Collecting a Wargames Army 104

Well, no plan survives contact with the enemy! I have abandoned the idea of basing units on stands of different depths to differentiate between regiments of different sizes. It just didn't look good. Either the figures were too tightly clustered or it meant dropping the number of figures per stand to a point where the units looked too thin. Either I will just assume all foot regiments are created equal for the purposes of my battles, or I'll use some kind of roster system and attribute the lack of obvious difference on the table to the fog of war!

I'm up to four regiments of foot now and I'm a third of the way through my fifth unit (Heselrigge's Regiment). I've been itching to paint up a unit of horse or two, but I've settled into a comfortable pace with the foot, completing about three models per day, so I am going to press on until I have seven or eight regiments. Still to come are Heselrigge's Regiment in blue, Potley's Regiment in yellow, and two Trained Bands in buff coats that will work equally well for the London Trained Bands (White and Yellow) or the various local auxiliary regiments (Tower Hamlets, etc) with a quick flag swap. This will allow me to play scenarios based on Sir William Waller's campaign in 1644. A few units of horse, some dragoons, and a couple units of artillery and I'll be ready to start on Hopton's army! Of course, I fully intend to fight some battles long before that. As soon as I have a dozen units or so, I'm going to divide the army in half and set them on each other! Only the officers' sashes will give away the fact that there are no Royalist units on the field. Given the rivalries and politics of the day, it may not even be unusual for quarreling officers to settle arguments with a skirmish! As usual with the ECW, different sources list different coat colors for my newest unit. Sir William Waller's Regiment of foot are sometimes listed as having blue coats and sometimes yellow. I have chosen the latter purely on a whim. I intend to paint Sir William's horse regiment as well and I'm going to give them yellow sashes instead of the typical orange associated with Parliment. The orange is worn in honor of the Earl of Essex and given their rivalry, it seems that at least with his own men, this would be an acceptable break with tradition.