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.

 

Making a Cossack

 So after making the casualties, I sculpted and cast a hooded minion for my pulp gaming. He turned out pretty well, and it occurred to me that the long robe would be a decent base for a Cossack figure. I started with a real basic design inspired by a decorative figure from a Beauplan map.

 

 

 

This one has a Gripping Beast head and an old Wargames Factory right hand and gun. I am working on sculpting some weapon hands and heads of my own, but realistically I am going to be using a lot of real bitz because they look better. Even so, these homemade miniatures are not going to be front-rankers, but with my long-term plans I'll eventually need hundreds of Cossack infantry, so they don't all need to be professional quality. Besides the heads and weapon hands, I've also made some variants of this body for, uh, variety, iteratively from this one like how this one was iterated from the minion.

I did notice my painting is even worse here than my normal standard, so I have since bought a pair of reading glasses. Hooray for being 40!

I have a box of Wargames Atlantic generic horsies on the way, once I have those I'll start working on Tatars, Polish noble levy, and pancerny, all of which I want in bulk.

Gosiewski Rides Out (Pikeman's Lament AAR)

It took a while, but I finally bought a battlemat (from deepcut), set up some tables (uline), and put together a solo Pikeman's Lament game to refamiliarize myself with the system. I even tried to write a narrative battle report, but it was really hard to account for the high number of botched orders.

The terrain is pretty minimal, PL says at least one piece per quarter so I went with that. The forces are PL approximations of a couple of skirmish lists from By Fire and Sword, a game that I doubt I'll ever play but regard highly as a resource.

In particular, the BF&S ruleset has made Wincenty Korwin Gosiewski a minor celebrity among Eastern European Renaissance wargamers, on account of his 1649 raiding party being the only way to field winged hussars in the skirmish level of that game. His Cossack foes for this battle are based on the generic Cossack skirmish force from the same game. For the scenario I went with the basic Ga Pa line-up-and-fight deal, with the Cossacks defending and the Lithuanians attacking.

Cossacks:
2x12 veteran shot (Registered Cossacks)
2x12 shot (moloitsy)
2x12 clubman (peasant rabble)
1x6 commanded shot (plastuny scouts)

Lithuanians:
1x6 veteran gallopers (hussars)
2x6 trotters (rajtars)
2x6 raw gallopers ("cossack-style" light cavalry)
1x6 dragoons

To keep things simple, I made the hussars Veteran Gallopers but not aggressive, both because I didn't want to have to remember the mechanic, and also because I felt that the Gosiewski Party background justified less reckless hussar behavior. I also made no attempt to represent the spearmen mixed in with the Cossack moloitsy, I have a few ideas on how to do so, but didn't want to bother with house rules for this game.

Turn 1: the rajtars and hussars advanced, but the "cossack-style" light cavalry and the dragoons stayed put, a reasonable enough set of results. The actual Cossacks all advanced, save the moloitsy on the side of the village (who were not asked to), and one of the peasant rabbles (fair). The plastuny scouts moved with special elan, accruing a bonus point of honor for their officer on account of their remarkable sneakiness perhaps. First blood to the Cossacks!! Not in-game, but rather, when I was moving one unit of moloitsy, a Cossack in the stationary moloitsy unit stabbed me in the finger with his wire spear, hard enough to draw literal blood. Good for him!

Turn 2 began well enough with the rightmost rajtars advancing, but ended prematurely and absurdly as the hussars decided to flee a half move, apropos of absolutely nothing. The now-exposed rajtar unit prepared for the worst, and while the first salvo from one registered Cossack unit did indeed halve their numbers, the rest of the Cossack army was apparently as confused by the hussars' retreat as the other Lithuanians were....

For Turn 3, obviously the priority was to get the elite hussars going back in the right direction (i.e. towards the enemy), but they were unable to move as their commander had to pause to receive a dispatch from high command; unfortunately, his dragoons were being reassigned, effective immediately. Gosiewski's only solace was that his foes remained baffled by his force's shambles, and themselves took no action.

