Dulles' Rifles

Over the last few days I've been rebasing a number of things and painting others to put together a few Special Units for The Silver Bayonet - a new tabletop skirmish miniature game by Joseph McCullough (Frostgrave, etc). The game is set during the Napoleonic Era and involves bands of soldiers and civilian specialists fighting against supernatural monsters... and... well... each other. 

The competitive part of the game doesn't really spark my interest, but there are rules of solo or co-op play and so that's what I've been looking towards making forces for. 

Normally a Special Unit is made up of an Officer and up to seven  soldiers and specialists - totalling up to 100 Recruitment Points. The troops vary from common infantrymen at 10 points to friendly Werebears at 30 points!? Highlanders and Riflemen are 18. For a co-op game with two players the rules suggest each having their officer with 40 Requisition Points. 

Earlier this year I did a HUGE reorg of all my Napoleonic forces - organizing them into units of 12 for use with Rebels and Patriots. (I had thought I'd share a link to those, I know I'd taken pictures of a number of the units... but apparently I never got around to posting them?!). There were a few left-overs of a few troop types which I thought I might make use of in this game. There were a handful of already painted Highlanders that I initially thought I would make use of... but I didn't have a spare officer...There were, however,  a few Rifles that didn't fit into the Rebels and Patriots units and they DID include an officer! They weren't painted - but were very easy to quickly paint up! 

Dulles' Chosen Men

I'd likely need to add.. well... something else... a regular force of 100 Recruitment Points, and this is only 72... but for now, they will do...  

All of the models are from Perry Miniatures. 

Richard "Dicky" Dullles was born to a life of comfort the son of a minor landed gentleman in the Scottish lowlands. He was the third of four brothers and bit of a wild one, with a terrible temper. He loved drinking, womanizing, and challenging people to duels when drunk. After killing a second man in a duel, and a minor noble at that, his father purchased him a commission in the British Army and had him whisked off to Spain to fight with the British Army there.

Dulles served with the 95th Rifles, but chafed at having to serve alongside a literal son-or-a-whore raised from the ranks by Major-General Wellesley himself... One night during the Retreat to Coruña, Dulles and some of his men snuck off to do some whoring in a nearby town. Upon their return they found their company almost entirely wiped out! They found one mortally wounded survivor that had crawled away from the carnage and hid behind a bush. He was able to tell them a wild story about being set upon by a pair of Spanish Vampires commanding a large pack of Dark Wolves. The story was unbelievable when they heard it, but after surveying the carnage, it seemed more and more likely - all had been slain by some sort of creatures that had torn them apart with tooth and claw! The official story, it was later decided, was that they were killed by French Cavalry... 

The incident sobered the young Dulles up (well... a little bit...) and when he finally made it back to British lines and made his report, he ended up being recruited by the Major-General Wellesley to take on special missions against supernatural entities that harried the British columns. Wellington had misunderstood from reading Dulles largely fabricated report that he had been with the company when the vampires attacked and, against the odds, he and his small band of compatriots had survived and they were clearly made of the sort of stuff that was needed to face supernatural horrors! Not wanting to disabuse the Commander of this notion, he and his men went along with it... 

I upgraded Dicky's Melee, Health, and Courage, so his initial stat line looks like:

Speed 6, Melee+2,  Accuracy +1, Defence 14, Courage +3, Health 13, Recruitment (100/40) 

I don't see him as particularly "courageous", just wildly disdainfully arrogant to the point of not being frightened by his "lessers" which is just about anyone and anything... 

He is armed with a Fencing Weapon (inlaid with Silver!), two Pistols (his old duelling pistols, tucked into his jacket), and Silver Shot. 

He also has the Indefatigable and Nimble attributes. 

Sergeant Grabbe and Riflemen Coyle are just two murderous thugs originally from Yorkshire that share in Dulles love for womanizing and drunken violence. They have had to smarten up a touch, at least while "on the job". They are his right and left hand men. Each has a Rifle (and bayonet), a Cartridge Box and Silver Shot. 

Riflemen Peters and Wood. This duo also happened to be out with the others the night the rest of their unit was murdered, and so they have been dragged into this whole mess along with them. 

Each has a Rifle (and bayonet), a Cartridge Box and Cold Iron Shot. 

I might just have to steal away a few minis from the Rebels and Patriots units to bring this up closer to 100 Recruitment points... and have all metal minis. I like metal minis... I don't mind plastic... I am less enthusiastic about combining the two in a single unit...