Army Men!! Pt. 3 The Civil War Set

 Oops, I goofed!

This post was supposed to come before the last one.   Senior moment...

Anyway, here goes. 

The Civil War Value Pack from Hobby Lobby has been opened and is ready for examination.

In a nutshell, the set consists of 34 soldier figures (17 each Union and Confederate), 2 horses, 2 cannon and 2 caissons.

At first glance this is an awesome little set.

There are enough individual poses to make things interesting.  It is my understanding that these packs are populated with random quantities of the various poses. It's very cool that the the poses of the soldiers are not duplicated between the two armies.

Viewed from a few feet distance, the soldiers and features are quite representative of the typical Civil War soldiers.

Here are photos of the two opposing sides all set out:

And the artillary:

There were no missing or broken pieces in the bag.  The only issues are that some of the muskets are bent. 

A quick, careful hit with a hair dryer gun can take care of that.

Overall, this set is not a bad buy at the $7.99 price point. I will likely head back to Hobby Lobby and purchase a second bag.

This will give me enough soldiery on each side to comprise a 'Company' unit.

In Civil War unit hierarchy, a company was supposed to be a group of 100 men. The majority started out with those numbers.

10 companies made up a regiment (1000 men). As the war progressed, most companies that were combat-ready at any given time typically numbered between 30-50 individuals. This was due to attrition from battle casualties, enemy capture, illness, and desertions.

Companies were given designation letters A through K. The letter J was not used, as it was easily confused with the letter 'I'.

Companies were typically led by Captains, their subordinates being the non-commissioned officers - sergeants and corporals.

So now that I've given a short history lesson, here is a fun fact:

If I wished to set up a somewhat historically accurate diorama of Pickett's charge at the battle of Gettysburg, it would require 706 of these Value Packs at a cost of $5,650.00 before tax.

General Lee sent over 12,000 men on that ill-fated assault on the Union center.

Next post: A closer look at the soldiers in this set and why a lot of it is not historically accurate.

Cheers!