Countdown to Vimy – 10 weeks to go!

Again, I’d meant to post this last night , but ended up staying up way too late (watching the first three episodes of True Detective season one and painting German staff and casualties) and was too tired to post it (even though it was mostly written, I just needed to download pictures of the workbench…). I guess I'd also I'd done two other posts yesterday... so...

Whew! What a week… I did get a fair bit done, but not everything I’d hoped… and some changes to THE PLAN will have to be made…

The Plan for last week was to:

#1 Paint a regiment (three battalions) of Germans

CHECK! 48 Great War Germans were painted this week completing the 262 Reserve Infantry Regiment.

I had a bit of a roller coaster of emotions earlier today. All week I thought I was working on the 261st Reserve Infantry Regiment, only to discover last night I ‘d already painted the 261st!? WOOO! I was super excited thinking I only had ONE more regiment to paint instead of two… ten doubt started to creep in and I began to think; “no… that CAN’T be right…” and sure enough it wasn’t. I’d forgotten about two regiments of Bavarians I need to do… so I went from thinking I had two to do… to thinking I only had ONE… to realizing I actually have THREE MORE REGIMENTS to complete…

I ws just about ready to throw in the towel…

Then I got to thinking. When I originally planned this I did not make the German battalions the same size as the Canadian ones, and before game even rolled for losses during the “Week of Suffering” (the week of harassing bombardment previous to the assault) and I got thinking, if I’m not going to field entire full-strength battalions… and I’m going to remove a bunch more right away before the game starts… WHY THE HELL AM I PAINTING FULL-STRENGTH BATTALIONS for the Germans!?

So I started to think about reorganizing and realized if I went with 10 man battalions – saying their smaller than the Canadian ones because a) the aforementioned “Week of Suffering” has depleted the units in the line, and b) the Canadians have all received fresh drafts of recruits to bring them to (or above!) strength! This way I will need only 45 more to finish the stuff I’d originally planned to for sure get done AND I could paint another 40 or so to do the assorted battalions that were rushed forward from the reserves to make counter attacks on the day. Which means I’ll end up painting about the same as I’d been thinking I’d have to do over the next few weeks.

#2 Base and prep three more battalions to paint the following week.

Totally didn’t get to this yet… Hopefully today I’ll get to casting up the next batch.

#3 Finalize plans for terrain.

Too busy painting and organizing other things, didn’t get to this. I’ll definitely get to it this week.

#4 FINISH CLEANING THE TABLE!!!

CHECK! The table all cleared off! Well… mostly…

4^th Division Terrain – ready for some refurbishing.

Detail of the 4^th division terrain.

This Week…

#1 Cast, base, prime and goop remaining Germans.

#2 Cast, base, prime and goop British 5th Brigade

#3 Base, prime and goop remaining 6th Canadian Brigade (miniatures should be arriving on Tuesday)

#4 Finalize Terrain Plans (and maybe start in on refurbishing 4th Division terrain...? That might be a bit much with all the miniature prepping and painting going on...)

#5 Reorganize Germans – repaint collars on old 261 Reserve Infantry Regiment to match collars on 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment reorganize those two regiments to form 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 1, and Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 3.

Next Week:

#1 Paint 45 Great War Germans to add to those painted last week and reorganize into 10 figure battalions to form the 3 regiments of the 79th Infantry Division.

#2 Refurbish rest of 4th Division’s Terrain

Rest of February

Finish Germans – 4-5 more battalions of units in reserve plus machine Guns and mortars

Build Terrain for 2nd and 3rd Division.

March

Finish British and Canadians 2 battalions

Build Terrain for 1st Divison

April

Make more wire and barrage markers

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Ummm…? Maybe a round up of boardgames we played through the second half of January…? Hopefully updates of plans for terrain building and pictures of some other Great War odds and ends (I have some german casualties on the workbench at the moment)