Fire&Fury ACW rules in 20mm - The 'Sunday picnic uniforms' of Bull Run 1861

This small collection of miniatures was painted around some 40 years ago, glued to some ugly card and kept inside boxes all this time. The promise was to return one day and base them accordingly (to F&F bases), after building all units for Gettysburg. So this group shows some of the most famous units of the ACW present at Bull Run that didn't use funny and innocent uniforms throughout the rest of the war (like the Fire Zouaves), or simply didn't participate in no other major action (like the US Marines).  Also in late 1987 a very nice group of articles were released by the Military Modelling magazine with Bull Run as one of its subjects which helped many modelers and wargamers to venture into the first battle of the American Civil War, before a relative standardization of its uniforms. 

In terms of plastic figures we had in those days the famous ACW Airfix and Revell boxes. These were intended to show "standard" uniforms from late 1861 on without, for instance, any Zouaves (firstly shown with the Italeri box and later with HAT miniatures). So the 'Sunday picnic uniforms' had to be made up in plastic from different sources...

The first source used were the cheap Chinese/Hong Kong copies of the WW2 Japanese hard plastic from Esci. These figures were abundant everywhere in the 80's and fortunately for this case they were not very detailed. By cutting the brim of the Japanese field hat you can have reasonable Zouave figures. This group is the famous Confederate Louisiana Tigers. 

This time the same Japanese were used for the US Marines. Only a small cut on the top of the hat and a careful paint job of the jacket to make it longer and its done. These figures also have an Airfix WW1 French cornet copy and, this week, they got a converted Revell officer with a new kepi.

I already have these ones for Gettysburg but not with the Havelock cap covers that made them distinctive at Bull Run (together with other units that also used them). The figures are French Foreign Legion from Esci and Airfix, with the bottom part of the coats disguised as large trousers with the help of GreenStuff (this last surgery was only made last week but improved its appearance) 

The 11th New York volunteers, the famous 'Fire Zouaves' were again made of Hong Kong WW2 Japanese copies. A cut in the brim of the field hat and they are done. The flags were also hand painted in 1987...

There were some flashy officers in the battle and as F&F use figure markers. This one is an old conversion of a Russian Crimean war officer from Esci with a cowboy hat from Revell. 

Next: The support guns of the British Infantry of WW1.