Bavarians - Flags, and a Possible Wizard Wheeze...

Continued (very useful) correspondence with Giovanni suggested that the line infantry flags I have used with my new Bavarians might be of wider interest. Now I have to say straight away that the flags are such a nightmare to draw (not to mention the risk of epileptic seizure) that, unusually for me, I was happy to go for the examples in the Napflag bit of the Warflags site. I have long admired the Napflag material - Alan Pendlebury did a splendid job of giving a free offering of all his research and very impressive graphic work. The pity is that the site hasn't been updated since 2001 - not because the flags are wrong, but because more modern internet bandwidths would have permitted higher-resolution (bigger) files.

So I downloaded Alan's Bavarian flags image and - entirely for my own preferences and use - I used the trusty Paintshop Pro to alter the shade of blue a bit, and to replace the black outlines and construction lines in the image with the predominant blue shade. I've also, for my own purposes, swapped some of the centre sections between flags. The tweaked image is here, if it is of any use to anyone - please note that this is Alan's intellectual property, from the Napflag site, and I take no credit for any of this. The images are a lot smaller than I would normally use, but for my 20mm soldiers I have printed them so that each flag comes out 24mm high (they were 173cm, according to the regulations), which is 1/72, and they work out fine. I would not recommend them for anything larger. Oh yes, the Leibfahne (carried by 1st Bn) is on the right of each horizontal pair, the Ordinarfahne (2nd Bn) is on the left. If you want more details of dates etc, check the Napflag site.

These are slightly tweaked versions of Alan Pendlebury's flags from the old
Napflag site. If you use them, or pass them to anyone else, please explain that
they are Alan's flags, though it was me who probably spoiled them! 

I was mentioning to Gio that my only concern about having a burgeoning Bavarian army is that I don't have anybody for them to fight. Yes, they could have a bash against the French after Leipzig, and I can always change history and get them sent to Spain as part of the Confederation contingent, but for the most part I will be relying on visiting (or hosting) generals at social games to provide an Austrian army for opposition. Gio, of course, humorously suggested that I was now irrevocably committed to building an Austrian army of my own to complement them. This has already been suggested by a number of other humorists, and the joke is not what it was. The Austrians are no kind of niche army - that would be a very serious undertaking, though the idea does have a strong appeal for about 8 seconds, until the full horror of the implications hits you.

One campaign I do have an interest in, however, is the Bavarian involvement in the Tirolean Rebellion in 1809. This would be a smaller undertaking all round, would involve relatively few Austrian line troops, and, for me, has the scholarly underpinning that my imagination was caught by Andreas Hofer and all that lot during a couple of fairly recent holidays in the Tirol. Yes, all right, all right. Hofer and ice cream. Highbrow stuff.

There is still the problem of sourcing suitable figures. The only known models of Tyrolean rebels in a scale which suits me are a single set of plastics by German, which got a very muted reception in the pages of Plastic Soldier Review.

German's Tirolean rebels

However, Gio suggested that my existing Napoleonic Spanish guerrilleros might just slot right into the Tirol. Hey! There are plenty of round hats and capes, lots of knee-breeches, priests, mad women with blunderbusses. He may well be on to something. And, of course, I have about 130 of them. As Napoleon said, quantity has a quality all of its own.

Thinks: if I added a sprinkling of celebrity figures - maybe a box or two of the German plastics - I could already have the makings of a rebel army. Some of the flags might seem a bit inappropriate, but that's not bad for this week's potential Wizard Wheeze. If you half-closed your eyes, you might not notice that some of Hofer's heroes looked a bit Spanish.

I'll probably have gone off the idea, or have been talked out of it, by this time next week. My local providers of Austrians may have some understandable doubts about their prized regiments appearing alongside some very scruffy guerrillas. It does go to show, though, how sometimes we are so hidebound by history that we can't see the possibilities.

Part of the Bergisel Panorama, Innsbruck

Bavarians - noch zweimal

Newly finished yesterday, here are the two battalions of the 14. Linieninfanterieregiment, flagged and ready.

My Bavarian forces are based on the troops which made up Lefebvre's French VII Corps in 1809, and the three battalions produced so far are part of Bernhard Erasmus von Deroy's 3rd Division.

The 14th regiment was relatively new in 1809, and had no official title, since it owed its existence to the terms of Bavaria's contribution to the Confederation of the Rhine rather than the patronage of a particular Inhaber. The history of the organisation of the Bavarian army is rather complicated, as I am learning. Even the brief snapshot around 1809 has a few quirks.