Turn 4 saw the bulk of the Lithuanian force (both light cavalry units and the intact rajtars) finally advance, but a botch on the hussar order saw them become wavering! Perhaps their lances and wings had gotten tangled as they attempted to turn back to face the Cossacks? For their part, registered Cossacks shot down two more rajtars (although the final member of that unit refused to budge), and the other registered unit moved up to the fence, but when the moloitsy outside the fence were ordered to shoot, they decided to advance instead. While it is usually a poor plan for infantry to charge gallopers in this game (or ever), given how poorly the Lithuanians were performing I can't blame the moloitsy for feeling pretty confident.

Turn 5 began with the hussars successfully shaking off their wavering status. This auspicious occurrence was followed by a "successful" caracole from the intact rajtars, that is to say, they received and executed the order, but failed to do any damage to the registered Cossacks opposite them. The remaining cavalry all moved as directed, marking the first turn in the game where an entire force carried out all orders. By way of contrast, the Cossacks failed the first order given.

At the beginning of Turn 6, the hussars advanced for the first time since turn one, though sadly they were unable to charge due to their previous dawdling. Both units of light cavalry, however, were in range to charge, and did! They attacked the out-of-position moloitsy, the first unit dealing some damage before being scattered by the moloitsy's first salvo, the second dealing additional damage and only losing two men in return. Tied for damage, the second light cavalry unit was forced to withdraw (as the attacker), but both units remained in good order. Meanwhile, the intact rajtars performed another ineffectual caracole, while the lone rajtar was unable or unwilling to perform the maneuver.

Turn 6 continued with the registered Cossack units opening fire on the rajtar squadrons nearest them - the lone rajtar was finally gunned down, while the larger unit lost two cavalrymen. Reduction of the Lithuanian force to half strength meant morale testing for every unit, but only the remaining rajtar unit began to waver. The pastuny, who had scaled the hill in such a praiseworthy fashion earlier in the encounter, seemed content to continue posing, choosing to disregard the order to shoot at the nearby light cavalry.

At this point I called it for the Cossacks. While the veteran gallopers are a tough enough bunch that they might well have been able to turn the tide singlehandedly had the game continued, quite frankly I did not want to give them the opportunity after their absurd incompetence throughout the previous turns.

I'm already planning a sort of rematch, with 36ish points per side to more accurately reflect the skirmish lists, more liberal use of special/house rules, and perhaps even a custom scenario to reflect Gosiewski's historical mission.

Who Invited the Bishops?

So, The Assault Group provides special freebie miniatures if your order exceeds a certain price threshold, and if you forget to specify which you would prefer, they just send one that seems appropriate given the other contents of your order. Since I mostly use TAG for Cossacks and Muscovites, it makes sense that I would mostly end up getting Orthodox priests. So here they are.

I decided to do some minor converting just to avoid having identical quadruplets. I just googled "russian orthodox priest" to get a sense of how the outfit might vary, I have no idea what the history or theology is behind the hat colors or whatever. The beard extensions and hat flaps are greenstuff. The staff is a plastic Persian spear bit with a blob of gs on the end, and the ikon is the end of a wooden coffee stirrer.

(the title of this post is a line from The Death of Stalin, which I recommend if you like Armando Ianucci's brand of grim satire).

First game of Pikeman's Lament

Unfortunately, I was too busy making sure we got the rules more-or-less right to take pictures or put together a proper report. But my opponent managed to get a nice picture at the end of the first turn.

I played the Cossack/Tatar side, and lost pretty handily. Commanded Shot aren't much good out in the open...

Pikeman's Lament

The snazzy new skirmish ruleset, from Osprey and one of my favorite bloggers, just arrived yesterday. It's a super quick read, and should be a lot of fun to play. Michael Leck has published dozens of sample companies on his blog, but I decided to throw a few together based on my own mid-17th-century collection and needs. I don't actually have the models to field all these, except the first two, but it'll be easier to attain these goals than full P&S armies...

