Resisting temptation...

Resisting temptation is not one of the Legatus' key characteristics.  Indeed, my particular friend Sophie always maintains that my epitaph should be "Oh, alright then...".

Now, although I am very busy at present (I actually had to contribute to a brief for the Prime Minister today at ridiculously short notice) I have been trying to do a little bit of painting every day.  So collars, cuffs and turnbacks on my Dutch Jaegers today.  Not much but enough to move them along a bit.  Now, given the enormity of my lead (and plastic) pile and the geologically slow rate of my painting it would be palpably insane to be considering buying large numbers of new figures,  Today, however North Star have announced a sale.  Now there isn't very much there to tempt me except they have several deals on big collections of figures. 

A third of my painted French infantry

In particular, a force of 69 foot and 20 mounted of the Copplestone (mainly) sculpted Glory of the Sun/1672 French for £93, down from £156.  Now I should bear in mind that I have painted exactly three of these figures in the past few years, mainly because I have no idea as to how they fit in a wargaming/historical context.  The promised historical information on the Copplestone site never materialised.  But it's such a good buy!  I have always had this urge to get some figures from the 1650-1770 period but didn't want to do WSS (mainly because many people do it at Guildford already and I am contrary by nature).   I recently bought some British from this range but I can't find anything that shows the British fighting the French on land for the Dutch Wars.  In fact we were allies of them at some point.  Hmm.

The next offer I was tempted by is even more insane: two armies, Austrian and Prussian, from their 1866 range.  99 Prussians for £75 and 96 Austrians for £70.  This is for a range that is hopelessly incomplete as well but I have always had an interest in it because of the interesting uniforms and, perhaps, my Austrian heritage.   But given the pickelhauben hatted infantry at the top of this blog do I really need another bunch of pointy-helmeted troops?  If I want to do something from this period shouldn't I just do ACW?  Hmm.

The third temptation today (don't they always come in threes?) came about because I was searching for something else.  I can't even remember what it was now.  Anyway, there was someone selling Roco Minitanks.  My father used to buy me these in the early seventies and I loved their orange boxes and exciting blister packs that let you see the complete vehicle.  It wasn't some kit that would take hours to assemble; it was ready to go (on little wheels too!).  I may even still have some up in the loft.  It isn't the WW2 tanks I am interested in though, as I had a lot of these when I was younger.  I had the Minitanks catalogue and it had in it all sorts of exciting modern (at least in 1972) tanks in it.  I wanted Pattons and Chieftans and self propelled guns with really long barrels.  Maybe I could do some 1970s-set WW3 (like Team Yankee but 15 years earlier?)  I really liked the painting of the Centurion at the Imjin River on the cover of the catalogue I had.   Maybe Korean War?  Hmm!

Sometimes only a very big bottle of wine will do!

Well, the only solution is to have a glass of claret or three and wait until these feelings go away.  Just think of all the other figures that I really, really do want to paint (such as my Perry Cuirassiers) that I already own!  I have also been very impressed by everyone else's well thought out plans as to what they are going to paint this year, so I really don't need any distractions.  Hmm.