Battle of Centerville 3: Union cavalry completed and Confederate infantry under way

I finished the Union cavalry some weeks ago and was quite pleased with the way they turned out, despite finding them something of a struggle.  Fortunately, I only have one more unit of cavalry to do, for the Confederates, and I am contemplating doing them in regulation dress with yellow kepis, as that is how I painted my Airfix ones.  They won't be done until I have finished the first regiments of Confederate and Union infantry, however. Then it will be two more units of infantry,  Then an artillery battery, followed by more infantry and then the other artillery battery.   I have now completed one out of ten units.  I also realised that the cavalry is the first box of plastic historicals I have completed.  I have done Lord of the Rings figures but never finished a box of historical figures before, despite starting many.

Having finished the Union cavalry I took a break from the ACW to do some Zulus and some figures for the 2nd Afghan War.  I was sort of putting off getting on with the Confederate infantry as I found the cavalry figures rather hard work, mainly because the Perry ACW figures are smaller than the other figures I have been painting.  Having finished some Sikhs I was contemplating doing some Afghans next but I picked up the first nine confederate infantry (which I had the base colours down on) and decided to see how much I could do today,  I moved them along quite well from that rather depressing 'just started' state to a 'well under way' state. Partly this is because we had good light today which, I realise, was the main problem in trying to paint the cavalry.  Much to my surprise, I actually enjoyed painting them, so will focus on these for the next week or so.

Left: Old Perry plastics Right: new Confederate infantry

I already had a box of the Perry plastic confederates and also a box of their generic ACW troops ,which started the whole plastic 28mm craze back in 2008.  There is no doubt that the new ACW infantry are superior to the old ones (especially in things like detail on the muskets) but I was pleased to see that the old one piece (at least no separate arms to fiddle about with) figures go quite well with the newer figures, size-wise, and I have happily put them together in the same unit.  The newer figures do have more fragile bayonets, though, although they are not as bad as the Perry plastic Prussians, where I have managed to bend almost every bayonet so that they look like soft plastic figures.

Speaking of which, I went for the marching poses on this first unit as it reminds me of these old Airfix ones, which are, therefore, appropriately Terence Wise.  I have to make three regiments of 27 figures but am not sure if I will have them all in a marching position (which is very old school) or not.

I had originally thought that this unit would be Texans (the scenario requires a unit each of Texans, Virginians and Georgians) but then I came across this picture of Texans.  I really like their frock coats and black trim so I am going to do them in metal as Perry have Confederates in frock coats.  It does, admittedly, detract from the plasticness of it but there you are.  I will see if I can find them at Salute.