Milestones

i just looked at my stats and saw that I had hit a milestone of 600 posts and 179990 pageviews. Thank you everyone for making that possible. This has been a fun way keep track of my hobby. I appreciate all of the feedback I have gotten.

Reassessing My Figures for Sharp Practice

As Sharp Practice 2 gets closer to being released, I decided to head over to the shelves and see what was lurking inside. I started with my Napoleonics. It has been forever since these have seen the light of day. Honestly, I was in better shape than I realized. I had purchased a slew of figures over time looking to do something impossible, make a 1 to 1 Battalion for both my British and my French. I remember painting night after night in an attempt to make it happen. I did not even come close. But, I have a good set of troops that are ready to go.

French Legere Battalion

I probably have the most figures painted for the French than anyone else. A historical unit at paper strength has:
4x Chasseur Companies of 70 to 140 men.

1x Voltigeur Company of 70 to 140 men.

1x Carabinier Company of 70 to 140 men.

Each company was composed of a Captain, 2 Lieutenants, a Sergeant-major, 4 Sergeants, a Furrier, 8 Corporals, 2 or 3 Drummers and 121 privates. On top of this was a color party of an eagle bearer, two sergeants with halbeards and 6 to 9 Sappeurs. It was commanded by a Chef d'bataillon (mounted), an Adjudant-Major (rank of captain), a Sous-Adjudant-Major ( rank of lieutenant), a Adjudant Sous-officer (a senior NCO), and a Drum Corporal.

So, what do I have ready? Well I have a full company of Chasseurs (the line company of the Legere (light) battalion. I have 72 men, four sergeants (two with fannions), two drummers, a trumpeter, two lieutenants and a captain.

I will apologize in advance for the pictures. I am working at night and am trying not to wake my family while I play with my toys. Thus, the lighting is terrible.

You can just make out the fannions in the picture. But that is only one company out of four. Well, I have the makings of more. I found two more painted officers waiting to be based. I also have fourteen men on painting sticks and two sergeants there as well. I also have a bugler among the waiting to be painted. I have a ziploc full of more miniatures to paint. I just might have enough to finish out two more companies if I get to it.

So for my grand plan of an entire battalion, well, that has fallen a bit short. I only have a single group of Carabiniers. There are nine of these brave men who are lead by a sergeant (the fellow next to the large rock). But I do have more of these fellows. Apparently, I had bought a big bag of them from Old Glory at some point. There has to be atleast 50 left in the bag. At the moment, I have 22 of them on Painting sticks. I also found a painting stick with two painted drummers and an officer for them. So if I ever break out the brushes, the Caribiners are sorted.

What about Voltigeurs? Well, they are not even basecoated. I have a whole 8 voltigeurs, plus two officers and a pair of drummers. Time to go back to AB miniatures and shop it seems.

What about the command staff. Well, I have one mounted officer painted and ready to go. I have a second mounted officer on a painting stick with a fellow that looks like an ADC. I also have my eagle bearer and sergeants all painted up.

The figures are better than my sorry photograph shows. These will be joined by three sappers that I have on a painting stick along with a drum major. These have not even been undercoated. But since I only have one company painted, it really does not matter.

But what Rich has mentioned is the supports that your base force can obtain. Well, I have a bit of kit. First I have a cannon with a four man crew. Yikes, this picture is awful.

But what about cavalry? Yes, I have some. I have 22 Chasseurs with a trumpeter, an officer and a standard bearer. They are complete but need their bases finished. Very nice minis that can be table ready in about an hours work plus drying time.

Given Rich's article, I am assuming that a base force is six groups of figures. Five groups of "line" troops (8 figures) and one of skirmishers (6 figures). Based on this, I have what I need for my French. What I don't have is my troops based very well for this. The French are too spread out. I can't really make groups of eight out of them as they are three to a base. It does work well to have them in groups of 9 as I can do their formations properly. Plenty of choices of big men are available. I will just have to work around this for the time being. I would love sabot bases but I would have to make them and rebase everyone. Yuck!

The British

My British are a generic light company. I have 60 men painted that are based in twos. I have another four that are at 80% complete. I have three sergeants for them and two officers. I'll do photos of them another night.

In terms of additional troops for the British, well they are out of luck. I have about half of a line company on painting sticks (36 men, 7 sergeants, two drummers and two sappers). I also have four officers, two drummers and a sergeant painted as well. For battalion staff, I have a mounted officer and a pair of standard bearers. I need to do some shopping. I have earmarked some British troops for my next pass through ebay.

What I lack is support option. I don't have any artillery for the British nor any cavalry. In terms of a base force, I have that with my light infantry company. I really would like to have some center company troops and then rebase some light company fellows to be individually based for skirmishing. But at this point, it works.

Conclusions

One thing I don't have yet is carts and baggage animals. I want a mule team. I think I have a generic cart somewhere that I can use. All I know is this, Sharp Practice is distracting me from finishing my terrain that I need to get done.

New Toys - The Hotel

I got around to opening my hotel. Reycast from Poland has done a great job with this. It is a very nice looking building.

The pieces were wrapped up with saran wrap and in a nice bubble wrapped package. Once the saran wrap was removed, the pieces were very nicely cut. There are a few parts that need some sanding. Also some of the balcony railings need to be trimmed to fit. But it is still very nice.

