ACW – Union Yellow Zouave Unit

I have completed a lot of ACW models in the past, you can see them all in the archives of this blog. However, in a tidy up I found some more in one of my <cough> many boxes to to do projects. I got some of these as extras and also as potential other projects – I found a collection of Plans Indians which I will get to for pony wars games at some point… Over Xmas I decided to spend some time and finish them. So, here are the first of them.

There are 12 bases of America Civil War Zouave troops, with yellow trim, and yellow soft/floppy hats. I think officially it is called a “chéchia” (yes I had to google that). I did not base these on any specific regiment. I don’t know if any used yellow hats and trim rather than red – which was the most popular. However, these are generic and I have some red Zouaves already and wanted a different colour.

You can see the flags which I added to the command bases, as they came out well. Those are done simply by downloading some civil war flags, scaling them correctly in size and then printing them off. I find if I paint around the edges with a colour they look and awful lot better as well. That is a trick I leant from a blog somewhere.

These bases here which could be a single big unit or 2 smaller ones. The Zourve units were never huge or lasted too long with their fancy uniforms but I like having an option for them. To be honest on the table they make great models to be elite etc with their distinctive look. i think these are fairly fantasy uniforms for most of the war, as I can’t see them lasting that long in the field.

well there we are. The models are nice and from Pendraken as are all my 10mm ACW. I think in the end the yellow soft caps does give them a little ‘gnomish’ look which I am not overly found of. It is not the historical either. But, heck more figs for the table now, so I’ll keep them.