The usual mistake…

I usually dive in head first when it comes to a new project, looking at what ranges are available and what’s ‘cool’ in the army lists. Sadly the one thing I generally don’t do is calculate what I need down to the last miniature (well apart from with De Bellis Antiquatis or my future Lion Rampant project, see my next blog). I just tend to buy, buy and buy! Naturally, this does tend to lead to a few too many purchases and a little overspend. Take my recent venture into the realms of Napoleonics - the battle of Ligny. Suffice to say, while most of it is finished, there are a ‘few’ models left to be painted.

I’ve been doing a Napoleonic stock take to find the depth and extent of my madness. For the Prussians, I still have three brigades of Landwehr, two brigades of Line to finish. Add to that four units of cavalry and two guns. For the French… well… there was a fair bit more. I’d only recently finished one unit of Chasseurs a Cheval with another unit of Cheval soon to follow. However joining them could be another two units of cuirassiers, two dragoon and two hussar cavalry squadrons. All of these sprayed white for painting. 

So what am I going to do with all of this? My girlfriend Emma has an answer, of sorts. She has kindly offered to ‘tidy it all away’ for me, but I suspect she means straight into the bin! The HORROR! Ebay is another alternative but I am loathe to sell anything - from my experience you can guarantee the one thing you sell will be exactly what you need in the future. Sorry, those looking for a quick bargain are going to be out of luck…

There is only one course of action open to me really - get it painted of course! I may one day aspire to have enough models to have the huge game in the Black Powder rulebook or the likes you see at shows. While I have the infantry painted, I don’t really have enough cavalry, even to form a division. That’s a great incentive for me to get them done, so I can wield a ‘proper’ sized cavalry division in the rules. 

So when the cavalry are done, then I’ll need some horse artillery. That’s assuming I don’t get distracted by something else in the mean time… Mongols are on the horizon but this time, I’m being very careful exactly how much I’m buying…