I’ve been threatening to rebase my “elite” ACW units for weeks now and I am finally getting around to the effort. Here are some more interesting ACW units that I’ve either recently acquired or repainted to serve in different capacities (read: I didn’t like their original paint jobs).

The connundrum I’m facing is a complete “first world problem” in that I’ve already used 11% of my total blog storage space with pictures. I pay a small fortune to google so purchasing additional space from WP is out of the question. The solution? I’m working on it…

“Elite” ACW Units?

Characteristics of elite troops from the horse and musket era or the age of rifles are their ability to take punishment or their ability to rally back after what other units would consider a devastating loss. These troops either have a strong confidence in their abilities, have received exceptional training and equipment, or perhaps have seen their share of fighting and come out better from it – excelling at their trade and trusting in their officers. Some units have a mystique or exclusivity about them like the US Army’s Rangers or the US Marine Corps. It’s the same in other armies and in a battle, sticking around a few minutes longer than other troops or perhaps continuing to try when other units have long abandoned the attack is sometimes the difference in winning or losing a battle. Most of us have played games with elite units on the table, and like me, you’ve probably expected much from them. So much so that a failure to rally or failure to charge at an inopportune moment brings a blush or a snicker.

Neil Thomas chose to classify better quality ACW units as “Zouaves” in his One Hour Wargame rules and while Zouaves came in many different stripes, qualities, and capabilities (and uniforms!) that mystique of theirs is probably irresistable to the wargamer, figure collector and history enthusiast. NT’s “Wargaming: An Introduction” rules do not “bucket” elite troops simply as Zouaves, and so in my version I won’t either (but it’s fun to think of many of them in that regard). NT’s WAI ACW rules and my version have different morale grades, of which the highest is “elite”. The “elite” troops are the ones I want to showcase today.

I will be rebasing the Iron Brigade troopers this weekend in the hopes of getting them on the table soon (although not in my Bull Run game).

That’s it for this unit showcase. I have more pictures but I’m trying to save space – which brings me to the “connundrum”. I’m already at 11% capacity in storage for my blog as stated above. This is probably due in no small part to my phone’s outstanding camera capabilities. The issue though is that wordpress is going to make me pay for additional storage and I’m not particularly keen on that – so I’m playing around with picture quality and size, as well as how the media is presented within the blog (all of which make a difference).

So come with me on this journey to more efficiently load blog images (I never had this problem with blogger because its storage was based on my Google storage which I have plenty of). On one hand, it’s making me more disciplined in terms of the images I load. On the other hand, it’s forcing me to compress pictures and adjust sizes of those pictures, which is extending the amount of time it takes to publish! I’ll be posting best practices as I go. Stay tuned!