A little here, a little there

We just wrapped up our third full week of school, and the familiar patterns of years passed have emerged. I'm frightfully busy most of the time. I suffer from anxiety induced insomnia, so when I'm not busy I'm exhausted. It puts a damper on my gaming life--such as it has become.

Even so, I'm trying to paint regularly-every day if possible. That's complicated at times because of school commitments. This week was Back to School Night-so Wednesday was a wash. I'm also watching a little bit more television, mostly because I want quality hang-out time with the missus. There are only two shows we're watching, Mad Men (On Demand) and we're trying Flash Forward, which after one episode is pretty good.

Even so, I have made a fair amount of progress on projects. I made my Enfilade trade with Doug Hamm for some of his gorgeous AWI figures. This was a deal we weren't actually able to consummate until his move to his new house. When the figures arrived in early September, I vowed to quickly do something with them. And I did-sort of. I remounted one of the two units, the Volunteers of Ireland, and then set about remounting many of my other figures. It's back to the 40mm square bases I had them on for years. I'm also getting ready to paint a couple of more units--a converged grenadier unit for the southern campaign, and a small unit (12 figs) of North Carolina Continentals for Eutaw Springs.

Of course I can't start those guys until I finish my 48 figure unit of French dismounted men-at-arms for HYW. These will be a 12 stand unit for the Crusader Rules/Medieval Warfare. They're all Perry figures. They're gorgeous, but take some doing to finish. I'll keep picking away at figures for this project. I have 14 more figures to paint, as well as six standards, so it's going to keep me busy. But I sure want to get on with the AWI figures.

I'm also picking at my Spanish Civil War figures. I have four light machine gun figures to paint before moving on to heavy machine guns. I have enough to provide each army with two machine gun companies. Then I want to move on to paint a couple more battalions of Republican militia.

I hope the variety keeps me interested, if not focused.

Spanish Civil War Update

These are pictures of my painting table. All the primed white stuff are Spanish Civil War figures in process.

I'm fairly taken with the project at the moment because it got such favorable response at our August game day. I've even ordered a few more figures. I just finished painting a couple more Nationalist units-a Phalange militia unit and a Nationalist regular army unit. I have a couple more Republican militia units to paint. I think they'll both likely be POUM socialist militia. I've also received a few planes.

I joined the SCW 20 yahoogroup, mostly to see if there were some useful sources, especially flags that I could scale for my 15mm figures and I struck gold. There were also some useful sources including rules. One idea I saw included random arrival of off-board support including air attacks and bombardment. I'm excited about it. I don't know when I'll play again, but I do think Non-Pasaran is a good convention game. I'll haul it out at Drumbeat and plan a scenario for Enfilade. Here are the units I'm likely to have, together with those I've painted:
Nationalists:
2 X Spanish Foreign Legion (1 complete)
2 X Moroccan Tabor (2 complete)
2 X Requete (Carlist) militia (2 complete)
2 X Falange militia (2 complete)
1 X Falange shock battalion (0 complete)
1 X O'Duffy's Blueshirts (1 complete)
1 X Cavalry regt. (1 complete)
2 X Italian volunteers (0 complete)
3 X tank companies (2 complete)
Artillery and anti-tank companies all complete

Republicans
3 X International Battalions (2 complete)
3 X Popular Army Battalions (2 complete)
2 X Assault Guards (1 complete)
6 X worker militias (2 complete)
2 X tank companies (2 complete)
2 Artillery and anti-tank companies all complete.

4 Spanish Civil War aircraft (0 complete)

The blurry figures in the foreground are Falange militia by Peter Pig nearly finished. The figures with red berets are the Requete (Carlist) militia, very conservative, very Catholic, very effective fighters for the Fascists. There are some other items on the table including a very nice 32mm Cardinal Richelieu figure from Redoubt's Three Musketeers range.