Saturday, August 11, 2007

Ole, Senor and Costa Brava...

Ole

Well the first Spanish for Coupigny’s Division are done. The order from Front Rank arrived yesterday so I chose the smallest Spanish unit (7 figures strong) and got cracking to see how they looked.



This unit is the Truxillo Provincial Militia, one of the five Provincial Militia battalions that were with Coupigny. The rest, as you can see below, are much stronger. I painted them in blue faced red. The battalion was probably in white by then, and I will paint the other 4 battalions in white faced red, but I thought some would look fun in blue. I also chose the figures in top hat to represent the militia, although there are issues with the coat in this regard: it is actually a coatee rather than a coat and with the linen trousers, blue coat and top hat they have the feel of an early Victorian party of bluejackets!



























The orbat I am working to for Coupigny is as follows:

Brigade
1/Ceuta Regiment
2/Ceuta Regiment
2/Granada Regiment
3/Granada Regiment
Granada Provincial Militia

Brigade
1/ Ordones Militares Regiment
2/Ordones Militares Regiment
1st Catalionian Volunteers
2nd Catalonian Volunteers
Truxillo Militia

Brigade
3/Ordones Militares Regiment
Bujalance Militia
Cuenca Militia
Cuidad Real Militia

Unattached
Bourbon Line Cavalry
2nd Horse Battery

I am doing the line battalions and the Catalan light infantry 16 figures strong. Some of these battalions will be this strong when we refight Bailen next year and, at 4 companies per battalion the maths actually work. Equally, apart from the Truxillo battalion, I am doing the militia at 12 men per unit. I have not bothered getting more grenadiers for these battalions, although they should have them. Instead they are all in top hat. The Bourbon cavalry will be 13 strong. According to the orbat there were 401 of them plus 120 men from the Espana Regiment. I have conflated these into one unit, as at 1:40 a force of 3 men will be totally useless. Everything is Front Rank except I have on order 2 La Valliere 4lb for the Horse Battery from Elite.



As a division goes it has lots of infantry, but with only 6 4lb guns in support the least said about artillery the better. One regiment of heavy cavalry is not bad in terms of cavalry support: I have been spoiled by the Austrians to expect a lot more. The trouble is that this is the picture across the army as there is no specific cavalry division to take up the slack. But I am looking forward to painting them, and the 1/Ordones Militares is already on the stocks.

WAS update



Well, I have bitten the bullet and ordered some figures that will, hopefully, work for WAS. This is by way of being my birthday present to myself, but with these, the Austrians, Spanish and French I have I will have plenty to keep me busy until after next Xmas. I read on the TMP site of a gut who had painted 800 in 3 months! I am lucky if I manage a tenth of that in the same time frame. Still, winging their way towards me are enough troops for 4 Spanish and 3 Sardinian battalions. These are from the Front Rank French SYW range, either with turnbacks and lapels for the Sardinians or without lapels for the Spanish. If they will not work then they will simply be the start of an SYW French army instead.

ACW For sale



As I mentioned in my last posting I have decided to sell my ACW Confederates. I never use them and they are just taking up space. I have moved around enough to realise that doing just one side while a mate does the other is fine, until you move 200 miles away. So I will keep my 15mm Marlburian, and 15mm Napoleonics and Revolutionary collections but am looking very hard at what is just ballast. The ACW collection is the biggest one. URL is here if anyone is interested:

http://tinyurl.com/2weoka

Anyone interested is free to leave a comment or send an email.

J

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