Planning Forward

 These few pictures might tell you a little story of where I am going next.

This first one is of some few Swedish Dragoons. I wonder how many of Holger Ericsson's figures representing the army of Charles XII are actually painted as such. 

I am nothing but responsive to my comments...

These beautiful marching figures are from a small stash I have had in my collection for quite a long time part-painted. So, I shall need to buy a few more to round them out to a full unit which will be well worth the expenditure. Don't tell anyone, but it would be a lovely thing to put together a small Swedish army from HE figures. All arms are represented fairly comprehensively and by heaven I already have rather a lot of infantry. There are even horse teams for the guns.

Next are some more HE figures. Those in the first picture below are some of the first HE's that I bought when I heard of them, they are painted in something of the style of the French guard cavalry. 

Next there is a lovely little batch that came to me through JP from the collection of Stuart Asquith which are not too far away from my own in their look. I am thinking of a composite Alzheim Leib Regiment with Dukes' and Duchesses' squadrons respectively. These too will take a few purchases to bring them up to strength and the heck with it, yes they will both be rather over-officered with many an appointment "à la suite".

The picture does not really do them justice...

Last, we have another red-coated regiment from the Comardo Collection. I had long since decided that the Alzheim dragoon regiments will wear red coats and here we shall go. 

I think that totals another 49 cavalry which will need to be completely painted from scratch plus the finishing works that will need to be done on the 15 Swedish Dragoons which are on he painting desk now. I like that. Also, the Comardo Alzheim Dragoons paint time will neatly fill the waiting time for the newly ordered figures On a financial front it represents a good combination of lead pile reduction and new incomers!

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Things to do in 2008

Just thinking out loud here, you understand. I can’t be held accountable for any of this, OK?

I’ve been thinking about where to go next with the Duchy of Alzheim. As I’m writing this, my French Army stands at nine foot units (7 Line and 2 Light), five of horse and a smattering of artillery. Now, I reckon that this is a pretty fair force for now and probably won’t be adding too much more to it for a little while, apart from the ongoing effort to round out the unit sizes to my current targets and eventually adding some Gardes Suisses to pair with the Gardes Francaises and some more gunners. Naturally I’ll revisit this at a later date and add more units, but that’s for the longer term.

I’m now looking for another project to take me through the next twelve months. I’m thinking of taking up my original Seven Years’ War project and picking up where I left off with my Prussians. I’d gotten as far as building out IR13 to my original unit standard which was about 43 figures, so it won’t take too much to build it up from there. On top of that I had about a dozen of DR5 and a half dozen of the von Kleist Horse Grenadiers and a couple of guns.

From this base I’ve been poking around at my lead stocks and think I can make a pretty good start on another two Musketeer Regiments and a Fusilier Regiment, each with sufficient Grenadiers to give me a couple of combined Grenadier battalions. I’m then wanting to round out DR5 to three Squadrons, the v. Kleist Horse Grenadiers to a similar strength(?), add a Cuirassier Regiment, a Hussar regiment, some more guns and some v. Kleist Light Infantry.

That should make a nice little force, smaller than the French, but able to stand well enough against them in the field, especially if they ally up with my Bavarians once they’ve been built up to 2 Foot and one Horse unit.

I think that’d be enough to occupy me for the next twelve months or so.

What are your longer term plans?