New Year painting and fighting the lurgi!

Not the best of starts to 2024; before Xmas I had a chesty cough that kept coming and going. Number one son went out with his friends and came back with a stinking cold. Almost inevitably, I have come down with it as well. A Covid test showed negative, so I assume I have fallen victim to a combined cold and flu virus.

Cue coughing, sneezing, alternate runny or blocked up nose, disturbed sleep and generally feeling under the weather. Copious application of over the counter remedies has provided some relief. Amazingly, despite this I have managed to do some painting. I forced myself to have a go and found not only was I so zoned out I was able to concentrate and focus on the painting which distracted me from the cold/flu. I was careful not to push it too far; when I started making mistakes or felt tired I gave up for the day.

I tackled some more SSMs as they are undemanding to  paint once you have done 100 or more, simple block colours on black undercoat. I bit the bullet and brought down the box for Banst.

Banst is one of the Electoral states, ruled by an Elector that doesn't seem to get on with anyone! His character is one of the few militarily excellent personalities, his cards coming out as "War, Dominant" which in this campaign is going to be close to military genius! I see the army as a potential mercenary force.

The army was originally going to be made up of "left over" figures; I had some Napoleonic SSM cuirassiers in helmet and some of the later Peter Johnstone 25mm plastic SSM additions - much smaller than the classic SSM. I also sort of fancied doing an army to reflect some of Marechal du Saxe's less wacky ideas; plentiful skirmishers, amussette light artillery and a neo-classical organisation based around Roman legions. His real life Volunteers du Saxe provided uniforms and lancers. By the time it came to recreate the army with these ideas, I had managed to accumulate enough SSMs that I could use the smaller figures for head conversions on standard SSM bodies so they matched the other armies.

So here's last week's painting. I have already painted two more infantry units. Unusually, instead of ploughing through all the line infantry, instead I varied it by painting the other main components of the first "Legion" of mixed infantry, cavalry and amussette. There will be two such formations and two batteries of "flying" (horse) artillery.

Scratch-built amussette and mobile shield. The gunner is a converted frontiersman / cowboy from SSM with a head swap and carving.

Line infantry - two more "Cohorts" are painted - Princepes, Hastati and Triari.

Skirmishers - Velites - converted Napoleonic SSM 

Horse - Dragoons

Light cav Hussars and Lancers