Make That A Double!

Well I don’t usually bother with yearly round-ups or posts describing what I’ve got planned, but I actually had a vague plan for painting stuff in 2022 and since it served me so well I’m going with the same one in 2023 (hence the title)!

Back at the end of 2021 I worked out what I’d been painting since I started the blog in 2016 and decided that I’d try and paint stuff for a couple of conflicts/armies that I’d neglected or not started. That subsequently led to my storage boxes getting re-organised and shuffled about so I knew I had enough room for the minis I wanted to paint.

I decided that I wanted to concentrate on forces for the Mexican Adventure, Victorian Science Fiction and the Balkan Wars projects (these are shown in amber in the table above, the same table I posted at the beginning of 2022).

For some reason I seemed to have a really unproductive year last year, with not much to show for my time and only about 80 figures painted. Part of this was probably because I got quite a bit of scenery finished for the Season of Scenery challenge (which I was really pleased about), along with more bits started and quite a few figures prepared for painting. Consequently I didn’t get any figures painted for the Mexican Adventure, but I did paint a Greek Evzone unit for the Balkan Wars and, finally, made a start on my VSF figures!

During last year I added some extra storage boxes so that I could finally bring my 25/28mm Samurai and Ming Chinese armies out of the cupboard they’d been lurking in for years. I also found that Newline Designs had expanded their 20mm colonial ranges to include regular Afghan army forces for the 1880s so I had to get some of them to re-invigorate a project that got put on hold years ago. So more boxes got added and the contents shuffled about, as shown below.

Although the total number of minis appears to have gone up significantly, in practice it hasn’t because the Samurai, Ming and handful of painted Afghan troops hadn’t been included in the 2021 review.

So, what does this mean for 2023? Well, I’m going to continue with the emphasis on the same projects as last year. I only need to paint about 31 figures to complete my Balkan Wars armies to a point where they can be left alone for a bit (or considered complete). I’ve worked through small numbers of VSF troops and have more prepared, so I’m happy enough to keep going with them. For the Mexican Adventure I’m planning on getting some Mexican Republican troops finished before the end of April, since that sees the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Camerone and that gives me a target date to work towards.

Depending on how things go I’d like to also get some work done on the armies highlighted in pink in the above table. Since Jacklex has just brought out some 20mm Chinese troops for the 1894/5 First Sino-Japanese War I want to get some of these to expand my Chinese forces for the Boxer Rebellion. This will likely take the form of adding officers and drummers to my existing units and adding some modern artillery, regular cavalry and Western-trained infantry. For the Paraguayan War I’d like to add another Paraguayan cavalry unit and also paint some of the ships and naval personnel that I prepared last year. Although I don’t think I’ll complete any figures for the 1880s Afghan army, I’d like to at least have all of the figures primed and based ready to pick up at some point in the future.

So with the first week of January over, how have I done? Well, I’ve painted a vehicle that doesn’t belong to any of the armies listed above! No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy!