Reinforcements for Peter the Great's Army

When I started this GNW project, my intent was just to make a small company of soldiers, suitable for skirmish games using The Pikeman's Lament.  That was all, no great ambitions to build another great army.  Well, as the Bard saith, "the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley".  And so, miniature megalomania has struck again and the army has mysteriously grown.

Our intent now is to try Black Powder for the GNW.  Units will be 12 infantry, 6 cavalry or one gun or general model.  As the units will be smaller than the intent of the rule writers, we're planning to cut all movement distances and ranges by half.

Here is the army in its current form (and note that I still have some more units on the painting table!).

That's 6 line infantry, 2 grenadier regiments, 4 dragoons and 4 guns with 12 crew, plus 4 officers/generals.

These are the new grenadiers.  I assembled them using a combination of bits from the Warlord Games plastics, including bits from the WSS artillerymen, cavalry and infantry frames, with heads from Ebor Miniatures (so that they have the same mitre style as my Repnin's Grenadiers that I recruited earlier).  The two grenadiers with muskets in the front left are metal figures from Ebor.  The idea here is to have grenadiers actually using grenades, not just line infantry with funny hats!

Although I based them in pairs and singles for ease of skirmish gaming, I've blue-tacked them to 40x40mm square bases to make it easier to move them in a BP game.  I really should paint the edges of those bases, though!

Here are Repnin's Grenadiers with the same base treatment.

I like the grenadiers to look ready to assault the enemy!  A GNW-specific rule we'll use for BP will allow grenadiers to ignore one level of cover, to encourage their use in taking out dug-in enemies.

As I used up my plastic artillerymen building grenadiers, that meant I was short of gunners.  These men have stepped up to fill in the ranks.  Ebor artillerymen.

Just for fun, some side-by-side comparisons of equivalent poses from Ebor and Warlord Games.

I've also recruited more dragoons.  These are from Warfare Miniatures (aka League of Augsberg).  I've painted them as Moscow Dragoons, because I had a fit of temporary insanity and decided that I wanted to paint white coats.  (Normally, I hate painting white uniforms...)

A contribution from my friend Doug, these are nominally the Semenovski Guards, although they have a fairly generic pair of flags.  One of the pleasures of painting this army is that there were many different coat colours used! 

 And finally, the commander in chief Tsar Peter Mikhailovitch with some brigade commanders.  The Tsar is from Reiver Miniatures, the white wig officers from Ebor and the skinny chap on the left is Wargames Factory/Warlord Games plastic.

Grenadiers WIP

For my Great Northern War Russian Army, I decided that I want grenadiers with grenades, in active poses, but, alas, I was not able to find any readily available.  So instead, I decided to make my own!  

Starting with the WGF plastic WSS Artillerymen as a base, and with lots of bits from other WGF WSS plastic sets generously shared by Doug and Kevin, plus a supply of pewter grenadier heads from Ebor, I have fabricated these:

Torsos don't match exactly.  I considered adding a bit of modelling putty to fill the gap, but I don't think I'll need that.  Once these are painted, the overlap won't be easy to see.

I used Ebor heads to match the Repnin Grenadiers I'd already painted:  https://willstoysoldiers.blogspot.com/2018/05/grenadiers-for-peter-greats-army.html

Grenadier mitres come in a distracting variety of styles. I'm not judging which is best and I'm certainly not ready to research the exact style of mitre used in this army, but I do want to be consistent.  The mitre here supplied by Ebor matches the mitre shown in the Osprey Man-at-Arms book so it's good enough for me.

Peter the Great - Russians finished!

Here's something you won't have heard me say very often:  I finished an army!  Hopefully I'll get better at this - I just need to learn to say, "enough is enough"!  I've reached a point where I don't need to grow my army of Peter the Great.

Here are the last couple of figures finished.  Here is Tsar Piotr Alexeyevich Romanov, aka Peter the Great.  The figure is from Reiver Castings, and I picked him up after doing a search for a PtG figure and this was the only one I could find in 28mm!  He is here with a mounted officer from the Warlord Games WSS plastic artillery set.  

And here he is with a Ebor Dragoon.  Flag is also from Reiver, and is the standard of the Ingermanlandski Dragoons.

