(Lead) Mountain Musings - "Napoleonics" Mo'Vember 2017

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

This month's themed attempt to try and reduce my ever-increasing horde of metal, plastic and resin models has been directly influenced by my desire to dedicate part of my hobby time towards miniatures of a 'beardy' nature (in celebration of Mo'Vember), as well as my recent acquisition of Bob Cordery's "The Portable Wargame" and sudden desire to play some Napoleonics. Indeed, my yearning to fill a tabletop with some splendidly coloured 28mm forces from 1803-1815 has led to my purchasing an old hardback copy of "Grand Battery" by Jonathan Sutherland & Diane Canwell and "Song Of Drum And Shakos" by "Gamesha Games".

Fortunately, I am not about to embark upon such a time-consuming adventure completely from scratch, having actually tried to paint some "Victrix" French six years ago for a 'Battle of Marengo' project. That naive undertaking was perhaps always destined to fail, but it did cause me to purchase a considerable number of plastic Napoleonic infantry and cavalry, as well as actually paint sixteen Frenchmen up; albeit I don't seem to have applied any flags to their command stand... 

"Victrix" Napoleonic French WIPs - All of the soldiers' trousers have been painted

As I plan on getting to grips with the rule-set's basics by simply deploying just eight musket-armed infantry units (8 @ 4 SP each = 32 SP; Rated Average), and a Commander (1 @ 6 SP each = 6 SP), this means I already own almost half of the foot-soldiers needed for my first foray into "The Portable Wargame". Of course though, that still means I need to paint another twenty of Napoleon's finest, 'picking out' all their straps, cuffs, water bottles and stowage... and I haven't even mentioned their similarly sized Austrian opposition yet.

Realistically therefore, considering all the other painting projects and models I want to pigment over the next few months, I've decided to set a relatively low-bar of completing just four figures per month, and hope that before my enthusiasm for the project wanes too much I manage to finish enough soldiers off to at least start a few straightforward skirmishes; something which as a rule ordinarily helps reinvigorate my mojo. In addition, once I've completed these initial four Frenchmen I plan to start work on a few of their "oldest and, next to the English, the most persistent" of their "foemen", the white-coated Austrians.

Ronnie Salvage WIPs - The dwarf has had his boots and leg tassels 'picked out'

Sticking with 'beardy' miniatures for Mo'Vember, I have also been slapping a lick of paint onto one of my favourite miniatures from "Rumbleslam" by "TTCombat". Arguably, "the showiest, flashiest and most charismatic dwarf you are ever going to see! Ronnie Salvage is one of the superstars" of the Cornwall-based company's fantasy wrestling rule-set and has clearly been inspired by the late Macho Man Randy Savage.

As a huge fan of the old "World Wrestling Federation", and Randy Mario Poffo in particular, I have been picking up a number of this "fast paced high action" tabletop game's plastic figures since I first bought the "Rumbleslam" Starter Box towards the start of the year; the majority of which have clearly been modelled upon old-time professional wrestlers. So don't be at all surprised to see a few crop up over the next few weeks as I look to (re)assemble The Mega-Powers, The Bushwhackers and Legion Of Doom...