Palate cleansing and progress

Before I get onto the update on my task list, here are a few piccies from a recent perambulation in the park.

I was trying to snap the trees but after taking this I noticed how the Margravina looks to be leaning back at a very difficult angle as though a giant modeller had bent a 'civilian' figure back on its base.

Those dots in the middle ground are people performing the ritual of seeing how close they can get to large wild mammals (the dark smudges they're surrounding). Noted anthropologist Graf von Nundanket believes it is the 'fossilised', bloodless remnant of the hunter-gatherer age, whereby instead of flint arrowheads, the hunters surround and shoot the prey with cameras.

It was not quite 4 seasons in a day, it never got cold enough for winter.

And now for the toys.

Bar a few 'units' worth of skirmishers, I have all the Greeks and Persians based. About half have only just had the sand applied. Those spare skirmishers might stay un-rebased as I don't think I need so many.  There's also 32 close order, round-shielded, pointy stick wielding chaps in the Persian box to re-base. I think they were probably something like Ionian Greeks tribute/mercenaries. I'm minded to do a little re-painting to make them into Spartans. If you have enough line fusiliers, you're allowed to have some Garde Imperiale.

The finished Perisan massed archers left. And right, oplites, undress of em. Back left, Persian heavy infantry, lights, cavalry and chariots. Rear right Greek psiloi, peltasts and cavalry, plus some more hoplites.

Finally, a bit of nod to Max Foy's 'Hooptedoodles'. Messrs Heroics and Ros despatched (most of*) my order. I got several e-mails from Royal Mail reporting on their progress to the Schloß. Delivery expected between 10:15 and 14:15 on Saturday. The time slot came and went and shortly after I saw an e-mail saying it had been delivered. The tracking portal showed a photo of the local Pat pushing the small package through.....not my letter box. No house number was visible so off I trotted to find a matching door down my street (about 100 houses) looking for doors that matched the one in the photo. Of course I chose the wrong direction. After exhausting the houses to the left as you look at the house, and the nearby street with a similar name to mine (easy mistake, but no number as high as mine), I went right. 

After a careful bit of matching the door colour, what was visible of the door window, letter box shape and colour, mucky marks on the door etc....of course it was the first house on the right! No house number visible on the house so nothing to indicate why Postman Pat would pick that house. Now I can understand a busy postie, under modern management pressures to do more for less, being (a) overworked; or (b) a half-arsed, workshy 'erbert (take your pick) might push a bundle of items into one letterbox and inadvertently include my small package. But Pat in this case, carefully took a photo of said package going into said door, on its own. How the flip do you do something as intentional as posting a package whilst photographing the act to prove delivery, without the intentionality of actually checking the address on the package matched the address of the house?

* Ironically, the part of the order not despatched (poplar trees) was the item that I wanted to order in the first place. The rest were ordered as sort of a mixture of 'take advantage of free postage over a certain value' and a notion of starting an Early Modern Ottoman army.

Lots of Eastern European/Eurasian types that might be similar enough to 'the Dreaded Turk'. And some pieces for the Western European train. The marching gunners in the gun teams look like musketeers with sloped arms. They might just get roped into padding out another unit.

Tentative Order	Job
1	Finish river pieces
2	Check stock of magnetic paper and bases
3	Paint houses
4	Order storage boxes
5	Paint walls
6	Paint and base trees
7	Rebase Greeks and Persians 70%
8	Flag SYW figures (French priority)
9	Try Alala!
10	Try Siege Works rules
11	Paint wagons and gun teams
12	Decide what to do with SYW odds and sods
13	Paint petard crews etc
14	Prepare New Year Campaign
15	Paint sheep
16	Paint pack animals
17	Paint villagers (6 and 10mm)
18	Make fortress
19	Ottoman painting guide
20	Order Irregular Ottoman army
21	Paint Ottomans
22	Run ECW siege campaign
23	Make AWI boats
24	Maybe rebase some Romans
25	Build & paint sailing ships

Oh well. Onwards and upwards as they say.

Slow but steady

This post is as much for my benefit, in terms of keeping a record of progress, than anything else. After work I delved into a couple of items on the list.

I started to organise my Greek cavalry and light troops into units, partly to work out if I had enough bases (it looks like I'll need more). There looks to be a lot of light infantry (I have no idea of proportions historically, so maybe that's something else I need to consider). Gut reaction is I don't need so many. So I'll probably just base a few units. That'll relieve a bit of pressure on bases - I don't want to make a new order without working out if I need anything else at the same time. 

Another conclusion I came to was that I don't need any more storage boxes, so that one is ticked off, at least until I get to number 20 on the list. Also, I have enough 'magnetic paper' and magnets. All to be qualified by the catch-all phrase 'for now'.

One other by-product of the look at the light troops is that I discovered several of them had helmets, round shields and pointy sticks. So I pinched several of them to pad out the 6th/8th unit of hoplites (depending on rules). Now the pointy sticks are a bit short for hoplites' dories/dorata, but I think I have some fuse wire somewhere. The shields are also a bit small for aspides, but at this scale and in the rear ranks.....

Pending the arrival of the order placed with H&R last month I'll hold off on #6, 11 and painting the 'Ottomans' and press on with 7. Maybe I can have a bash at 9 at the weekend.

Tentative Order	Job
1	Finish river pieces
2	Check stock of magnetic paper and bases
3	Paint houses
4	Order storage boxes
5	Paint walls
6	Paint and base trees
7	Rebase Greeks and Persians 35%
8	Flag SYW figures (French priority)
9	Try Alala!
10	Try Siege Works rules
11	Paint wagons and gun teams
12	Decide what to do with SYW odds and sods
13	Paint petard crews etc
14	Prepare New Year Campaign
15	Paint sheep
16	Paint pack animals
17	Paint villagers (6 and 10mm)
18	Make fortress
19	Ottoman painting guide
20	Order Irregular Ottoman army
21	Paint Ottomans
22	Run ECW siege campaign
23	Make AWI boats
24	Maybe rebase some Romans
25	Build & paint sailing ships

Checking off that list

Progress on the job list. Not all tasks are equal. 7 is a LOT, LOT bigger than5 for example. But just sticking things down in black and white has encouraged me to get some blooming things done.

About 3.9m. In my usual SYW scale that's about 11 miles. I wasn't happy with the edging but I couldn't get the clumps to stick so stuck with grass.

Not so many houses, or walls. A bit rough and ready but they'll do.

Nearly all the hoplites. I haven't got quite enough to finish off the 8th unit, but I'm looking at ways to bodge some conversions.

The Persian close order archers. About 190 in total.

They were originally based in uniform coloured units but they got jumbled up once prised off the old bases and I thought, varied colours in each unit looks better. If I had painted them from scratch I'd have done them in uniform colours.

Three down. 22.7 to go!

Tentative Order	Job
1	Finish river pieces
2	Check stock of magnetic paper and bases
4	Paint houses
3	Order storage boxes
5	Paint walls
6	Paint and base trees
7	Rebase Greeks and Persians 30%
8	Flag SYW figures (French priority)
9	Try Alala!
10	Try Siege Works rules
11	Paint wagons and gun teams
12	Decide what to do with SYW odds and sods
13	Paint petard crews etc
14	Prepare New Year Campaign
15	Paint sheep
16	Paint pack animals
17	Paint villagers (6 and 10mm)
18	Make fortress
19	Ottoman painting guide
20	Order Irregular Ottoman army
21	Paint Ottomans
22	Run ECW siege campaign
23	Make AWI boats
24	Maybe rebase some Romans
25	Build & paint sailing ships