By His Command!

 That is to say rather that at Phil's forceful suggestion this blog entry has seen the light of day. A bit of background here: I like to take advantage of days like Friday - warm, light breeze, low humidity - to spray varnish figures in the 'done but not done' queue. So I got out the kit and sprayed my 12 Brunswick Grenadiers. Seemed such a shame given the conditions not to have anything else waiting it's turn. So, into GHQ, where the AWI game was still out on the tabletop battlefield. Most figures we'd used are relatively recent and are matt varnished, but their storage boxes contained many other  more venerable figures either satin or gloss varnished. So, can and boards are deployed and off we went spraying gaily all afternoon. The result, well, somewhat surprisingly I have to say, a whole collection reinvigorated ~

The core of these Front Rank figures originally came into my collection starting in about 1984 when I bought two 'Starter Armies' at Salute in Kensington Town Hall. Back almost in the dawn of time Alec Brown the then owner attended many shows with his Front Rank trade stand so I must have added to these down the years, but I've no recollection of that. It's an age thing I'd guess! 

More recently though I'd added Foundry, Perry Miniatures, Eureka and even more Front Rank figures to the collection but I don't think I fully realised until now how it had grown - and there are still three Continental Dragoon regiments in another box! Anyway, Phil has ordered a parade, so here it is, starting of course as is only proper with the forces of the Crown ~

After the forces of the Crown, those of the Revolutionary Americans ~

It's a bit of a surprise, you might even say a shock, to realise how projects can seem to grow with a life almost independent of your own. I had no idea that down the years I'd acquired this many AWI figures as we usually play smaller sized games. Another thing I noticed as the figures were drying in the sun was that they were rather better painted than I thought, though I've long moved on from black lining figures! Having got them all in the same varnish finish now has the effect of drawing the whole collection together more satisfactorily to the eye. So, it seems only right that we might have to move up a size in coming battles...