Signs of life in Syldavia?

Hi all,

It has been pretty quiet around here, somewhat embarrassingly so I have to say.  The end of semester has been incredibly chaotic and I have been dog-paddling in deadlines for months it seems.  I have squeezed in a little bit of therapeutic figure painting here and there, the Syldavia project continues to inch its way toward completion!  Spring ought to be coming around the corner, I'd like to conjure up a little sun and a few flowers.  

I dropped in on TMP yesterday only to stumble upon a strange little bunfight about Sam Mustafa's new Maurice rule set and such travesties as the use of cards and rules (shudder!).  Why did I let myself get distracted by all that I wonder?  I had already ordered Maurice as I am interested to see how he has set up his imaginations campaign rules, the pre-release brochure piqued my curiosity and I can see how it might be also help me out.  As for all the fuss about cards, dice, rules, etc that erupts from time to time, meh.  Its all a game, what is the point? It is fun or it is not, it leads the imagination somewhere it wants to go, or it doesn't.  My daughter, a real force of nature,  intervened last night in a little game-experiment I had set up to test out the workings of Bill Protz's BAR rules, which seem excellent to me.  As you can see, she has her own way of resolving battlefield situations, independent of dice, cards or rules... it looks fun in the photo!  She is, I think, transforming some green-coated dragoons into frogs...   The percipient reader can take this photo as proof that my Syldavian army does in fact exist, almost all of the minimum force is now completed and I have enough of the Bordurian side to give the decadent Syldavians a challenge.  This bodes well for having some fun this spring and summer introducing them and playing some games.  They are 18mm Eureka figures, 36man infantry battalions and 12 man cavalry units, not quite up to BAR's Big Battalion standard but still with some visual heft.  I look back on my early days of 12-man Napoleonic btns with dismay!

Edit: I asked my daughter what she hoped to do with the magic wand.  She said that she wanted to turn the "bonhommes" into "horses".  Given that she was focussing on the dragoons, already mounted on horses, one wonders if she was wanting to turn them into Horse.  If this is the case, she just might be making a sly comment about the quality of the Syldavian cavalry...  Could she be in fact cheering for the Bordurian side?