There is the famous saying that someone has bitten off more than they can chew. … this evening I decided to get the metal and the resin infantry based on painting sticks and it was at this point that the enormity of the task ahead struck me…

What we have above are the miniatures for two of the four Pike blocks the guns in the foreground are for the Tercio as well as some Skirmish troops too. The pikes on the right are the front rank troops of the second pair of pike blocks.

Now technically from every stick of miniatures I will get two pair of pikes, meaning 120 miniatures or 60 pair, which will be able to go onto another base to make up the numbers. But even with this happening I am going to have to fire up the printer again and do some more pikes.

Typically I have plenty of arqubusiers spare… I think.

I did a test to see if my theory on the extra miniatures filling out the extra bases worked… it seemed to…

Here we have three quarters of an imperial eight stand Pike block, minus the skirmishers and doppelsoldners. To be fair it does look like a densely packed Pike block.

I have actually run out of lollipop sticks… I took a pile into work for the kids to make models out of… I am off to get them back tomorrow. I just have some more here, I just don’t know where they are.

I reckon with the bits and pieces I have left then I will be able to make a third Pike block, but will need more printed to make the fourth. As I am printing anyway, and have these already painted on the front rank then I might as well do the fifth unit… perhaps, or common sense will arrive and make me stop and consider things.

It is my daughter’s 13th birthday tomorrow, so I doubt I will get much done tomorrow evening. Joe is coming over on Friday for a game, so it might be a while before much progress is made.