Supercalafragilisticsexpealidocious!

While Mrs. Rosbif took the junior Rosbifs and Granny Rosbif to see the Mary Poppins stage show yesterday, I got to have the whole day to myself to do with as I pleased! Not a lot to show for it, though, as my hard-earned free time was spent re-touching flaked paint and applying Army painter by brush to the rest of my Peninsula-era French army. All the infantry (bar my regiment of Bardin-uniformed infantry), the command figures, the horse-gun battery and my Hussars are now varnished with Army Painter. To go, I still have the Chasseurs a Cheval, Dragoons, Cuirassiers and the foot gun battery. (As a force for the Spanish theatre, I know my collection shouldn't have Cuirassiers or the 5th Hussars. My excuse is that I sometimes fight Austrians, so they can legitimately be for the 1809 campaign. I do have plans for painting the 1st-3rd Hussars and more dragoons.)

I also converted one of the British command figures from wearing a belgic shako to the more appropriate cocked hat, and tried my hand at making a vineyard row from used matches, corkboard strips and medium flock. See the results below.

Waterloo 1815 mounted officer with HaT Peninsula officer's head

First row of vines. I'll make several rows and flock the bases, too. You can't campaign in Spain without vineyards!

I've also come up with a detachable base for troops in skirmish order, as I find it hard to estimate in inches and using the tape measure can sometimes just be fiddly. Instead of permanently fixing figures to skirmish bases and then swapping them in the midst of battles (not to mention the laborious process of duplicating whole battalions), I've made a 2" skirmish base from sheet metal that my figures stick to, as they all have magnetised bases that keep them in place in the tool-box when transported. I've flocked the edges to match the bases and left the centre bare, so that the figures stick. So now, when skirmish figures are detached from parent units, or whole French battalions are broken into skirmish order, it's just a matter of popping them onto a base and they are the regulation distance from one another and no arguments. The Revell British rifles set also come with detached packs for the action figures, so I added one for each rifleman not wearing a pack.

Skirmish base for rifleman sans figure

With added figure

No after-action report form last week's meeting as it was my turn to do kitchen duty. There were supposed to be at least 3 campaign games scheduled, but due to lack of opponents, there was only one Napoleonic game and it wasn't even campaign related, so all battles had to resolved by the umpire. Fortunately, our battles this round have mostly been resolved in our favour with one outright victory and a couple that the opposition only just managed to save, leaving in a weakened position. I believe this coming week I shall have my first battle of the campaign. So far my role has been more in the diplomatic arena, which I've enjoyed (getting into the role of early 19th c despot) but I am looking forward to a bit of table-top biffo!