Line regiments with higher numbers than 10 become a bit tricky. Regt No. 11 "Kinkel" was ceded to the newly-created Grand Duchy of Berg in 1806, though a new regiment with the same name and number was created the following year - these chaps spent 1809 chasing around the Tyrol, fighting Andreas Hofer's rebels.

Regiment No. 12 "Lowenstein-Wertheim" was disbanded after it mutinied in 1806, and the number was kept vacant until 1814. The problem was that the regiment, which formed the garrison of Bamberg, consisted of men from the Würzburg area, and since Würzburg also became a new state in 1806 the troops did not wish to remain in the Bavarian army.

Regiments 13 and 14 were created in 1806, without regimental titles (which, I remind myself, was the reason I embarked on this explanation). In 1811, the new (replacement) 11th Regt was disbanded, the 13th became the 11th, the 14th became the 13th (to preserve seniority - and there continued to be no No.12); subsequently, in 1814, more new regiments were raised and things swapped around again, but we won't worry about that here.

Bavarians - 1/9. LIR ready

King Maximilian's heroes - Oberst Delamotte leads the Ysenburg regiment towards
the front lawn. Some fool parked his car in the wrong century.

Here we go - all based and flagged, this is the 1st Bn of the 9. Linieninfanterieregiment "Graf Von Ysenburg" ready for action on the Danube. I have another two battalions almost ready, and I was holding off to post a photo of all of them, but time is passing and I thought better of it.

The others will be along on the next bus. Two posts for the price of - well, two, I suppose.

These are a bit special - they were painted by the illustrious Count Goya, who - when he is not painting the horrors of war - can apply his skills to turning out some very nice miniatures, as you see. This allows me, now I think about it, to focus my attention on the horrors of war. Anyway, my grateful thanks to the Count - I'm delighted with these fellows.

20mm as it used to be - guilty as charged, Your Honour. The rank and file are Der Kriegsspieler, the mounted officer and the Fahnenjunker are from the old Falcon range, which is now available again from Hagen, and the foot officers and the drummer are Hinton Hunt.

They probably felt a bit conspicuous marching round the garden, being the sole representatives of the VII Corps at present, but some friends will join them shortly, and they were enjoying the sun.

Bavarians - Another Sample Figure

I've finished the second "style sample" - this is a fusilier from the 9th Infantry Regiment Ysenburg - the casting, again, is by Der Kriegspieler.

I'm getting the hang of the Bavarian uniforms now.

Serious painting will be starting shortly...


***** Late Edit *****

A propos of absolutely nothing - this follows a couple of recent conversations. There was some talk of Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo being released on BluRay to commemorate the bicentennial of the battle. Did it ever happen? I can't trace any such product - I have now watched this film an embarrassing number of times (far more than the number of times I've watched The Sound of Music...) and still love it to bits - warts and all. Nay - especially the warts - wart-spotting is a great hobby.

If ever a film needed an HD BluRay edition this is it. Anyone know anything about this?

********************

Bavarians - More Preliminaries

I've now completed my first pilot figure, and have learned a lot about the Bavarian line infantry uniform, and the practicalities of painting it in 20mm scale. I am now a lot more confident about what is required. This is a fusilier of the 14th IR - a Der Kriegsspieler casting. You can distinguish these from the very similar Hinton Hunt figure since the soldier's feet are placed in the middle of the front and back edges of the base, rather than diagonally opposed in the corners, and the musket is carried in front of the body, with a space behind it, rather than the "bookshelf" attachment of the HH. I will be using some HH castings for the line infantry, but the DKs have an advantage in that they made fusiliers without plumes - presumably Marcus intended that his customers should simply grind the plumes off the grenadier castings, as required.

For the entertainment of those who understand these things, and most certainly know more about them than I do, here's a photo of a small selection of Hinton Hunt Bavarian officers, from my tubs. These are, from left to right, two examples of BVN1 and one of BVN6 - they are all clearly coded under the bases. I was interested that the two BVN1 "charging" chaps are different - they have their heads turned at different angles, as you see, and the one on the left has an unmistakable epaulette on his left shoulder.

Bavarian officers didn't wear epaulettes.

It is always inadvisable to imply, even accidentally, that Marcus ever made any mistakes (similarly for Peter Gilder and the Perry Bros - not acceptable at all), but I wondered whether the left hand figure was in fact an earlier version, subsequently replaced.

