OH NO! Not Another Project - Retreat from Moscow 1812

Well the title says it all not content with starting numerous projects and finishing very few of them I have suddenly found myself immersed in all the fun of planning a new project which will test my painting skills and add a very different dimension to my gaming collections.

I blame the recent weather which the media has called the beast from the east.

I have always been fascinated by the disastrous 1812 retreat from Moscow where Napoleon lost the best part of his 95,000 strong Grande Armee that had survived the blood bath of Borodino. The range of figures from Perry was a real issue for me to resist, so after 18 months I have given in. So far I have a small number of Cossacks, 2 packs of Murowski Miniatures Poles for the retreat and a couple of packs of Foundry Russian Grenadiers I picked up at the recent York show. But there is a lot more in the pipeline.

The first couple of these came out really well, since then I have found that the great coated figures are actually quite quick to paint and I am really enjoying the variety of the figures.

I am in that euphoric stage at the moment of imagining how this will look, how will I approach the project, how will I base them and what will the unit sizes be. Initial thoughts on rules are Black Powder and Sharpe Practice. One of the things driving my basing thought process is a way to utilise the bases so I can use both rule sets. That will mean I can use the figures in the early days when there are relatively few finished but also have larger battles in mind. It probably lends itself more to the smaller games but would be great to work for both.

So I am sourcing figures and thinking about terrain and basing plus organisation etc whilst adding the odd extra figure to the workbench.

I will update you on the terrain separately as this looks interesting and perhaps talk further about basing at the same time. I have had a bit of a result with the figures as chum Jerry had a load of Perry retreat from Moscow French spare and a contact on the Lead Adventure Forum has Russian foot in great coats we are discussing.

Initial thoughts are all based in 4's so Sharp Practice units of 8 will work. Add some units based in 2's for skirmishers and we get to the Sharp Practice 6 skirmishers easily enough whilst still being able to use them for Black Powder.

For the Black Powder organisation initial thoughts are French in small units of say 12 figures on 3 bases, Russians in 16's on 4 bases and small units of stragglers in 8's on 2 bases. These can be broken up to form units for Sharp Practice. This has the advantage of using a small amount of space on the table and from a firing point of view being one dice per base, reducing movement due to the snow and exhaustion also allows for a smaller playing space. I am hoping for a 6x4 feet space but might need 6x8.

Still a work in progress though as I dont know how the unit sizes will actually look.

40x40 bases are going to be too small. 50mm front by 60mm deep look great for the French and Poles and give lots of room for the bayonets on the advancing or firing figures and also all the clutter of broken drums, bodies and wheels etc scattered over the retreat. I am unsure how 4 marching Russians will look on this large base but it is perfect for the cavalry. Once I have a few painted up I will blue tack them to bases and share my thoughts on here.

So thats it for now, whilst you all chuckle and shake your heads I will be ploughing on through the snow and seeing where this new project takes me, wish me luck.