Royal 13ieme

Hi,

Painting post today, the 13ieme regiment of infantry, Royal.



As one of the "vieux" regiments, these will serve as one of my trained infantry in our upcoming campaign.



I'm still not clear on how I get better pictures in a relatively dim basement than I do in full daylight.  The angle maybe?



I'm now tantalizingly close to completion of my list for Maurice.  I'm half-finished my last cavalry regiment, at which point I'll need one more base of guns, and some mercenaries.  I've more or less settled on the following list:

National Advantages:  Oblique Order, Supply Depots, Maison du Roi, a la Baionette

1 Elite (guard) infantry (Claire)
2 Trained infantry (Navarre and Royal)
4 conscript infantry (Artois, Chartres, Foix, Saintonge)

1 Elite (guard) cavalry (La Reine)
3 Trained cavalry (Maugiron, du Roi Dragon, Archiac)

3 batteries of guns

Under the command of Le Marquis d'Escquarbrie



The army is mainly about flexibility and durability.  I have a core of capable units, up to 5 of which come back at full strength when broken, which means I can use them aggressively.  I've got decent mobility with the relatively large cavalry wing plus oblique. I've got a bit of an edge in the infantry clash, and decent artillery support.  For mercenaries, I'd originally thought to do some Bavarians or reichsarmee (for variety), but am now leaning towards more French (as they'd be usable in my Might and Reason list).  I know there's at least two armies out there using the Lethal Volleys / Rally to the colours combination, so hopefully mobility and tactical genius will be enough to compensate ;)

On the topic of starting something new, I've finally decided to take the napoleonic plunge.  Scale will be 15mm, and I'll begin by collecting a force for Lasalle that I can use to game with at the THMG.  The leading contenders  right now are a Peninsular British light brigade a force of 1813-14 Russian guard.  The Brits have the advantage of lots of unit variety (also, Bernard Cornwell ate my soul), while the Russians have the advantage of being Russian.  It's still also possible I  will simply bow to the inevitable and go French, but after pumping out a force for Maurice, a change would be nice.

I keep waffling between AB and Blue Moon for the figs.  AB, from what I've seen, are simply gorgeous models.  BM while not perfect, are nice, a little more animated, and provided I buy the entire army over one year (so as to take advantage of the OG army discount) cost about half as much.  The sculpting, while good, is still a little more rough that AB, however.  I'm unused to buying expensive stuff in this hobby (I've written before about how I tend to get large buys at discount via ebay or bartertown), but this is going to be a special indulgence for me.  I want to really enjoy painting whatever I choose, which keeps bringing me back to AB.  Once I get my head around the cost involved (and realize I'll be distributing it over a good chunk of time), I imaging I'll go AB.  I've spent a good chunk of my free time over the last couple days chewing over lists, figuring out what and how much I'll need, etc.  Good times.

Barring catastrophe, I should be getting a game in on Wednesday vs. Nick the Lemming's Austrians.  This is the first campaign game for either of us, and a bit of a grudge match, as I'll be looking to keep Nick's perfect record intact, and he's hungry to find out what winning feels like ;)  For those of you interested, the club (under the auspices of dictator for life Watts), has set up a separate blog to chronicle the campaign "in character".  There's a few manifestos up there now, including one from yours truly.  I bet you never realized the potential for conflict in sausage.

FMB