Taking Stock

Alright, I'm taking the plunge.
Or at least getting further along than I was before.
Last night, while waiting for glue to set on my next commisions, rather than finish up the last of my WW2 German armour or paint some Colonial figures, or flock my Medievals, I instead started a whole new army!
15mm Seven Years War Austrians.
OK, maybe not the swiftest idea, but it'll be fun.
Being rather organized with my miniatures (not as obsessive about making the spreadsheets as Mike is but I do keep inventory lists of the leadpile when I've got a lot) I found I had previously sorted much of my unpainted SYW figures and made the following notes:
Austrians
2x 18 figure German musketeer battalions
4x 12 figure German musketeer battalions
3x 12 figure German grenadier battalions
14x 12 figure Pandour battalions (told you I had a lot- Battle of Olmutz anyone?)
3x 12 figure Cuirassier regiments
3x heavy guns
3x medium guns
2x light guns

Most of these are Old Glory figures from back before Old Glory sold off their 15mm lines to 19th Century Miniatures and you could buy the infantry in the big bags of 100. One regiment of Cuirassier are Minifigs.

So last night I scraped and got ready for priming 3x musketeer battalions, 2x Pandour battlions and 1x grenadier battalion plus 2x guns and a general I dug out of my Prussian stocks.

I also remembered that I already have painted a nice little Bavarian brigade of 4x musketeer and 1x grenadier battlions with 1x light and 1x medium gun. Instant allies.

To face them Frederick already has under arms:
1x Guard battalion
2x grenadier bns (the Grenadier Guard and 1 converged grenadier bn)
9x musketeer/fusilier bns
2x garrison bns
3x freikorps bns
1x jeager bn
2x cuirassier regts (including the Garde du Corps)
2x dragoon regts
2x hussar regts
1x freikorps uhlan regt
3x medium guns
2x howitzers
3x heavy guns

Since we were playing Warfare in the Age of Reason all units are 12 figures strong. Bigger battalions would be cool, but it would be expensive and time consuming. Increasing the battalion size to 24 figures wouldn't change the 120mm frontage, so it won't affect playability to stay with the 12 figure units. The 18 figure battalions are a left over from AoR that gave the Austrians bigger battalions for some reason that is not actually historically justified. I'll have to see if I can instead change them into 3x 12 figure battalions, but the units are made up of kneeling and standing firing line figures, so it may be difficult. I bought them because I thought they looked cool, but the reality is the muskets are fragile and they are hard to rank up in column. I'll stick to the classic 'march attack' pose for future purchases.

Switching from the 12 figure to a 6 figure cavalry unit (a 'division' of 2 to 4 squadrons) as the standard size unit would give us a cavalry unit of roughly the same frontage as the infantry. Multiple units from the same regiment wouldn't be a problem, since cavalry usualy deployed by squadrons anyway. So no repainting. But one could have the option to mass them together into a big sledgehammer too. Having the option to deploy a 6 figure unit of cavalry means I can use up those left over half dozen figures from the old 30 figure cavalry bags too.

Now that I'm blogging about my SYW stuff I realize I have never gotten these figures posed before the camera. I'll have to fix that before my daughters take their cameras off to university next month!