A group shot to show relative size.  Peter is much more massive.  Of course, he was over 2 metres tall in real life, but was lanky, as opposed to this fairly hefty fellow.  He's also got a suitably massive horse to ride.

With these figures completed, I now have enough figures to field a fairly balanced force for Pikeman's Lament with a mix of cavalry (dragoons only, which was normal for Russia), infantry, grenadiers and an artillery piece.  Here are a couple of group shots of the entire force.  

Due to points limits, I would not field the entire army.  With what I have available, I can mix and match a bit.  Most likely, I'd field something like this, unless there were scenario specific reasons to change the selection.  The force would include 2 units of shot, 1 forlorn hope, 1 commanded shot (dismounted dragoons) and two units of dragoons - note that I would ask my opponent to accept my proposed rule amendments for dragoons that I presented here:  http://willstoysoldiers.blogspot.com/2018/05/thoughts-on-cavalry-for-pikemans-lament.html

Grenadiers for Peter the Great's army

As you may have seen from my previous posts, I now have painted enough figures to make three units of dragoons and two of infantry (aka 'shot') for my Pikeman's Lament Russian company.  In order to bring the total to 24 points (which is standard strength for a one-off game), I wanted to add one more unit, so I decided that a 'Forlorn Hope' was needed.  In TPL, a Forlorn Hope is a small group of elite soldiers.  So I decided to get some grenadiers!

I ordered Swedish grenadiers from Ebor, as I wanted the tall cloth mitre cap that is shown in the Osprey MAA 260 Peter the Great's Infantry.  As it turns out, the Swedish figure is not quite right for a Russian grenadier - the thing I really noticed was the fall down collar, where Russian uniforms didn't have collars at all (at least not until 1720).  As it turns out, Ebor has Russian grenadiers in their unit pack, but it didn't occur to me that I could ask for them separately.  I also got 12 grenadiers, when I only need 6 for a Forlorn Hope.  

Anyway, these arrived in the mail on Thursday, and I had a mad painting spree over the weekend!  The uniform is supposed to be that of Prince Repnin's Grenadiers. I decided that due to their elite status, red coats would be a nice distinction from the green coats of the dragoons and the shot.

They are on a mix of single and double bases.  I can field one or two Forlorn Hopes, or combine them all as a single unit of Veteran Shot.  Either way, they certainly look like they mean business!

Russian Dragoons for Pikeman's Lament

Here are 18 Russian dragoons ready to use for Pikeman's Lament.  Figures are by Ebor.  If I can convince my opponent, I'll use the WSS/GNW dragoon profile from my last post.

The dragoons will be in units of 6.  I can mix and match of course, but I have the idea that one unit will be fully mounted, one dismounted (except for the horse holder) and one mixed mounted and foot.  Alternatively, I could field the foot unit as 'Commanded Shot', depending on how the PL company comes together.

Mixed mounted and foot:

Foot plus horse holder:

All mounted:

These are the two horse holders that I completed.  

Mixed foot and mounted stands

These figures were a bit less fun than usual, for a combination of reasons.  The figures are nice enough, sculpting is ok, but there is only one pose for the mounted trooper.  As a result, the troops look a bit unnatural when you see that each is holding his musket on his right thigh exactly the same way.  Another problem is that the metal is a bit brittle:  three of the troopers' muskets snapped off at the hand, so are waiting in my lead pile to be converted (I'll see if I can clip off what's left of the muskets and give them swords instead).  Yet another problem came from when I primed them. Something went wrong with the primer, and several of the figures ended up covered in a bumpy, textured surface, as if they were layered in coarse sand.  I tried to soak off the primer using Simply Green, but the primer wasn't going anywhere.  I painted over the mess as best I could, but they aren't the prettiest.

I have enough bits in the pile for another six dragoons (five mounted, one foot), which I will eventually get done.

Russian Dragoons for GNW

Here is the start of my Russian Dragoons for the army of Peter the Great.  I have no particular plans for them as yet; just a vague idea that they could be used for Pikeman's Lament or similar skirmish level gaming.

I took advantage of a rare sunny winter morning to take a few shots with natural light.  I particularly like the horse holder - definitely adds some character to the dragoons to emphasise their ability to deploy mounted or on foot!