Plastuny painted

Plastic Plastuny Platoon

The Plastuny were the Cossack's scouts, snipers and ambushers. Since they're only supposed to be modeled two to a base in BF&S, I decided to have a little fun with the arrangements.

They will be painted in dull earth tones... browns, greys, tans and greens. I might even paint pine tar on to their faces and hands, since that was apparently something they did for additional camouflage.

Painted moloitsy with spears

Here they are.

Cossack Moloitsy with spears WiP

When I did my previous cossack spearmen, I was still thinking in terms of pike blocks. So even though I knew that cossack longspears were shorter than proper pikes, I modeled them in a bland fashion to make ranking easier because I misunderstood how I would field them.

Now that I have a better sense of how the moloitsy used spears (mixed in among the other moloitsy), I let myself have a little more fun with the poses. I also added in some helmets, to match the reenactor pics in the By Fire & Sword rulebook.

By Fire and Sword - Cossack skirmish force

Here is a look at the largest Cossack force I can make so far. In BF&S it works out to 11 FSP (Force Strength Points), assuming I upgrade my Colonel as much as possible. The smallest possible Cossack skirmish force is 4 FSP, the largest possible is 19, so this is a good medium-sized force.

I'll note that this force isn't "technically" complete, I need to paint four more banners, one for each commander and one for each moloitsy rota. Also, one of the moloitsy spearmen is missing a head (I dropped him and the head popped off and I can't find it.)

The pictures are terrible, I'll try again in sunlight when I get a chance.

The colonel is worth pointing out. One of the quirks of BF&S is that every cavalry and infantry element has the same frontage and model count: 3 models and 4 cm. That's for 15mm miniatures, but for 28mm it looks like 6 cm will be a typical frontage. Since I tend to base cavalry at 25x50mm per mini, I based the third member of this command element on a piece of popsicle stick, only 10mm wide.

Since Cossacks are an infantry force, I can just make this one mounted trumpeter and call it a day. But if I wanted to convert my Poles to BF&S use, I'd probably have to convert 1/3rd of them to these "skinny" cavalry bases, and then maybe make "sabot" bases for when I want to use them for other games.

The rest of the registered cossacks

Here are the rest of my registered Cossacks, plus a few you've already seen to fill out the command groups. Tomorrow I'll try to takes some pics of the whole bunch arranged as a By Fire and Sword skirmish force.

Back to infantry (Registered Cossacks)

Got some more basic registered Cossacks here, based on Wargames Factory's WSS infantry, except these ones have Zouave heads. I found myself with a little extra time last night, so I painted up a quick banner (based on a picture from the By Fire and Sword rulebook).