Just looking at the pieces, I was kind of lost. I looked at the pictures from the auction and started to fool with it.

The roof was not that hard to figure out.

The ground and second floors came together quite nicely. As you can see, there is plenty of room inside each floor. There is dividers to provide three rooms per floor.

This is the top floor. I am not certain that I am sold on the giant balcony. I am wondering if I made that the second floor instead, it might look better as it would provide the cover to the entryway. So at this point in time, I now have 10 MDF buildings to complete and only 1 that I have finished. I need to find time to work on them.

More Paper Terrain

I managed to build some more Eric Hotz Paper Terrain buildings. I must say, I really like these. So far, I have a Saloon (tent with false front), a Livery Stable, a bank, a sheriff's office, a shack, a blacksmith, a privy, a double privy and a pair of sheds. Even with my butter fingers I have managed to put these together with little issues.

And the saloon:

The one thing about these is that they would be WAY less fiddly in a larger scale than 15mm. But they came together quickly and look pretty good. I have enough scenery now for my game this weekend. There are still a number of buildings that I want to make. I just need to cut them out and apply the glue.

Blogger Followers

Not sure what I am doing wrong but I keep noticing that my followers have started dropping off lately. I was at 171 not that long ago and am now at 166. I would assume that it is because of the useless posts here if it were not for the fact that it has been 171 for a long time. It seems y'all are fairly tolerant of my posts.

Anyway, I have made a few more paper buildings for my old west game this saturday with my son. I have not taken any pictures yet but I will later this week. Strangely enough, I am finding it rather relaxing to put these together. I hope to have at least 10 buildings done by Saturday.

Been fiddling around with the Kharkov scenario book some as well. I also almost started work on one of my apartment buildings that i bought from Ebay. The problem is, no directions. I have most of it together but I am at a loss on the decorative bits.

Update on the new figures

Here are the post Apocalyptic figures that I got.

First up is an odd looking group. It is count Dracula and his four deaths. In front of them are six creatures with really big guns.

Next up is a biker gang. Honestly, I really like these guys. They match with what i found in Rebel Miniatures offerings.

Then there is a group of punk rockers with weapons. Nothing says a Dead Kennedy's concert like axes and automatic weapons.

Now we have a group of Indiana Jones head hunters. I am not sure who these guys are supposed to be.

Then we have a group of police that were called in about the apparent homicide committed by the guys above.

This group must be the Popular Peoples Front for the Liberation of Popular People. Or just a generic badguy group.

Lastly we have some members of the NRA because, well, we like to shoot.

Anyway, these are the figures that came with the cowboys. There is some fun stuff in there. I just can't figure out what to use it for. If I played Zombie games, there is a bunch of useful stuff there.

New Toys

I purchased some new miniatures from Ebay. I received some nicely painted Old West miniatures. Enough for three gangs in Fist Full of Lead - Reloaded.

The first up is a group of what I will use as Lawmen.

They just struck me as looking like lawmen more than the others.

The next is the Calamity Jane Gang. The blonde headed girl is the leader.

Then the last is the Dixon gang.

I really like the figure with the two pistols. Reminds me of Kevin Costner's character in Silverado. All are nicely painted. This was a good purchase. It came with some post apocalyptic miniatures. There are some nice police figures, some motorcycles and other odds and ends for a total of more than 20 such figures. There are some monster looking things that I have no clue what they are. Still, it was worth it for the old west minis. No clue what I will do with the rest.

Kharkov Buildings and some Old West.

Kharkov Campaign

Over the weekend, I had several packages arrive. I have been on a bit of a buying spree lately. First up is a lovely warehouse building from Foundations of War. I discovered this on eBay and snapped it up. The instructions are on their website and do not come enclosed in the kit.

The kit was in an envelope with some cardboard in it for support. But that did not stop my post man from cramming it in the box. Fortunately there was no damage to the kit.

I have not yet begun to assemble it. The instructions are far less step by step and will require some figuring. It is a fairly large piece though.

Next up are two buildings from a company called Eldo Miniatures that seem to be exclusively eBay. They are small three and four story buildings that look like they will paint up nicely. These too came with no instructions but they seem simple enough. Again, they are untouched and still in the bag.

Then, i also managed to find a hotel in 15mm that seemed to fit with what I was looking to do. This is from another eBay company called ReyCast out of Poland. The price was right and it looked promising. I don't expect to see it till the end of the month even though it is marked today as shipped. Things are starting to come together.

Old West

My son has asked me to break out the minis again and get in a Old West cowboys game. In honor of that, I just bought Fist Full of Lead - Reloaded last week. Seems like a very straight forward ruleset. I have enough Cowboy minis to get in a good game but I only have adobe buildings. So it was time to fix that. I happen to have some PDFs of Eric Hotz's Whitewash City buildings that I had bought years ago. I started to fiddle with these and rescale them. Here is the first of my efforts.

Honestly, this came out WAY better than I thought it would. The railing was fiddly to deal with but i think it was worth the effort. i should have started out with something bigger but it was a trail balloon. Now to knock out a bank, livery, blacksmith, some stores and a sherrif's office this week.

15mm impudent Mortal House finished.

I finally finished the first of the seven buildings from the kickstarter. The raw product looked like this:

A little spackle, some roof details and some window dressing combined with paint, and I ended up with this:

All and all, I am happy with how it turned out. I am trying to figure out how to do the next building.