After a few months of cracking on with my Dark Age project I hit a break point while we went on holiday to Cornwall for two weeks (and after the hottest summer for decades we were only slightly annoyed that the weather was shit…) and when I came back I felt I needed a little change before resuming the project. But I wasn’t sure what…
Over two years ago I started painting the next of my C18th ImagiNation Altefritzenburg regiments. This was intended to be the as then BIG battalions with 36 musketeers and 12 grenadiers. However at the time I had decide to move to smaller units so rather than paint the 12 grenadiers I had primed I prepped 6 musketeers and paint them and 6 of the grenadiers. These sat on table and workbench for a looooong time. Every few months I would dust them! At some point I prepped the 18 figures I needed to make up one of the smaller regiments (30 figures) but again these sat there and got dusted every few months… Until my return from my hols when I decide it was time to finish them! It took about a week but they form the 2nd Altefritzenburg Regiment.
As ever, intending to just finish the prepped figures I felt the need to do the battalion gun and crew and a brigade command stand. The bulk of the figures are RSM (I really like the figures!) with command coming from the Minden range. 
For the battalion gun I wanted to try and emulate what John Ray had done with some of his and have figures pushing the gun rather than crewing it, which looks a little weird when the rest of the unit is striding manfully towards the enemy! I don’t have John Ray’s sculpting skills so just took two of the RSM gunners and bent the arms a little and stuck them behind the gun! You can also see the other 6 grenadiers I had prepped painted as a test stand for what will become the 3rd Altefritzenburg Regiment.
I also regretted the fancy Altefritzenburg flag which is a bugger to paint! What I’ve done is scan the pre-cutout flag and will try and print that for future units and add painted highlights. We shall see….
I’d also wanted to do a brigade stand. The mounted officer is a Minden Austrian and the chap in the greatcoat a Crann Tara artillery officer and the ADC at the back a Crann Tara early French hussar office. Both are lovely figures.
It was nice to get back to something for this project. It’s unlikely the C18th chaps will see the table before Ayton 2020 but it has got me thinking about exactly what I want from the project so I’ll be sorting what units I want to do (eventually) and offloading the surplus. It was quite scary the amount of unpainted C18th lead I have….
So what next? More C18th? Return to the Dark Ages? Or something a little (or not so little) different? 🙂