As ever, it matters not a jot - I'm happy to file off the epaulette, and it's a luxury to have a choice of two slightly different poses. Just thought I'd mention it.

Next job is to prepare another prototype paint job, this time for the 9th Ysenburg IR. I've received a little shipment of paint from Foundry - I must confess to a very slight moment of disappointment when I found that the appropriate shade for the facings of the 5th Von Preysing IR appears in the Foundry catalogue as Nipple Pink. I hadn't realised that Foundry did that spotty Citadel Warhammer thing - there's something faintly incongruous in my first two official paint acquisitions from Foundry for this new army being Bavarian Cornflower Blue and Nipple Pink, though I accept that this little problem - if there is one - is entirely mine.

Bavarians - Something Stirs

Still a lot to do before this gets seriously underway, but this weekend I've started cleaning up some infantry figures for painting, as part of my Napoleonic Bavarian project. The chaps in the picture make up two battalions - most of them are Der Kriegsspieler, though the command are a mix of Hinton Hunt and Falcon.

The first batch should yield three painted battalions - not sure of the timing, but at least things are moving now.

The infantry will be provided by castings from DK, HH, SHQ (provided the castings are better than the batch I received recently - legs missing etc) and the Hagen-reissued Falcon range. The gunners will be SHQ (since I can't afford the Franznap ones) and the cavalry are still to be worked out. Since the cavalry of my target period of 1809-12 all wore variations on very similar uniforms, it should be possible to recruit nearly all the cavalry from the Hinton Hunt chevauxleger OPC figures, with conversions based thereupon.

My target OOB is in two stages:

The "halfway-house" target is Deroy's 3rd Division of Lefebvre's VII Corps of 1809 - this comprises two brigades of infantry, plus one of cavalry, plus a couple of batteries for the Division. The cavalry brigade is of two regiments (1 Chevauxlegers + 1 of dragoons), and the infantry brigades each comprise 2 x 2-bn line regiments plus a light battalion - that's 10 battalions total.

The longer-term objective is to add Wrede's 2nd Division, which has a very similar structure.

The accumulation of figures proceeds - I have them organised into tubs within crates, as you see, but there's a fair amount to obtain still.

I confess to some nervousness over the small matter of painting HH or DK type figures. It's been a while since I did this on any non-trivial scale, and I am uncomfortably aware that the glories which we see weekly from the blogs of Stryker, Wellington Man and Mark D show how this should be done. I don't anticipate getting even close to that quality, so I'll just have to take refuge behind the old "effective in the mass" policy embraced by some of the wargaming pioneers.

Problem with DK and similar (obviously) is that the detail of the figures is to some extent implied rather than set out in crisp relief in the manner of more modern castings. It'll be fine, I'm sure, but I'm not going into this with any level of arrogance, I can assure you! Doubtless you will see some painted figures emerging fairly shortly, but if my painting is disappointing they may be standing in the distance, slightly out of focus, in Old School black-and-white.

Bavarians - Paleontology

Very old figures, laid bare. After a rather longer spell in the stripper than I had expected, at last I have some real vintage castings cleaned back to the metal. Interesting. These three chaps are (from L to R): Hinton Hunt BVN4, Bavarian private charging, and then two versions of Der Kriegspieler model No. 175 - Bavarian infantry advancing. The DK models were originally sold in a bag, with a proportional mix of variations for elite (with helmet plume) and battalion (no plume) companies - examples of each being in the picture; HH did not produce an infantryman without a plume, so we are forced to assume that Marcus intended us to remove the plumes if we cared enough. All these figures will work for line or jaeger units, by the way.

That's all good. Let's not have a discussion about the obvious DNA connection between the two makes - it's very clear that one is the inspiration of the other. I am intrigued, though - the HH man has his feet firmly planted at the corners of his base - the DK boys have their feet in the middle of two opposing sides of the base. Considering the fact that the figures are almost indistinguishable, why go to the trouble of having a different base?

My sincere thanks, again, to Stryker and Wellington Man for their generous donations of vintage figures, and to Clive and to Chuck Gibke for consultancy services. All much appreciated. I am still working on obtaining supplies of suitable castings, but at least I now know what I'm looking for. Sometime soon I hope to paint up a unit, though the extra French division which arrived recently probably takes precedence, if only to get it out of the way. No - let's not say that - it may well be that after some heavy sessions retouching the French I'll really fancy doing some Bavarians for a break!

