Command Conundrums

As you know, dear reader, with the mission creep overtaking my nice, little, limited Sharp Practice project I have been having mathematelogical conundrums. With the Landwehr and Russians I had lots of extra leaders for Big Men so I could easily make up the command groups available as extra 4 figure stands to give me even 4 stand battalions for General d'Armee. 

However, with the incoming Prussian line infantry and the Bavarians, I have exactly the right number of command groups. So I can take out command figures for Big Men for Sharp Practice and sacrifice stands for General d'Armee, or I can have full stands for G d'A and sacrifice BMs for SP.

This was causing many hours of permutations and calculations of the most efficient allocation of resources, and think tank focus group sessions to determine how many extra command packs I needed to buy.

Get it?

Of course, ramping up for G d'A also means I need some brigade and divisional commanders for the Russians and Bavarians, further complicating things. 

The announcement last week that Front Rank is up for sale (If only I had a cool £255,000/Cdn$385,000 in my other pocket) prompted further thought. I was planning to put in an order later this year to pick up some bits and a few packs of civilians. But just in case the new buyers take too long to get up and running or like has happened with some lines, it disappears when the owners retire, I thought I'd better put in a smallish order now. 

Urgent calculating. Orders were put in the cart and abandoned. Needs recalculated. More orders started and abandoned. What if I forgot something? I can't just wait for the shows to start up again and be like British gamers and pick up a single blister of Foundry or Perry figures etc. because it's Canada and the Perry Brothers aren't coming to Hot Lead. There's shipping damnit, so an order has to be big enough to be worth it.

This past week I have been working on this baker's dozen of Wargames Foundry Russian infantry that I got for a song (Cdn$1.00 per figure!) from Mikey. A sick day from vaccine complications was put to good use. 

I'm painting them as Jaegers. 4x stands of 3 figures each plus a Big Man. So either a battalion for G d'A or 2x groups of skirmishers in SP. 

While cutting the grass I realized that I don't need to have 4 figures per stand in G d'A. I can divert an officer or NCO from each of the Perry command sprues to give me Big Men for SP and just do command stands of 3. This frees up many more command figures, thereby saving me from buying extra command packs. The money saved was diverted into a group of Schutzen for the Bavarians.