Hello all! With a new year I want to get a new project underway but I'm undecided - should I go for a full researched historical army or have a go at inventing my own imagi-Nations?

I've got to admit it is nice painting ancients and not having to look at what trim Hannibal's Spanish infantry had! But then it's always been a (pipe?) Dream of mine to collect every unit for the later 19th century wars.

When it comes to gaming I'm similarly torn it would be brilliant to throw them French out of Italy in 1859 and smash the Prussians all over Bohemia! But it would be also nice to be giving fee reign over a army composition and campaign!

Anyway sorry for rambling but any thoughts would be nice!

I think this is one of those subjects that it is hard to give advice on, but here goes...

From my limited knowledge of such things, it appears that the most successful imagi-nations' armies are made by gamers who want to lose a bit of themselves into the back story: lots of care with the uniforms, the names, maps etc.  I don't of many gamers who successfully went down the route of calling one horse and musket army "the Reds", the other "the Blues", and used them to refight every campaign from Steenkirke to Marengo in those guises - even though it would be far more "efficient" to do so.

I am currently involved in an imagi-nations campaign set c.1860. The protagonists are all central and southern European states based on the armies of France, Prussia, Austria, Turkey, Britain, Italy and Spain. These are not the names of the states involved, and indeed there is a state in the making which will resemble Polish troops of the time, which didn't actually exist. For more info I would refer you to www.thewargamer.org and the name of the campaign is Terra Fera (but please excuse my mate's spelling). 

My preference would be to paint historical armies to use in "imagi-nations". That way you can have the best of both worlds. So, those Prussians, French, Austrians circa 1866 - 1871, for example, could double as any "Ruritanian" style nation you wished.
 

This discussion puts me in mind of the very first book on miniature wargaming I ever read: the late Charles Grant's The War Game.  In it, Grant described the two 18th century European Imagi-Nations that he had created: The Vereinigte Freie Staaten  and the Grand Duchy of Lorraine.  Because they were essentialy proxies for Prussia and Austria, it allowed Grant to carry out his fictional campaigns while still recreating historical scenarios like the Battle of Mollwitz.  Ah, good memories of that book.  Must have checked it out from our local library at least a dozen different times during my teenage years.