Bavarians - Figure Samples

This is a little selection of figures for which I have already obtained samples. Here are some miscellaneous infantry poses from Falcon, including a rather charming mounted infantry officer, a couple of artillerymen from SHQ/Kennington and a charging grenadier and a OPC chevauxleger from Hinton Hunt.

The castings are resting on a cutting board, and the little squares are 5mm. All these ranges stand 22mm soles to eye, the hats and weapons match, they have sensible human proportions. It all looks rather promising, doesn't it?

Can't Get No Grindin'

Such a device might be the answer to several questions I haven't even thought of...

Things are a bit overshadowed at present by another outbreak of Real Life. It is, inescapably, a time-of-life thing; further problems with the care of elderly relatives - this time my wife's family rather than my own, but it feels very much like more of the same. I hope and trust that things will be resolved soon in a satisfactory and comfortable manner, but the most obvious immediate difficulty (for us) is that the relative in question lives some distance away, so the Contesse is going to be driving long hours, and negotiating with overstressed social workers in yet another county. Having recently been through a similar episode with my own mother, we could have done with a bit of a break, I guess, but of course it is important that we help as much as we can. Blood, as you know, is famous for having a higher viscosity than other well-known liquids.

My Bavarian project has not yet made made much visible progress, but I am getting a feel for the available 20mm figures, and have a growing collection of samples, including a couple of very generous donations of vintage figures. In a few days I'll publish some size comparison pictures of what I have to work with. Really looks very promising, though - as you would expect with vintage castings - I am going to have to carry out some conversion work to provide sufficient command figures and - not a trivial point - sufficient variety of command figures. As discussed before, I'm happy to have entire battalions of crisply identical fusiliers, but having the self-same officer in every regiment is less satisfying.

Another issue requiring conversion work is the nippy question of plumes on Bavarian infantry. Only the grenadiers had plumes on the helmets (all right, the Jägers had them too, but not until some time later than my chosen 1809 context), so, for a couple of the brands of figures, a period of competent plume removal is approaching. Which (at last) brings me to the point of this post.

I was once the owner of a rather dinky little cordless Dremel, complete with accessory tools, some of which I never identified. I used it sparingly, to say the least. After about the fourth time I used it in anger the battery would no longer recharge, and that model does not allow a replacement part, and of course the guarantee had expired a small number of weeks earlier. Maybe the poor thing died of loneliness. More quality stuff in the landfill.

The Bavarians will require some conversion work, and I am freshly healed from a spell of very sore fingers after needle-filing epaulettes off a bunch of Spanish officers. I think I need to replace my Dremel. I checked out some cheaper brands - Silverline and Tacklife, for example - but the customer reviews were uniformly hostile, and there was a general theme to the messages: pay the extra, get something better.

Not recommended, apparently

So I need to get something small and hobby-ish, but it must be mains-powered, and I don't want to sell the house to fund it, but the cheapest brands seem to give problems - notably with the chuck attachment.

Anyone have experience of such a device, or a recommendation? I don't think that I shall require to re-machine motorcycle parts or anything - this will strictly be a device to assist a flaky dilettante like me with his toy soldiers. All views welcome. Anything which requires hearing protectors or similar is probably not what I'm looking for!

Care must be taken with all DIY projects

To revisit the title of this post, here is the Mighty Mr Morganfield - Muddy Waters to you - live in Germany in 1976.

Napoleonic Bavarians - Uniform Sources

Ex-Falcon figures - now available from Hagen. I'm waiting for samples
of these - this picture from Uwe's History in 1/72 blog - thanks, Uwe

Early days yet for my Bavarians - I have some figures, I'm expecting some more - in particular I'm waiting for the postie to bring me samples from SHQ and from the Falcon series, which have recently been taken over by Hagen. I've received a packet of standing Bavarian staff figures made by Hecker & Goros - very nice - they need to be put on bases (we are into specialist diorama figure makers here, with eye-watering prices to match); the H&G figures were sent by Germania Figuren, of Duisburg. There will, I am led to believe, be some new, mounted Bavarian staff figures coming from Hagen some time reasonably soon - they are in Uwe's famous "pipeline". All very promising. Also Art Miniaturen do nice (though expensive) Bavarians - I am interested in their drummers and sappers - and Franznap produce some fiendishly expensive Bavarian Manson-pattern cannons - these are currently 3D-printed, I believe - my plan is to equip the Bavarian artillery with French guns!

