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.

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