Cossack infantry

 Cossacks from Old Glory, I greenstuffed shirts and hats on some of them.

 Old Glory minis are a bit on the small side, but I think they mix fine with the TAG and converted Perry minis I've used for previous Cossacks.

 

Tatars from Old Glory

 Bulking out my Crimean Tatar horde with a batch of Old Glory sculpts. Gotta say, I don't really get their whole short-sleeve jacket thing, doesn't match any other miniatures or images of Tatars that I've seen, and the full beards also seem odd, but painted up they blend in just fine with the rest of my collection.

 

 

 Size comparison with a TAG Crimean Tatar (middle), and my kitbash plastics (right):

 

Combined manufacturer unit:

 

Boyar's Sons (Muscovite cavalry)

 Any proper Russian/Muscovite army from this period is going to have swarms of irregular feudal cavalry. I have TAG minis to represent a few units' worth but wanted to have another go at converting some. These six are made from different Gripping Beast plastic kits; one Arab Heavy Cavalry, two Goth Noble Cavalry, and three Dark Ages Cavalry. Of note, these minis include my first ever attempt at adding stirrups. All of these except the one from the Arab kit, I made stirrups from wire and greenstuff.

 

I am quite happy with how these turned out, I think they mix pretty well with the real thing. 

It's a Dead Man's Party

 Here are all the infantry casualty counters I need for the next time I run my Tczew/Dirschau game. Models are my own. I need to cast a few more for the next batch which will cover cavalry and gun crew.

 

The little dice receptacles are just paper, I didn't want to worry too much about exact fit, the paper has some flex so it was easier to manage than hard plastic or whatever.

Back to Blogging, with Tatars

 Well 2024 was a busy year for me. Not a lot of hobby stuff getting done for real-life reasons, but now that we're settled into our new place and gotten past the holidays I expect to do better with mini stuff and the subsequent posting.

I got another batch of Assault Group minis last year that I didn't get a chance to work on at the time, and it includes my first "real", i.e. non-kitbashed, Tatars. However, I also have a bunch of leftover Wargames Factory bits for making kitbashed ones. I decided to do them together just to keep building my Crimean force in general.

 

Unfortunately, I don't know if I'm just rusty at hobby tasks or what, but I screwed up the priming and sort of textured them with some splatter. It's not super noticeable on the table, and it fits their aesthetic okay I guess, but I'll probably relegate these to back-rankers once I have the numbers to do so. I do think the real and fake tatars look ok mixed up like this, which is good because I have a few more of both.