The Weekly Sitrep....Number 21

No prizes for guessing what will be featuring prominently in this post!

This post will be more like 'The Weekend Sitrep' rather than the weekly version - mainly because the weekend was quite a busy one!

I finally managed to get some cheap storage crates to decant those parts of Eric's collection that were in crates that were battered beyond the point of salvaging. I also took advantage of the price to lay in some extra so that the man cave now looks a little more organised. Having a floor covered with assorted piles of boxes and crates constituted a health and safety issue as the floor space was at an absolute premium! The resulting 'moving and shaking' meant that I was able to separate out all the late 17th and Marlburian cavalry for cataloguing and identification purposes. For the record there is around two crates worth of horse, all of which is still in Eric's original unit sized boxes.

I have also pulled out all of the Minifigs units from across the entire collection although I fully expect to find more given that Eric often made up units with odd figures from varying manufacturers. Having done this I would say that there is probably slightly more figures from the Seven Years War than the Marlburian period but in either case there is plenty of choice - probably too much for me if truth be told. One thing that did surprise me though was the amount of ECW Minifigs that Eric had assigned to some of the armies. We are certainly not talking whole armies here but certainly sufficient to form the basis of a Portable Wargame style set up for the period.

By far and away the biggest component of Eric's Seven Years War collection was the French Army. A lot of the Infantry appears to be Greenwood and Ball although I am unsure. I will get to them once the Marlburian and earlier ranges have been disposed of as far as possible.

I also found some artillery! Lurking in the Danish and Russian collection were several packs of Front Rank field guns and howitzers. Lord alone knows how long these had been in storage but suffice it to say that the wire used for the axles had a generous coating of rust! This will be up for disposal in due course as for my own need I will be using Minifigs artillery.

A few other mysterious offering appeared - sorry, no pictures yet - including a unit of what Eric described as Serbian Scout Cavalry - there is a dozen or so of these and they look very much like early Minifigs ACW kepi wearing cavalry sporting an over the shoulder cartridge belt and carrying a carbine; a unit of what look like Wargames Foundry Crimean Russian Dragoons with dismounts and finally a box of around two dozen or so partially painted early Minifigs Boxer Rebellion Chinese.

A couple of things have surprised me about all of the figures in this collection. To begin with the only modern ranges that anyone seems interested in are Wargames Foundry, Front Rank and to an extent, Dixons. Everything from Essex Miniatures and older seems to be almost of a niche interest. I am surprised by Essex as in many ways I kind of see them as the forerunner of the trend for larger and more detailed figures. Having said that some of the models do look rather dated by comparison with the newer types.

As someone that very seldom buys figures I am probably not the best person to comment on this but that is how I see it.

The next big undertaking will be sort sort out the cavalry as I am confident that all will find a home in due course.

Except the Essex that is....