Saturday was a rare treat... my wife, god bless her, took both the kids to my niece's birthday party without me. She took one for the team there. Hooray! Extra points for her, because it was my niece on MY side of the family, hehe.

This meant that I had 4 glorious hours to work on my French & Indian troops in peace and quiet. Well, not complete quiet; I did have Pearl Jam and Zeppelin going on the overhead speakers. And she had just stocked up on beer the night before. And right as I was about to get to work, a package from the Perry brothers arrived at my house. Did I mention it was a good weekend? I love it when a box shows up with the little blue "Par Avion" sticker on it... better than Santa!

So with that said, I did not get any painting done on Saturday. Why? Because the darn castings from Conquest / Warlord are atrocious! The sculpting is great but they take forever to clean up. Took me a full 4 hours to get them ready. It was 4 hours well spent though, because now I am ready to start painting up my British Regulars next weekend. I got a full regiment, 3 companies of 8 line troops and 1 company of 8 grenadiers, plus 2 officers ready to go... Nice!

I had been planning on finishing off my Compagnies Franches de la Marine this weekend, but after the past couple of game nights I realize I had better start painting some Brits to oppose the French if I am going to be hosting FIW games. Besides, looks like I am not going to the Muskets & Tomahawks tournament in March anyway, so no immediate need for me to build up my French army.

While I was in clipping/sanding/filing/basing mode, I did get a bunch ready though. So I now have 8 French grenadiers, 8 frontiersmen (to be used as "Coureurs de bois") and an additional 12 Troupes de la Marine ready to go on the paint table. The French Grenadiers are the first models in my FIW collection so far that will not be from Conquest. I think they are my favorite sculpts, but I am wondering if I should have gone with Crusader for my regulars. These French grenadiers by Crusader did not require much cleanup!

I also made up some hidden deployment markers that I can use in Muskets and Tomahawks or Song of Drums & Tomahawks.

  Eeewww.....