Catalogue picture of the Hecker & Goros Bavarian staff figures - this is most
definitely not my paintwork - the grenadier with the cased colours is from
1814, so out of my time period. Presumably that must be Herr Hecker and
Herr Goros on the left...

So no painting yet - I'm at the reading and pondering stage. I have a first-cut OOB - based on Deroy's division of Lefebvre's VII Corps on the Danube in 1809. Classic case of wargamer's dilemma: naturally I want my version of Deroy's crowd to be correct, but I am disappointed to find that the 9th and 10th infantry regiments, who were brigaded together, had identical uniforms, apart from the button metal - that makes four near-indistinguishable battalions, which feels like too much of the same for a small and potentially colourful army. At present I propose to substitute a different regiment for one of these two - one with different facings, to enhance the spectacle. Wargamer's licence - it's my damned army, I can change it if I want. Yet I know that if, maybe a year from now, some visitor points out that I have the wrong regiment present, I will find my lower lip trembling.

So I could justify it like this - the next phase (after the one that hasn't started yet) will be to add another division - I'll borrow one of the regiments from that next division now, the understanding being that I'll put everything right when the second division is complete. Yes, that would work. Anyway, let's not get into that - I haven't started yet, and I am aware that this is all silly in any case - I would happily produce any number of identical line battalions if the division were French.

Thanks to Goya - if God had intended us to buy expensive uniform
books, he would not have given us Osprey

I already had some of the standard general purpose hobbyist books which provide information on Bavarians - I even get as exotic as all 4 volumes of Elting and Knötel. Goya very kindly gave me a copy of Otto von Pivka's Osprey title on the Bavarians, which is attractive and welcome. [Aside: I used to have an earlier edition of  this book - back in the days when I was still obsessed with the idea that one day I would build up all the armies for 1813. I have some uncomfortable personal history with OvP and his works, but I'm very glad to have this back in my collection.]

I also ordered this (below) from Blackwell Books - excellent - artwork is by Peter Bunde. The book is only available with German text, so my reading of the historical bits requires a lot of coffee, and I must keep the big yellow Langenscheidt dictionary handy.

Last, I must make a gentle plug for the works of the worthy WJ Rawkins. I had a couple of his booklets years ago - I suspect that if I have a good search they should still be here somewhere [problem is that my OCD leads me to store my odd booklets in big-box magazine holders, of which I have rather a lot, and which enable me to lose whole sections of the archives in a single step...].

Goya drew my attention to Rawkins' website. Wow. The books have all been enlarged and enhanced - they are excellent. I bought the Bavarian title and a bunch of others - I bought them on CD, sent by post, and they are astonishingly inexpensive - we are talking pint-of-beer prices here. If you choose to purchase by digital download then they are even cheaper, but my own ability to keep track of a digital file without a physical copy is likely to be even worse than my ability to hang on to a paper booklet through the years. There are all sorts of Confederation Napoleonic topics, the French foreign regiments, Austria, the Kingdom of Italy - all sorts. If you have not checked these out, do yourself a favour and do so now - the link to the website is here.

Major Checkpoint

Time to have my yearly Sensible Look at what is on my list of projects - things that have been going on for a while, things which have crept in through a side entrance or otherwise jumped the queue (including Creeping Elegance items), and things that I want to start on, and which need a proper plan - or at least a better idea of what's involved.

A sanity check, in fact (or charity snack, as Cousin Dave would have put it) - always worthwhile, always throws up a few surprises and decision points, and sometimes gives an opportunity to start something fresh.

This morning's head-scratching produced the following:

Gaming (generally, like) -

Must make time to do some more ECW stuff, must set about organising another campaign (probably boardgame-based in the strategic department), and must do some more work on developing my in-house tweaked variants on C&CN, to allow for extreme ends of the action scale - i.e. smaller and larger than normal. For small actions, I'd like to develop my tactically-enhanced C&C package, in which units have a front and a formation, skirmishing appears in a more explicit form and there is even (perish the thought) a simple unit "quality" test to permit reactive changes of formation. For very large actions, I must have a proper look at C&CN Expansion #6, which deals with EPIC and similar multi-player games (all the more pressing because of the very welcome increase in the social side of my wargaming, in collaboration with Stryker and Goya); I must also do some more work on my Grand Tactical variant of C&CN, in which units are brigades, and weapon ranges and implied groundscale are halved (roughly).

