More monsters, plans for "Blucher" and other stuff

First up, it's a sad day as Spock has died again.  Unfortunately it's for real this time.  Thank you for entertaining me for years in space and on impossible missions Mr Nimoy.

I have had a bit of a "run-about like a mad thing" week again.  My Mum has been released from hospital, but is still pretty rough so we are keeping an eye on her.  My Daughter is struggling with post-natal depression, so we are keeping an eye on her too and I am struggling with a constantly coughing wife, so I am keeping an eye on her as well.  I need 3 eyes!  

Painting has been somewhat stifled by the lack of eyes :) but I have managed a few bits.  

 I have rebased some 28mm Old Guard for a nice chap in Belgium, so they are off on their travels soon.

I have also painted 90% of the second batch of the Shadows of Brimstone figures.  3 Slashers(big red things), 6 Hellbats(winged snakes), 12 "Hungry Dead"(zombies with a few conversions using Perrys ACW bits) and 4 heroes(Lawman, Preacher, Indian and Rancher woman).  Just the huge Harbinger left and that is the lot done.  Then it's onto some dead cowboys for Dead Man's Hand.

Due to my wife's bad cough, which is always worse at night, I tend to be up until stupid o'clock in the morning.  So I have been "planning things", which is usually a bad thing as it ends up costing me money.  It also usually ends up with part finished projects, such as 15mm AWI, 15mm ACW, 28mm Dark Ages, 28mm Medieval......The list is endless.  For the first time however I am contemplating getting some Napoleonic figures for myself.  Luckily I am considering a proper size, 6mm!  The reason for this is Sam Mustafa's new set of rules.  Blucher is a fun game and plays quickly, as can be seen in my previous post.  While it is perfectly playable with cards, such as the Hundred Days expansion for it, they are just not aesthetically pleasing to a die-hard figure gamer.  So I spent several hours planning and working out what I would need to replicate the cards in 6mm figures.

Then I slapped myself for being stupid.  Why replicate something that you can already use to play a specific period or campaign?  I'm a dumbass at times, espescially at 3am.  So I started reading up on Leipzig, as it's a major battle and had elements from all the major nations.  Another slapping soon appeared though as I did some working out of bases, figures etc.  If you average the bases out as each representing 2000 men I would need 112 bases for the French Grand Armee alone!  As each base would need 2 units to replicate the brigade that makes each base about £3.50, so about £400 just for the French.  That idea went flying out of the window very rapidly.

A bit more thought and I considered doing Austerlitz, Jena, Salamanca and others, but eventually came up with the winner.  My first project for Blucher is to be Marengo.  The French had about 24000 men and the Austrians had just over 30000, so it's not too big and the forces will form a nice basis to expand for Austerlitz by adding some Russians and additional French.  

The battle itself seems to be fairly interesting, with the initial attacks by Austria pushing the French back before Napoleon counter-attacked and defeated the Austrian army.  So that's the plan now.  I have figured out that I will need 12 infantry and 2 cavalry bases for the French, against 11 infantry and 3 cavalry for the Austrians.  Nothing too major, I will be placing an order next week when some funds have cleared.  It's good to have a plan, even if it's not the plan you had last week, or expected at all.  The aim is to have something approaching this look to my bases, but probably not as good as Steve's. 

Have fun and I'll be back next week.