Art de la Guerre and By fire and the Sword

Sometimes even the best of plans gets derailed by reality and sometimes by unrealistic expectations.
I had planned all my projects to happen with large enough intervals of time between them so that I would not face the dreaded "pile of lead"  accumulating on the projects table, but Alas, it happened....yet again.....

I received my orders from Old glory ( FIW) and Wargamer (BFAS) on the same day, and my Franco Prussian armies that I ordered from Pendraken are likely to arrive very soon, so I will end up with a pile of lead to work on instead of having the luxury of doing one project at the time.

At the same time I have been playing Art de la Guerre (ADLG) with My Friends Frank, Scott and Al at our local gaming shop and its really been great. I have been preparing and painting a lot of new armies for the game (see picture)and so that has been keeping me busy while I was waiting for the other stuff to arrive.
So far I have decided to put together a Teutonic Knights army, Triumvirate Romans, Spartans, Athenians, ancient British, Gauls, some type of crusaders or Frankish armies  and some late medieval knight armies, all in 15mm.
Eventually I will build republican Romans and  Carthaginians but I want to do those in 28mm along side with all the 28mm ADLG armies that I need to condition from my WAB armies.

The games I played in the last 2 weeks were fun although I only thought of taking pictures in two of them. I played Frank with his amazingly painted Tamils, and I shirked my duties that day and forgot my figs so Frank loaned me his also very nicely painted Patrician Romans, so Pilum vs Elelphants! and I can tell you, an enraged elephant that is about to die is not fun, as my trampled front units can attest!

Luckily I had peanuts in my pocket, so I distracted his charging Elephants and was able to break his line and take a narrow victory......

Then I played against Scott and his Late Ottomans with my Catalan Company, and his cavalry stomp me, although I had a few good rounds. The next game was against Al and I played his Nikephorian Byzantines, again with my Catalan company, and he completely destroyed them (funny enough I did not take pictures of these games, not intentionally though).
I went back to the drawing board and redesigned my Catalan Company and I played Al again, this time he decided to use his Ayyubid Arab army and it was a tough close game, but I was able to break his lines and won. But again it was close, a difference of 5 break points.

 It was great to have played these games and look forward to maybe playing once or twice again this week.I really like the game (ADLG) and its been a lot of fun.

As I mentioned before I received my BFAS shipment, and although they missed a few things that they will mail later, I still received a lot of stuff.I got Muscovites, Transilvanians and Polish. So I have several weeks of work just with that order. will post pics as I progress.

My Old glory FIW stuff arrived too at the same time. I will start doing a few pieces in between other projects to change air. There is no rush on that particular set of models so, I will take my time since its one of my favourite time periods. and I want to do them well.

The only things left that I have on the line for now are the Franco-Prussian armies  in 10mm that I ordered from pendraken, The Spanish civil war 10mm and 28mm armies that I want to put together and the Great northern war and late 17th century armies I was putting together. The Franco-Prussian stuff I will work on probably by Memorial day, and the rest I still need to order certain elements for each  of those projects, so they are at the back of the line until I get everything I need to put them together.

Finally, There are two articles that I will write, one, a consumer reports-type approach to wargaming rules for which I am trying to enlist some of my friends and fellow wargamers to help me out with this. I will post more on the subject as I develop this idea. The second is an article on the pluses and minuses of painting in 6mm, 10mm, 15mm and 28mm as I will be painting a small group of miniatures in each of these scales and report my experience as a painter with "all thumbs for fingers" and will make sure to include nice pics to go along my painting disasters and horrors that will probably ensue.

Until then, Game on.