Five months since my last post! Shocking really! 14th November… How the world has changed in five months…The initial delay in posting was just slow progress. I had a couple of blog posts I wanted to do (the Durham Lard day and a great weekend in Newark and Lincoln) but never got them finished. Part of the blame fell on Twitter. It has a great gaming community and is ideal for doing quick updates and progress reports. But with the Ayton game in May in the offing I really wanted to get my army prepared so my New Year resolution was to do a little each and every day. And bar a minor break around the Vapnartak weekend I have done that!
The original plan for Ayton was just to do another unit or two and sort out reorganising my Alterfritzenburg Cuirassiers from one big 24 figure units (with separate officers) into three 12 figures units with command included. Unfortunately the figures I chose for my extra unit were Hinchliffe X Range AWI (by Steve Hezzlewood). These are lovely figures but when I came to base them on my usual 50mm square bases it was clear they just looked wrong… Iain Burt (Essex Boy) has been mocking my ‘skirmish order’ troops for years (git…) and I knew Dave Hall (World2Dave) was slowly rebasing his troops from 50mm down to 45mm so with heavy heart I decided that now was the time for The Great Rebasing!
And it wasn’t just the line units that needed doing. They weren’t straight forward as I had 4 figure command stands and two seperate officer figures. Two officers on a new 6 figure stand would be wrong and I didn’t want to swap a line figure and put an officer in the ranks (although I’ve done this on one other unit but don’t like it). Fortunately in my last order from Crann Tara Graham was kind enough to throw in about ten fifers! So each unit got a fifer in the rear command rank…which meant more painting. I also wanted to move all the skirmishers types from 25mm square MDF onto 25mm round washers… And remove the Altefritzenburg artillery from based guns and crews to individual bases… And finally, the cuirassier reorganisation needed two extra command sets, 6 extra troopers, and 9 of the existing riders removed from horses I no longer like and put on those I do! And finally, the Legion Dragoons and Lancers needed proper command stands with flags and trumpeters… And as I was going to have to unbase so many of the cavalry to do all this I decided now was the time to move to mounting them in 2s rather than 3s! So as you can see, it escalated a little!
So… here’s the full run down! The whole army…
So there we have the main army… and here’s a few more pics to show a bit more. You can see in the picture if the Swans that the main regiment has a new command stand. The original was done back in 2011 for the very first Ayton and used RSM running standard bearers and slightly smaller flags than I use now. So new flags were presented to the unit and a new Minden/Crann Tara command stand painted. Could face binning the old flag so it joined the brigade commander on his stand.
My small opposition army (that of Braunschweig) I was going to leave as is for now as I did not intend taking them to Ayton but as I was in a rebasing frenzy now seemed the time. As before, fifers were needed, and I decided to replace the two flags that Tim Hall did for me originally with ones that matched my own style and the other unit.
Part of the troops Tim passed to me a few years ago were 16 Foundry Jaegers. I painted an officer for these and tried to match Tim’s style but didn’t quite make it… So when the time came to rebase I had always intended making two 12 figures units (I have had the extra figures for years!) and painting them to match but in the end I decide I couldn’t manage it so four of the original units got repaints (sorry Tim!) in my usual style.
So there we have it. My grand rebasing fully completed well before the planned Ayton game that SHOULD have been happening next weekend! Of course, if the whole Covid fiasco hadn’t happened I’m sure I’d have still been frantically rebasing up until the night before!
So what next? I’ve already started some Jaegers for Altefritzenburg and still have a unit of hussars part painted so I need to finish them. And I need a proper Army Command stand with generals and ADCs. And I’ve started making up RUB inserts to store them all.
After that? May have a change of scale/period. Maybe some 15mm ACW. Maybe 15mm Ancients. I’m wary of the latter as that may prompt me to consider a massive rebasing project!
Keep well all and stay safe!
Andy
Lovely figures and job.
Lovely army; the pig terror weapons superb
Wow! This is an absolutely AMAZING collection!
I, too, love the Porcus Crispy terror weapons, well done on the mass rebase, its hard, hard work, and I think your army looks absolutely splendid!
On to victory, my man!
At last! Your ragtag army of skirmishing rabble are no longer skirmishing. I see though that the heavy artillery still occupy carpet tiles all of their own.
On the whole, when push comes to shove, I’m seriously jealous of your gorgeous army.
Well done you.
Iain
A really nice army Andy of which anyone of us would feel proud
Fantastic looking army!
Christopher