The end of the Peninsula British (for now)

This weekend should bring to an end the painting of the Peninsula War British for now.  I have managed to paint forty three foot regiments (thirty nine out of the fifty one foot regiments for the Peninsula, the missing twelve are all from the Left Centre Column).  Twenty cavalry regiments (including all seventeen British cavalry regiments for the Peninsula)  Eight out of the twelve RA/KGL/RHA batteries for the Peninsula are done.  Finally, four bases of Commanders have been done. So, that just leaves the Portuguese, Spanish and a few more artillery batteries to do, all of which I will tackle in a couple of months time.  

So, what am I going to do to fill my painting time with, I guess the obvious answer is to begin doing the French that I need.  I will begin with the Army of the South under Gazan, comprising thirteen line, five light regiments of infantry, ten dragoon, three chasseur a cheval, a single hussar regiment and finally eight batteries of either foot or horse artillery,  After that will come the Army of Portugal under Reille with six line, two light infantry regiments, four dragoon, four chasseur a cheval, one hussar regiment, six foot batteries and a single horse battery.  I will leave the Army of the Centre and King Josephs Spanish Army until later as I am still researching some of the uniforms and flags for the Confederation of the Rhine and Spanish troops.

I am also going to wrap up the Parliament and Royalist armies by making some all musket and all pike units, which will be used with the Twilight of Divine Right rules.  I have managed to get a couple more games with these rules and really like the way they play, especially with larger numbers of troops involved and I will be posting a Battle Report of a game I played towards the end of June taken from the Programmed Wargames Scenarios by C S Grant.

I have also managed to start looking at the naval side of things and have picked up some 1/2400 Napoleonic ships, and some 1/3000 and 1/6000 World War One and Two ships to compare and to try to do a good paint job on.  I like the fact the 1/6000 ships come with their own bases but the size of them scares me and I doubt I could do justice to the painting that they need.  So, initially I will give the 1/3000 fleets a try using the General Quarters rules from Navwar, now, they state that the ideal space would be an area ten foot by ten foot.  There is no way I can get a space like that sorted out, but there is a little sentence in the rules that says if space is tight then to use centimetres instead of inches which brings the space down to about four foot square and that will fit nicely.

This was a Davco model which looks really nice, the base is a standard 60mm x 30mm that I have, though I am unsure about the ship name label and the flag.  I used some artist modelling paste to get the sea texture which worked out really good, though the photo does not do it justice.  As the ship only just fits on the base I have gone ahead and ordered a load of 75mm x 25mm bases to try out on the two sample fleets that I picked up from Navwar.