Some Small Figures, A Big Move

10mm Prussian Infantry from Pendraken.

 

It has been a few weeks since I have posted anything, so good to get back into a bit of the blogging and painting pace a bit with this entry. These are 10mm Prussian infantry for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The figures and flags are from Pendraken, purveyor of top-shelf 10mm figures. 

 

Prendraken make fantastic castings for this scale.

 

Most of the figures are wearing their coats, but two of bases feature infantry with the coats rolled around their chests, an image from the war that is more common. If you stare closely (sorry about the crappy photos), you will see I painted coloured facings on some of the coats. Ooops! Not sure what I was thinking there...anyway, it adds a little variety and once a whole bunch of these fellows are out on the table you don't really notice anyway. 

These two bases in the forefront feature Prussian infantry wearing their coats wrapped around their chests...the rest in the background have the troops wearing their coats.

 

These bases are useful for all sorts of rules, from the utterly perplexing "Polemos", to the excellent "1870" to the tried-and-tested "Black Powder". The base could represent anything from a couple of companies to a regiment, depending on the level and scale of battle one is looking to represent on the table. For my initial 10mm battles I will be looking to use each base as a single battalion of infantry, so a regiment would, on average, be comprised of three bases. But over time I hope to try different rules and different battles. It will be fun to experiment!

The Prussian "needle rifles" will be ready for action!

I have now painted enough 10mm Franco-Prussian stuff for a small game - specifically, the Battle of Wissembourg. Who knows when we will get a chance to play it? The public health restrictions related to COVID continue to increase in many areas of North American, including Winnipeg. But there is one additional wrinkle...that would be the reason my painting progress has been so non-existant for the past several weeks. This photo should explain it:

Thanks for everything, Winnipeg!

Yes, I have moved - or, as I believe they say in the UK (and possible elsewhere), "moved house". The reasons are good ones, linked to a career opportunity at my firm. After having lived my whole life in Winnipeg, this summer we put our house on the market, bought a new house in Ontario, and then prepared for the move, which took place at the end of September. 

Moving is a very stressful experience - I don't know anyone who ever enjoyed it. Moving a long distance is particularly stressful, and I must say coping with the clowns and cretins at the moving company, the various and sundry contractors, lawyers and other nonsense has been particularly trying. We are only now just starting to get our heads above water again, settling in to our new house - and I have been able to find some time to paint! We love our new house and new location very much, but wow...this has been hard.

And, of course, none of this is good for the hobby collection/hoard. Like many gamers, I have access to an assortment of foam trays and containers to allow for the safe transport of quite a few figures over to another house or location for a game. But there was no way I would ever have enough of that stuff to move all of my collection at the same time - and as it was, email inquiries out to various suppliers were for nought, as many are either disrupted by COVID or simply don't reply to emails (step up, KR Multi-case). Things had to happened so fast - and, because of COVID, kind of had to happen very fast - that 1-to-1 scale sadly needed to take priority, and many, many hard hobby decisions were made. On the plus side, many items from my collection made their way to new homes with friends, which is great - if stuff has to go, best for it to go to a good home :) I need to recognize and thank Byron, Dallas and Mike for their help this summer as I made crash preparations to get the house ready for the market and the collection as transportable as it could be...

 

And of course the cretins at the moving company made it difficult. I packed things up with as much care as I could, but they found ways to damage them regardless, tilting and tossing assorted boxes marked "fragile", knocking over a pile of boxes filled with my 28mm Franco-Prussian War collection, which I had PUT ASIDE so I could move them myself...they didn't even make it safely out of the basement! Sigh...

Anyway, the unpacking is now underway, and I will continue to make repairs where I can as I settle into the new house. I will very much miss my gaming friends - I am SO glad we managed to cram one more game in during the relative COVID respite in late summer. But I will be back in Winnipeg often to visit - and the web is a great tool to stay connected and stay in touch, and I will lean on it very much to do so. 

So thanks everyone - stay safe, stay healthy and stay sane!