One hefty byproduct of this is that I should also give serious thought to replacing my current battleboards with posh new ones in 18mm MDF - probably in a slightly larger size, and with the number of panels increased to allow games up to full EPIC or La Grande size C&CN. Daunting but probably worthwhile - however much work may have gone into repainting them, my present boards date back to 1972 or so, they are horrible (fragile) ½-inch chipboard, and life has not always been kind to them.

Organising and Painting Armies -

ECW - my armies are probably big enough, but because I bought in and retouched a load of pre-owned figures for Montrose's campaigns there is a proportion which is pretty scruffy - I mean scruffy enough for me to want to do something about it. This means getting in specific replacements for some dubious looking Scottish pikemen, and it probably means that I should get rid of a pile of spare lead which is not going to get painted. Hmmm. OK.

Peninsular War -

All Armies - I'd like to continue to progress my plan to change grouping and basing of generals and staff figures. Nice to do, but no rush.

French Army - I have enough figures for another Division for the Armée de Portugal - probably Bonet's - which will need to be painted and based. I'd like to get on with this, but it's not critical - nothing else depends on it. This is a conscious addition to the Grand Plan. There are some sappers and engineers to paint for siege activities.

This is the makings of the HLI - some fettling and puttying needed...

Anglo-Portuguese - I have the 71st Foot (HLI) on the bottletops to be painted. This may require me to add some more infantry units to make up a brigade to go with them. I'm thinking about this - I have stove-pipe figures which could become (for example) 50th Foot, and I'm sort of thinking about adding the 92nd Gordon Highlanders (don't have figures for these yet). I have a brigade of nice Portuguese infantry figures (4 line battalions and 1 of caçadores) from Hagen which need to be assembled (a bit) and painted, to fill a long overdue vacancy in the Seventh Divn. I also have some new Portuguese staff figures, which are interesting, and Hagen have also produced some splendid Portuguese cavalry - they haven't produced the command figures for these yet, but when they do I will be forced to replace my existing Portuguese cavalry (which are paint conversions based on Dutch-Belgian cuirassiers, as I recall).

1812 Spaniards - a couple more infantry battalions to paint up - nothing urgent.

1809 Spaniards - well now - I worked so hard to collect suitable castings that I now have far too many. This is tricky - it is very easy just to keep adding units to the OOB, but I need to stop this, and probably unload excess figures. I have two big Really Useful Boxes full of unpainted Spaniards, and they weigh a ton - probably a bit silly.

Form an orderly queue - Spanish grenadiers, and odd staff

I still have to finish off a battalion of grenadiers, and I'm also in conversation with Peter Bateman about replacing one of my hussar regts with a unit of converted Hinton-Hunts, which will be nearer the heart's desire.

Apart from that, from the existing lead heap, I have to paint up

- 1 further bn of converged grenadiers (Falcata)

- 2 bns of light infantry (mostly Falcata)

- 2 bns of Foot Guards (specially converted castings)

- 3 regts of Line Cavalry (Hagen)

- 1 regt of dragoons (Hagen)

- a group of infantry pioneers (Falcata)

- some more staff (NapoleoN, Falcata, home conversions)

- 1 more foot battery (mostly Hagen)

...and that's about it. Then I can get rid of the surplus figures, but this is going to hurt!

Something New - a Napoleonic Bavarian Army!

I've been looking at figure samples and swotting up on uniforms and OOBs. My intention is to aim at (as a first stage, anyway) a division of Lefebvre's VII Corps of 1809 - they can fight on the Danube and also against Andreas Hofer in the Tyrol (eventually, pending suitable figures - a campaign for which I have a strange fondness).

Thus my first effort will involve 8 line bns, 2 of jaegers, 2 or 3 regts of cavalry, 2 batteries and a few generals. I already have some figures - Ian very, very kindly sent me some surplus Hinton Hunts, with which I am delighted, and I'm working on building up a suitable stockpile. SHQ are suitable, there are some Hagen figures which look good (haven't got physical samples yet - as ever, size is everything). The Hintons are very nice - I like them - only slight problem with Hintons is that Uncle Marcus made all the Bavarian infantry with plumed helmets, which is only correct for grenadiers, so I would feel obliged to convert (and clone) deplumed fusiliers in goodish numbers. Art Miniaturen are a good source as well, but they are pricey and sometimes their figures are a little delicate for wargaming.

Anyway - early days, but I'm quite excited about this.

So much for sanity - have I decided what priority order these projects will jostle each other into? Well - nearly...

Better have a good rest, to gather my strength.