A tabletop gaming blog, with a vague bias towards Central/Eastern Europe and the Early Modern period.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Hussar!

Polish Winged Hussar from Warlord Games. I was rather intimidated by all the details, but I think it turned out well enough. I do seem to have mis-seated the lancer on his horse, and painted parts of the saddle as saddlecloth. Details aside, a whole unit of these ought to look quite fearsome...




Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Hail to the king, baby!

Here is King Jan II Kazimierz Waza, now with horse and bodyguards.





The King is based on Bicorne's Charles I, as shown previously. His guards are from Warlord Games (mostly). The standard bearer is a WG plastic pikeman with Wargames Factory arms, and the one with the pistol is the WG limited edition Pike & Shotte promotional mini. The halberd heads are from Games Workshop's Empire militia.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Noble Levy Cavalry test

Alright, let's get back to business.

A substantial proportion of the Polish-Lithuanian army at Beresteczko was the infamous Pospolite Ruszenie, less-than-enthusiastic amateurs drawn from the extensive Polish nobility. In the fantastic-looking By Fire and Sword rules system, they actually have a special rule called "We are here to be seen, not to fight".

So with that in mind, here is a posh young nobleman striking a heroic pose astride his faithful steed. In my haste to use the wonderful mounted officer that came with my recent artillery purchase, I kinda skimmed over some details. The cravat might be forgivable, it was a reasonably established fashion by the next decade, so maybe this guy is an early adopter. On the cutting edge of fashion, so to speak. I'm less happy about the basket hilt on the sword. It feels distinctly un-Eastern and I may yet go back and trim it off.





I'll be honest, these noblemen are not going to look that different from my mounted Cossacks, since they'll be using a lot of the same head and arm bits. My main ploy to distinguish them will be to give the nobles plenty of war hammers, and paint them more colorfully.

Finally: it turns out I really don't like painting horses. Perhaps I should have taken that into account before choosing such a cavalry-heavy conflict to collect. Oh well, too late now. I'll eventually go back and finish all the mounts that I've been ignoring.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

bits and bobs

Work's been crazy, and I've been lazy, but here are a few hints of things to come...