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

Monday, January 30, 2023

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.




Monday, January 2, 2023

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.





Tuesday, December 20, 2022

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". 





Saturday, March 26, 2022

First army shots for Tczew / Dirschau

 These armies are basically the MVP (minimum viable product) for the battle I want to refight. Since I'm not going to try to host this until summer, I've still got time for both practical additions (movement trays, casualty/disorder markers), and aesthetic ones (staff for commanders, some rebasing, pennants and cavalry flags), but the armies shown here could be used as-is for the battle if I wanted to.



Interesting to me is that the current lists put the Polish army at a slightly higher points value, despite a noticeably lower figure count. However, the terrain for the battle favors the Swedes substantially, so the Poles are probably still the underdogs as they were historically. More on army lists and the scenario later.

(technically the Polish-Lithuanians are missing one commander, and the Swedish one artillery piece, unfortunately I didn't make those calls until after the army shots)

Monday, March 7, 2022

many musketeers

 36 plastic musketeers here, all from Warlord Games, with a bunch of Warlord's metal helmets and a handful of their metal swinefeathers. The swinefeathers don't fit that naturally with the figures, I had to get creative (even greenstuffing a couple right hands) to use them in minis that aren't actively firing.





Sunday, February 27, 2022

Swedish Commanders for Dirschau/Tczew

 According to a board game about Gustavus Adolphus, his subordinates at Dirschau were Graf von Thurn, Herman Wrangel, and Johan Baner. From left to right, I've got: a converted Perry ACW commander as Thurn, Warlord's Adolphus as himself, Warlord's Ake Tott as Wrangel, and Warlord's Gustav Horn as Baner.





Wednesday, February 16, 2022

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....