A couple years ago a good friend of mine moved back home and reasonably close to me. He started me in Wargaming and through local players in the 80s I was introduced to Napoleonic wargaming. With the move back home and reconnecting with a group of very old gaming friends, we decided to start back with the Naps.
About 10-12 years ago I started buying 15mm Russians and French off of eBay, mostly old Heritage and Minifigs models. As I was the only one of my at that time current group of gaming friends with an interest in the scale and era, it was up to me to collect and paint the troops. In other words, I have a ton of old, barely painted French and Russian soldiers.
I've always had an affinity (and wish to collect) AB miniatures. Since I already had troops from manufacturers that wouldn't fit well with AB figs, I decided to start collecting a Prussian force. I've always like the Prussians and the newly reformed group had representatives of France, Austria, and Russian so there was room for Prussians. A quick trip over to Eureka Miniatures USA and the start of the corps was on its way. And frankly, that has been the primary focus for my hobby the last year or so.
As we do in this modern age, I started to do some research into the Prussian army. I decided to build Kleist's 2nd Corps in 1813. It has many elements that catch my fancy.
Of course, you also need to know how to paint the troops, so there I went back to the internet. Fortunately, if you are looking for information on painting Prussian Napoleonic troops you will find a rich collection of resources to guide you. My first stop took me to the World of Ringo Simpkins. This led to Von Ketteringham's Youtube channel, which in turn took me to Paul Alba's blog. As you can see, I'm spoiled for choice. There is nothing more motivating to the hobby than following these guys through their hobby progress. Not only are they all quite talented and open to sharing, they are also approachable and first class people.
But back to my opening statement. What does that mean? Well, there isn't a genre nor a scale that I've come across that I don't like. If I were to live forever that wouldn't be enough time to collect all that catches my fancy. I'm constantly distracted by the desire to do other things. I'm actually quite proud of myself this last year because I've put the Prussians out front and have (for the most part) remained focused on completing the Army. There have been some distractions, but generally I consider myself a Prussian commander primarily focused on completing my 15mm army. Sure, I painted up a British 6lber in 28 mm. That's because the group was playing Bolt Action at the time and I needed some AT. Absolutely I painted a miniature for Dear Mother as a Christmas gift. Who wouldn't? (You have, haven't you?) But I've managed to always go back to the Prussians and that's a big feat for me. Who knows, maybe I'm maturing.
Now, where did I put those toy soldiers....?
Until next time.
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