Not Quite A Dilema

My very first Prince August 40mm homecast regiment was MacDuff's Fusiliers, raised especially for service in the HAWK's Not Quite The Seven Years War convention battles. Their first appearance in battle was in 2000 if memory serves and eventually they became a full, alternate or mixed Charge! regiment with grenadier, light and 2 line companies. At the time,  I expected this to be the limit of my contribution.

MacDuff's Fusiliers seen capturing the standard of the von Nordenhafen Regiment at the 2nd Battle of St. Stephen during the Raid on St. Michel at Cold Wars in 2010.

In 2003 as I was starting to play around with Joe Morschauser's rules and the first version of what became Hearts of Tin, I started in on another PA project, a scaled down Fontenoy with myself providing the French. 6 figures to a 60mm x 60mm base, 3 bases per battalion. 

By 2006 that project was dead and I started converting the 6 battalions, 2 squadrons, light infantry and guns  that I had raised to Charge! standards and starting adding more. All of a sudden, instead of one regiment of mercenaries for the NQSYW, I had unintentionally built one of the larger national contingents and had to change sides for play balance. Thus Rosmark was born! 

I now found myself with 10 companies from 7 different regiments and 9 squadrons from 6 regiments, apart from ample guns and some light troops. Half the troops were in French uniforms and the rest in various fictional ones loosely based on Saxon and Russian ones. I need to transform this to have a proper contingent to take to convention games as well as opposing armies for solo games at home.  

Two company regiments on 3 different basing options compare frontage.

The first question was "How many troops?". The answer to that seemed easy: enough units for Grant Teasers. That was going to be two companies/squadrons per scenario unit until I cut my table down. Now one looks like a better bet except that many scenarios only call for three or four infantry units which doesn't give much of a game. I decided to try reducing the frontage per figure and decided that that was do-able and would allow 2 companies per unit. The only problem is that my figures would be on a much narrower frontage than their opposition. Claims of being better drilled have not bought me much slack in the past but luckily that would be easily fixed by just spacing my troops out for Away battles. Another option would be to go with the same washers I am using for the 1812 & Atlantica troops. This would ease logistics and can be seen on the militia and Pandours in the background above. Not as compact as I would like but closer to standard and ample for the first while when I will only have less than 8 companies per side available anyway. By the time I have 32 companies painted up, perhaps I will have added that foot or two back on my table..

The next question was what to add and how to handle existing units. Currently, my "French" troops  have been serving in mixed "brigades" with three companies from three regiments.Very messy looking. In many ways the logical solution would have been to paint sixteen new Rosish battalions and then bring each of the French battalions up to two companies. The main hitch is that this was the 3rd time I had raised a War of Austrian Succession/SYW in America French Army (once in 30mm, once in 15mm) and I had had enough. After nearly two years of dithering, I took the plunge this week and started partially repainting existing units into matched pairs of non-French troops.

First up was Rosmark's Queen's Foreign Brigade. One of the units was a light blue clad German unit whose actual name I have forgotten and La Reine.They can be seen in the background in the first picture, the Germans in pale blue with red cuffs and white small clothes, La Reine in white with red cuffs, blue vest, white pants, both with silver hat lace and self coloured turnbacks.

After 2 years of waffling, 24 hours sufficed to turn them into a 2 battalion regiment in medium blue with red cuffs, turnbacks and small clothes and white hat lace.  As much as possible of the original paint was left as is so they are still a little tatty looking but they are veteran soldiers with many victories and few defeats under their belts. The regiment is now the Queen's Foreign Regiment.    

The amalgamated Queen's Foreign Regiment in the new uniform.

That gives me 6 battalions in blue. Next up will be to convert the King's battalion to Red and then cast up and paint 4 more Red coated companies with yellow or green facings. That will give me 6 blue coated companies and 6 red coated companies with 2 more in white as fillers. Then maneuvers can begin.