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. 

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.

Early Medieval Commanders

 Well I finished the commanders but my table isn't clean enough for an army shot. I've got a Viking chieftain as well as the two Frankish leaders. All three are Gripping Beast metals.

As a bonus, here's a size comparison with a typical GB plastic, and an action shot.

Almost the rest of the Franks

 Here's the remaining units for my Carolingian army, done except that I might do a second pass on some of the shields. All I have left for them is a mounted warlord and a priest. I'll post a full army pic once I have those characters ready.

Carolingian Franks

 A third army, or at least the start of it, to scrap with my Slavs and Vikings. Pretty much just Gripping Beast plastics mixed up, with a few metal Franks and warlord Celt heads. The highlight is the shields, made of upholstery tacks and press-molded greenstuff bosses, which admittedly mostly came out more "spike" than "sugarloaf". 

Hussar Reinforcements

 Rounding out my recent cavalry work, I've completed 9 Wargames Foundry hussars to mix in with my Warlord hussars. The size matches well enough, even if the gear looks to be from different eras, although I think technically the Foundry lancers are more appropriate to the Dirschau period than the Warlord ones, which are more Relief of Vienna looking.

With these sorted, I'm actually pretty close to having everything I need ready for Dirschau/Tczew. I've got 5 more reiters to paint, then a handful of cannons and their crew, and 36 muskeeteers. Oh, and the Swedish commanders! All doable by March I think, although between Omicron and my fiancée's upcoming surgery I probably won't actually host the game until later in the year....

Cuirassiers

 Another new cavalry unit, 11 warlord games cuirassiers. No conversions, the only deviation is a single TAG horse mixed in. I couldn't decide on blackened, russeted or polished armor, so I did a few of each.

For Dirschau, the Swedes will have three units of Cuirassiers, but since I don't feel like buying any more, I'll mix in some medium-armored cavalry to make up the difference, with units looking something like this...

Finnish horse

 My Swedish list for Dirschau contains one unit of Finnish horse, of the sort that would go on to gain fame in the Thirty Years War as Hakkapeliitta / Hackapelit / Hackapelite / Hackapell / Haccapelit / Haccapelite. This unit has six TAG hackapells and two converted Warlord plastics. I painted them with a pretty restricted, earthy palette to really lean into the perception of them as backwoods ruffians, and also, all their horses are brown to represent the finnhorse breed, as opposed to how I normally have some black or grey mixed in for variety.

First gendarmes

 A bit of a learning curve here, especially as I'm mixing Perry plastics with Old Glory metals, which in retrospect was perhaps a poor decision. Nevertheless, I think I'm on a path to making it work. The flag is a painted-over Perry from the men-at-arms box insert; the Swiss side's cavalry at Novara were Milanese, so I gave them that flag even though these test models will probably not be the exact 8 minis I use for that unit in the battle.

Mounted Crossbows for Italian Wars

Post-move pandemic hobbying continues! I built a batch of mounted crossbows, mostly from the Perry light cavalry box but with a handful of Warlord's landsknecht bits to bring them into the early years of the 16th century.

My ultimate goal, which I don't think I've actually mentioned on this blog yet, is to field both sides of the Battle of Novara (1513). I'm using Olicanalad's blog as a reference for force construction. It's not so much due to any particular interest in this exact battle, as it is a way to guide and constrain my general interest in Landsknecht, Swiss, and associated early-1500s troop types.

Don't worry, I intend to swing back around to 17th-c Eastern Europe soonish...

more slav elites, and the voivode

The elites are a mix of GB plastics much as before, except the lamellar armor is carved directly into the chest of Dark Age plastic figures (ouch!), instead of being taken from the Arab Heavy Cav box like last time. Also, the flag and horn guys are GB metals, the last of the purpose-built metal Slavs I got from GB. I have yet to decide on a flag for the army.

And here's the general for these guys. He's a Gripping Beast Arab, with a Warlord Games Celt head, and some greenstuff fingers and nasal piece. I figure he's an older dude who prefers to let others do the actual fighting these days, which accounts for his relatively relaxed pose and lack of body armor. He should still stand out on account of having the only helmet in the entire army though...

Slav elites and army shot

Here is the final unit of my core Early Slav force, a small group of armored infantry. There are two Gripping Beast metal Slavs, and the rest are kitbashed out of GB plastics.

And with that, my Early Slavs are basically ready to go. I really like how the limited palette approach worked out, they look quite irregular but still visually cohesive and at least moderately intimidating.

(If you're curious about army composition, I literally just looked up the DBA list for Early Slavs and then doubled the figure count. Since that totals to less than 24 pts in Lion Rampant, I then added the "Foot Knight" elite infantry to bring them up to the target.)