidding and I managed to get quite a good collection in short order.  Among them was a large collection of US Cavalry and Indians, both on horseback and foot. Besides a couple of small Civil War battles, I have never used them. While going through my plastic figure I found an Atlantic plastic frontier fort. I was hoping, like my Airfix castle, it would be the right size for Peter Laing figures. Unfortunately, the ramparts come to the top of the heads and doesn't look right.

   My wife has 2 weeks off, starting the day after Christmas. I wanted to get one more game in before her vacation and decided to use the cavalry and indian figures. What's more, I had ordered several sets of Command and Colors: Napoleonics  dice. They came the day I was setting up the game so decided to use my new dice.

   The scenario is thus; a troop of cavalry went searching for some renegade indians. Alas, they failed to find them and were returning to the fort. The troop closed on a narrow pass which, once cleared would bring them a short ride home.  As they approached the pass, the renegades they had been searching for came charging out of the pass at them. There was only one thing to do. The captain ordered the troop to form line and attack.
US cavalry on the top left; indians in the bottom right. The cavalry must exit on the bottle right of the board. I used Horse & Musket rules from MWAN magazine. In the battle if the crossed sabers came up, the horseman was dismounted and had to fight on foot.  They then acted as infantry.

The cavalry in column; the indians start their charge.

Some of the nicely painted cavalry.

The indians.

A close up of the nicely painted indians.

The cavalry started to fall into line.



The indians close in rapidly.


The indians manage to dismount several of the cavalry and disorder the cavalry's charge.

The cavalry counter attack; they throw the indians back but do not break them.

The cavalry  in their counter attack start separating; the indians turn and slam into the scattered troopers. they suffer heavy losses

The indians concentrate on dismounting the cavalry. The dismounted cavalry is easily scattered.

The captain managed to rally some men and took a defensive position on the hill; the last mounted soldier tries to join them.  Outnumbered 3 to1, the odds are against the soldiers surviving the day.


The last thing the cavalrymen on the hill see.

9 comments:

  1. I bought quite a few untainted Plains Indians and US Cavalry a while back, plus one of my friends is selling a pair of painted US/Indian armies at the moment. I will try to find the pictures to forward

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  2. With these figures I also got quite a few unpainted mounted figures; many of them I believe are suppose to be wearing kepis. I have thought of painting these figures as Civil War Union, with the ones wearing brimmed hats as Confederates.

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  3. If you end up with any spare kepi figures, please let me know. I would be happy to swap some brimmed hat figures for them. I use these for my Danish army as mounted officers or artillery outriders

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  4. Ian I will try to dig them out in the next couple of days and post them. The kepi is not well defined and I'm not sure we are talking of the same figure. If this is the figure you are looking for I will forward what I have (except one for a master figure for possible mold making). This is a low priority project and if I was to do it I would probably use a French Chassuer D Africa for the Union figures.

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  5. That's very kind of you John. I will sort out some the hatted cavalry to send you by return

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  6. Ian right now the count is 7 galloping with swords and 4 standing figures. I am keeping 3 of each so I can make up 2 units if I ever use them. I thought I had more but a few were wearing hats. You can hold on to your figures; I have plenty of the cavalry with hats. The figures used in this war-game are about half of the painted cavalry figures. When I get these figures together I will try to cast some more of the APW Austrian infantry; I never did send you the ones I casted earlier.

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  7. Ok, I found some more of those Renaissance "strip" Minifigs, so I will send you those anyway

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  8. Not connected to this post, but I just spotted this:

    http://deartonyblair.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/peter-laing-interview-from-1977.html

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  9. Ian, thank you in regards to the Minifigs. I look forward to checking out the article on Peter Laing. I just looked it up and hopefully will be able to read it tonight.

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