reflections

I've been looking back over the last few posts to this blog and have realised that there are several themes running through it. I have stated my allegiance to 28mm gaming on several occasions, yet the last purchases I have made are 30mm Spencer smiths and 15/18mm ACW. Admittedly the latter was to round out a win of £25 of Blue Moon sculpts in a Battelgames/Miniature Wargames competition. I've tried 15mm ACW before but lost heart, hopefully with these lovely sculpts I be able to keep going. I have been re-reading Shelby Foote's three volume history of the ACW and this has inspired me. I have several regiments of 28mm ACW based for black powder, yet as is the case with many of my armies I've never used them as I don't have enough to play a reasonable sized battle. I have decided that I'll paint the 18mm figures before deciding which scale to go with.
The Spencer Smith thing is probable my own fault. I painted a battalion of the c18th British for my youngest son for Christmas last year. They were a joy to paint and even with my poor skills look great arrayed in their scarlet ranks. Then I had a good win on eBay of over 100 plastic Spencer Smiths which have been painted as either side in the AWI. I've used 48 man regiments so fairly Old School, but have based them on 4x4 on a 40mm square base. This seems to be a fairly universal basing method and will allow for quicker movement than single bases. At this stage I'm looking at using Black Powder as the basis but with tweeks to allow simplification for the boys. I've been so enamoured of the scale and the style that I made a diversion the other week to London to buy around a 1000 castings from a lovely chap. They will allow me to have great little armies for the AWI and then I may expand into the SYW as most of the figures can double up, I'm not that much of a button counter!
On the back burner are still my c19th WW1 project and some 28mm WW2.
Thats enough to be getting on with, especially with Christmas and Crusade coming up.