A Little Local Difficulty...

So I decided to try and cut some bases today in the comfort of the living room, while my partner sat and used the computer. This inevitably put me within range of our two cats Sooty and Ralphy (aka "The Devil's Children"). As the photo shows, the allure of small metal men and bits of cardboard were too much to resist for them, and they took pleasure in batting everything around.

I've lept straight back into my 1866 Austro-Prussian project in the last few days. Yesterday saw me finish painting most of the infantry for a second Corps, and now I'm prepping and basing the Cavalry and Artillery. I'm slightly surprised at how much Pendraken 10mm stuff I have, as whilst delving through a box I came across another almost complete Austrian Army pack. So maybe I'll get a third Corps done? Depends on if I get totally narked off with painting White and Blue uniforms.

I read the latest couple of issues of Wargames Illustrated over the weekend too, which is nudging my interests in the direction of some WSS gaming in the future. I read Richard Holmes' book on Marlborough a couple of years back and thoroughly enjoyed it. Again the issue will be of expense and scale. Given how long it took me to get a decent 28mm French Napoleonic Army, I'm reluctant to spend loads on a WSS one in the same scale. Also, I agree with many that 15mm and 10mm give a great look to the larger battles like Blenheim etc. On the other hand 28mm will be good due to all the amazing and colourful uniforms and character figures. Then again there's always Barry Hilton's new skirmish game for the period: 'Donnybrook' (also in the new WI) which can utilize only a handful of figures and follows on from a lot of recent popular games like Muskets and Tomahawks and Saga.

French Indian Wars - 28mm British Regulars

These chaps are from AW Miniatures. I picked a couple of their unit packs up from the Triples show last year. I was impressed with their prices, and the figures themselves are a nice chunky size. They were great to paint, plus seeing as we're using the Muskets and Tomahawks skirmish rules I don't have to paint up loads of them. For these I used a black undercoat with about two layers of Vallejo Flat Red then adding some white to highlight a third coat. Same approach again with the yellow cuffs and turnbacks. The AW range is really coming along and I noticed recently that they've just produced a range of British Grenadiers for FIW too.