Cossacks, Peasants and plans for the future

Some more Assault Group miniatures here, a mix of cossack foot soldiers and Russian peasant laborers.

My main reason for buying these was to celebrate my new job and have something fun to paint. But I'm not one to collect and paint miniatures without at least hoping to play with them. For one thing, I'm not good enough at painting to justify the expense as a purely artistic hobby. So, I have both short- and long-term gaming plans for this batch of unruly Slavs.

Short term, I plan on accumulating a few more of these miniatures to play Witchfinder General, a skirmish-level game pitting 17th-century pike and shotte soldiers against witches, vampires and other supernatural unpleasantness. The game assumes an English setting (note that the rules share a title with an old Vincent Price movie), but a guy with a musket is a guy with a musket whether he speaks English or Ruthenian, and Eastern Europe is as spooky a setting as any desolate insular moorland.

Long term, I plan on making a Cossack Rebellion army for the upcoming period ruleset by Warlord Games. Ideally, I would also put together a Polish Rzeczpospolita army to provide an appropriate nemesis. And as a bonus, I could combine the two for a Kislev-themed Empire army for Warhammer Fantasy!

First Post!

So, to start things off on the right foot, I present - a strelets! These infamous musketeers were founded by Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich, better known as Ivan the Terrible (although I'm told that his epithet 'Grozny' would be better translated as "Awe-Inspiring"). Their distinctive combination of firearm and polearm was apparently quite effective, since Ivan IV vastly expanded the Russian nation during his reign.

This fellow is most definitely WiP, but it seemed appropriate to post him first seeing as how he's armed with a bardiche. You know, like in the blog title?

Like most of the miniatures I will be posting in the near future, this miniature is from The Assault Group which is an awesome website for two reasons: first, they have a great range of renaissance miniatures sold at reasonable rates with great customer service; and second, when I have enough tabs open on my browser, the Assault Group tabs read "The Ass..." which is always worth a chuckle. And if you're wondering about scale, he's based on a penny.