What's on the Workbench?

To ask the question is to provide the answer - quite a bit!

Work goes well on Regiment Bearn - it ought to be finished by this time next week. I'll follow up with a post on how I have been painting my French regiments.

As you all could see from earlier posts, I have finished off the first squadron of the Turpin Hussar Regiment. I had originally thought that I might do the Royal Nassau Regiment, but it turned out I had better sources for Turpins'.

I have figures on order to make a second squadron. By the time this regiment has been pieced together, it will have been done with 10 Prussian Hussars in Mirliton (the troopers), one French Trumpeter and an Austrian Hussar in Busby (representing the CO). It's a pity the trooper figures aren't a little more animated, but there you go!

I reward myself when I am painting a big batch of figures by letting myself paint a handful of more colourful or just "different" troops. For being good and painting up Regiment Bearn, I am letting myself repaint two RSM marching Lorraine Grenadiers (almost the first figures I ever seriously "tried" to paint) as being from the Gardes Suisses and Gardes Francaises. I will post some images when they are done. I hope that they don't raise the bar too high for the rest of their units. Those test figures always seem to get that little bit of extra-loving-care.

My Saxons are still plodding along - two or three figures at a time. I must extract my finger and make a concerted effort on one of the Regiments. I've discovered that the RSM Austrian Freikorps Lacy figure would make a pretty passable von Rochow Fusilier, so there's another project for my Saxon Army - especially considering that there is a Prussian Infantry Officer without lapels who could lead them.

Beyond this, I am expecting a pretty substantial re-inforcement in the form of more RSMs I was fortunate to acquire in a trade. They'll let me add another two or three French regiments and put me in a position to start thinking about which Bavarian and which Hungarian Regiments I might like to go to work on. I like the idea of allying the Bavarians up with the french, it's like the War of the Spanish Succession all over again. It might be fun to put on a scenario with them recreating the storming of the Schellenburg!

I think that'll keep me until Chrismas. 2006.