Build me an Army worthy of Alzheim!

I owe a fair bit to Phil Olley in terms of developing my thinking on war-gaming projects. Specifically I think i'm now thinking of the whole shape of the enterprise rather than just pursuing it on the basis of "ooo, shiny!".


In that spirit, I'd just like to take a little time to put down a high level outline of this Spencer Smith project for the Duchy of Alzheim.

As you are doubtless aware, dear reader, this began a few weeks ago with the chance purchase of a large-ish (about 90-odd figures) lot of Spencer Smith figures on eBay. These were easily arranged into four groups that I took as my first four regiments; something that 'lazy me' quite liked because in terms of figure purchases and painting I was already almost halfway there, so to speak. that's not really been the case, as I've been almost completely re-painting the miniatures, but for me it was an important early psychological boost.

Playing mind games with myself is very important when I am considering painting 'x' number of 53-figure regiments for "The Wargame" rules.

Also, having more or less four regiments to start off with has given me some guidance as to a basic building block of two- to-four regiments so that I may set myself milestones as I go on. I think two regiments is a reasonable level at which to set milestones or, as I like to think of them, "reward points". Work hard young man, and you'll receive your reward. In this case, painting a gun or a couple of command figures.

So now to timelines. Experiments over the past couple of weeks have led me to believe that I can push out about 20 painted SSM infantry in a week of easy-going painting - say about 6-7 hours of actual work. This leads me to think I can put out about one and a half to two regiments in a month. I'll stick with one and a half as I am wary of burn-out.

I think then I can set myself a reasonable deadline of Christmas to get a reasonable force together.

For the Alzheim Army, I've put together the following rough order of battle:

Infantry Regiments
IR#1 Garde (3 x 24 figure battalions)
IR#2 Leib
IR#3 von Browne
IR#4 von Prittwitz
IR#5 La Rosee
IR#6 Ehrbach
Garrison Regiments
GR#1
GR#2
GR#3
GR#4
GR#5 (Invalids)

Cavalry
KR#1 Kurfurst
KR#2 von Roth
DR#1 von Reuss
DR#2 von Waldau
HR#1 von Raabe
In addition an artillery brigade of two battalions each of three field and one howitzer battery. Oh and three light infantry units because I like the montagnards/ miquelets, pandurs and jaeger from the SSM range.
So the target for Chrismas becomes four Regiments, a garrison regiment, a unit of dragoons, some guns and a unit of light infantry. Pretty comfortable considering the Garde, Garrison and light infantry are all 24-figure units.
In my next post, I'll talk about the opposition - The Empire.