Links, rivers, roads and trees

Introducing a few more links and some more ideas and finds.

First of all I spent my hobby allowance for the next umpteen years ordering miniatures from the RSM95 (the old Rusty Sabre Miniatures) range. Following C.S. Grants thoughts for a balanced force for horse and musket armies as laid out in his "The Wargame Companion", I'm aiming to build two armies each initially comprising 8 units of line infantry, 1 unit of light infantry, 3 units of medium/heavy cavalry, 1 unit of light cavalry and one battery of artillery.

Remember the inhereted SSM plastics and my E-Bay buy? These will be roughly devided in two to form the first part of both armies. Work has already started restoring the Grenadiers the France. My initial buy of Minden miniatures will be in due course expanded to more Old School/Classic proportions, giving me another three regiments of infantry. RSM95  miniatures will give me another 7 units, leaving the rest to be filled out with Minden. This will give me two armies approximately consisting of 40% SSM, 40% Minden and 20% RSM95. Reconfiguring these armies for rules such as Black Powder, Minden Rose or Rank and File -remember the careful planned basing?- would give me the double number of units.
Of course this will be documented in full -maybe even reconfiguring this blog- as the adventures of the DDU and its armies start happening.

Now, Tony, over at the Prometheus in Aspic blog has shown me the way ahead for my later Napoleonic projects. Although I'm not using hex based rules, nor his army organisation, his miniature painting and basing style are what I'm going for. You can follow -for some time now- his latest posts in the "inspiration" section on the left. I'm a big fan of his writings and sage advice that he gives as "Foy's Laws", which he comments and explains in no uncertain language, which I like very much...sometimes agreeing to disagree...great stuff.
The advantage of all this will be that all classic/old school terrain I build for my imagineering will serve at least two periods. Maybe the DDU will fight under Napoleon, or as part of some coalition against him...who knows?

Which brings me to terrain and I'm not talking about my garden. In the "how to" section I included a link to a recent post at the Too Much Lead blog, because that seems to me the ideal way to make rivers and roads for a classic looking battlefield. The TML blog is already listed in the "inspiration" section of these here Chronicles.
So, that's green paint, rivers and roads sorted out...now, what about trees? Easy that one, Stokes in his Grand Duchy of Stollen blog suggested using plastic trees from a company making cake decorations of all things. I ordered item 2140 from the novelty items section of the Sugarcraft company.

They also do plastic evergreen/spruce trees and they even have a 1 1/4"-non marching- marching band (item S71)...lovely stuff indeed. You can also find bridges, fences and there's even an "army" section. Well if it's good enough for decorating cakes, it's good enough for my wargames table (after eating the cake of course).

And last, but not least, a couple of members of my local games club "De witte ridder" had thrown together all their old 1/72 plastic soldiers in one big box. The plan is to base a number of units and introduce those interested to Napoleonic gaming using the Black Powder rule set. Nothing fancy, just plain unpainted armies as used by my brother in wargame arms Ludo and myself a couple of posts ago, good fun, hopefully lots units on big tables and we'll see how it goes from there.

Well, that about sums up what I wanted to get of my chest. TTFN...

Happy gaming
Pjotr