One of my favorite old projects was my Lewis and Clark project from about 20 years ago. I mean, who does a Lewis and Clark thing? Well I did, and eventually that morphed into a Rebels and Patriots project (after Rebels and Patriots was published) that included the period from 1791-1810. I called it my America Rampant project that included Battle of the Wabash/Fallen Timbers/hypothetical war with Spain in the Southwest. I painted some Spanish figures for that conflict including some old London War Room Cuera cavalry figures that fought the Apaches and the Comanches. They were okay, representative figures, but nothing to write home about.
Well, now there are Cuera to write home about. Gringo 40’s has launched a range of figures including early Apaches, Cuera, and eventually Comanches (and who knows what else) that are just stupendously wornderful. These are large, well sculpted figures with lots of useful detail.
The Cuera were frontier cavalry that wore leather tabards (cuera meant leather soldiers) to fend off arrows. There are two mounted figures and two dismounted figures. They could fight mounted with lance or sword and shield, or dismounted with flintlock musket and pistol. Because the Spanish frontier was sparsely settled, using the mobility of a mounted force was important to keep the peace.
The Apaches in the range are also quite nice with a variety of club, bow, musket, sling and lance-armed figures. The one mounted figure is especially spiff. Unfortunately, I’m unable to download the photo as anything but a web page.
Mostly I anticipate playing One Hour Skirmish Wargames with these guys. They are just a bit too spendy to do more. This is strictly one of those periods in which the miniatures has sucked me down the rabbit hole. Probably won’t order until August, but it will be interesting to see what figures are added to the range between now and then.
In the meantime, the show must go on. The past week was mostly devoted to painting some airplanes and 28mm Moros. The big accomplishment was completing a dozen of the very nice Raiden SBD Dauntless dive bombers. Love the SBD’s and I think their pilots did too. It was reliable and could perform a variety of roles including in an armed long-range reconnaissance role, as combat air patrol, but especially as a dive bomber, where it excelled. I painted my planes up in their 1942-43 blue gray over gray appearance. Paint by AK. I hand-painted the numbers, with decals by Flight Deck Decals. The Raiden models are quite nice, though the casting line down the fuselage is annoying and hard to get off.
Next week is pre-Enfilade doin’s and I hope to finish my batch of Raiden TBF’s. They’ll be in the same paint scheme. It fills in for naval battles like Midway, as well as all the air actions in the Solomons.
A Gamer's Tales 