Plans for 2014 – And some painting progress!

Before 2014 gets too established and the moment passes I best get my plans for 2014 laid out. I’d like to think I’ll update and amend the Painting Master Plan to the right, or launch back into my Wargaming Neutral project but… I think too much planning seems to lead to too much disappointment when life gets in the way and things just don’t happen. So lets do this with a broader brush, so to speak!

2014 First Quarter

The first quarter is really taken up with the painting challenge for which you’ll see the first entries below if you’ve not already seen them on the Analogue blog. My target is 1000pts which equates to 200 28mm foot figures!!! I currently stand at 95 points. This was partly because I wanted to finish off some odds and ends to clear the table so I can now start on the main bulk. The target is really driven by the Ayton game in May. Henry has asked us to keep our respective forces a little secret so I’ll not list them here but as part of the Challenge I hope to get another two foot regiments done. Each at 56 figures… This will make a big hole in the Challenge target and leave me with about six weeks afterwards to do the rest and some ‘specials’. I also intend to paint some 15mm ACW cavalry to allow me to play Longstreet at last and some microarmour simply because I have so much of it to paint!

2014 Second Quarter

This will really be taken up with the last of the Ayton figures and if the last three years have been anything to go by, a few weeks to recover afterwards! So moving on…

2014 Third Quarter

The beginning of October will see another ‘Ayton’ team game but this time in Framlingham. Although I have no ‘need’ to paint anything for this weekend I am taking part in a 20mm WSS game so it seems only right that my Savage Swans make an appearance so I have some rather nice Les Higgins miniatures to paint. How many in total has yet to be decided! I do like the figures though so may end up with more than planned!

As this quarter will also include the school holidays and likely our holidays as well I’m not sure it’s wise to commit to anything else!

2014 Fourth Quarter

In theory this should let me move on to all the other projects I have on the go. Likely targets are:

• Modern Microarmour – huge amounts still to do!
• 6mm SF
• 15mm AWI (potential game for 2015!)

I may even make a start on stuff for Ayton 2015 as I hope by then we’ll have agreed on the theme.

Most important in a lot of ways will be to get more games in. The ‘away’ games are always excellent but two games a year is not good. So this year I’ll aim for two ‘home’ games as well. No point in being too optimistic!

We shall see….

Some progress…

I have made some progress on finishing the odds and ends and getting the first two entries into the Challenge. I’d hoped to get something into the fortnightly rounds but just haven’t had time. The odds and ends consisted of finishing the rebasing of my Savage Swans. First done in 2011 for the first Ayton game I had allowed for single, two and three figures bases and had mixed in NCOs and officers with the ranks as I was short of figures. I wanted to adopt a similar scheme to that used by Essex Boy for his Gateway Alliance troops so I did the extra figures to have 48 rank and file (though I chose to keep and NCO for each company), a four figure command stand and four officers out front. It was only when I came to base them all that I realised I was one officer short! So he became the first entry for the Challenge.

Officer for the grenadier company:

Which enables me to have the Swans laid out so:The next project was to add to the lovely selection of troops given to me by Tim Hall after the Scotland game. This was a most generous gift and having now rebased them I will be taking pictures soon. I did however want to add some extra figures so they fit in to my force better. The first thing was to add some limbers for the two guns. These are Irregular limbers with Minden drivers. I have (finally) chosen to keep the gun unbased so it can be properly added to the limber, but with a ‘guard’ base added behind with two Huzzah Miniatures musketeers.

The Master of Artillery is an Irregular Miniatures figure. He is rather big but he is the gunner famous for his size and strength who dragged a 12lb gun singlehandedly from the field!

And stealing an idea from Essex Boy, the guard base has a curved front to allow the gun to turn when in column of march. This does mean I will need to re-base my other guns to match.

And finally, the newly formed brigade in the Altefritzenburg army will need a commander so we have Oberstgeneral Halle:

I’ve also been working on the re-basing of some of the 15mm ACW. I’ve another twenty odd stands to do but here is the start:

So there we go. A good little start to the year!

Oh. And I aim to post more updates as well!

Honest…