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
1 Aggressive Elite Gallopers @ 6 points each (Hussars)
2 Gallopers @ 4 points each (Pancerni or Cossack-Style Cavalry)
1 Trotters @ 4 points (German Mercenary Rajtar)
1 Dragoons @ 4 points (German Mercenary Dragoons or Tatars)
1 Commanded Shot @ 2 points (Haiduks)

Cossacks
1 Aggressive Forlorn Hope @ 6 points (Swashbuckling Cossacks)
1 Veteran Shot @ 6 points (Registered Cossacks)
2 Shot @ 4 points each (Moloitsy) (may trade one out for Dragoons)
2 Clubmen @ 1 point each (Peasant Rebels)
2 Priests @ 1 point each (attached to clubmen)

Muscovites
1 Forlorn Hope @ 6 points (Streltsy)
1 Elite Trotters @ 6 points (Dvor or New Order Reiters)
2 Trotters @ 4 points each (Boyar's Sons)
2 Commanded Shot @ 2 points (Border Guards) OR 1 Shot @ 4 points (New Order Musketeers)

Tatars
3 Veteran Dragoons @ 6 points each (Tatar Warriors)
2 Raw Gallopers @ 3 points each (Kazindji)

Ottomans
1 Veteran Shot @ 6 points (Janissaries)
2 Raw Shot @ 3 points each (Azabs)
2 Trotters @ 4 points each (Sipahis)
1 Dragoons @ 4 points (Tatars, Besli or Akinci)

Painted peasants

Two more units to go...

easing back into historicals...

You can never have too many peasants! At least, not if you're look to recreate the Khmelnitsky rebellion. Here's a quick shot of some peasants prior to painting. These minis are all Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors, with only a few Gripping Beast Arab bits mixed in. And also some greenstuff obviously. Note the agricultural flails made of spear hafts and jewelry chain.

I've been hearing good things about Frostgrave...

...so maybe someday I'll buy the rules and try them out with my historical collection, as an alternative to Mordheim.

Apparently the distinguishing feature of Frostgrave is that each warband is build around a wizard and an apprentice. So I've started converting leftover miniatures into 17th-century spellcasters.

The generic duo is entirely Warlord Games plastics, except for the greenstuff and red beads. The Scotsmen are also Warlord-based, but with Gripping Beast spear arms and I think one Perry Zouave arm. The Cossack apprentice is a Zouave with a GB spear arm, and the older Cossack is a Fireforge Mongol with Warlord pike arms and a cut-down GW spearhead.

Playtesting my rules

Hey, remember that Pike & Shotte supplement I wrote, with lists for Cossacks, Tatars and Muscovites? The fine folks over at Wargame Amateur decided to give them a test run. And even though they only played a couple games so far, they answered one of the biggest questions I had: I was worried that the Gun Shy rule might be too debilitating for Tatars, but apparently that is not the case.

Thanks guys!

Filling in the corners

I finally replenished my greenstuff stash with a trip to the Compleat Strategist in Manhattan (strange that it's more convenient for me to take the train to another state than to get to any of the closer hobby stores, but that's carless life for you). Given my idiosyncratic style, my hobby progress was pretty much paralyzed without it. Here are a motley bunch of rebels to get my units up to full strength with no overflow.

To start, some plain Cossack moloitsy. Two from Perry zouaves, one from Gripping Beast dark ages warriors. GB head on the left, other two have Fireforge Mongol heads, all with greenstuffed hat/hair.

Mostly GB Arab bodies with Zouave arms and heads. The tall one is Wargames Factory WSS with a Mongol head, and the officer has Wargames Factory WSS arms.

GB dark ages with a few GB Arab bits. And a short length of wire for the nailbat.

Ditto here.

Flag preview

I want the moloitsy standards to look less geometrical and regular than the ones I made for my registered Cossacks. Here are some I'm working on, repurposed from Napoleonic Opolchenie flags. I printed them in black and white to use as templates, and now I'm painting them, and tweaking the designs as I go.

Painted Cossacks

I painted the moloitsy from earlier. I'm really enjoying mashing all these kits together, I don't know how people can paint uniformed armies without going insane.

Hopefully I can rustle up some flagpoles and flags for these guys this week.

a whole mess o' moloitsy!

More kitbashing with the same sets as last time. These are all the guys I need to bring my moloitsy (non-registered Cossack infantry) up to six units. The first picture has musketeers and one spearman. The second is all the standard bearers I will be distributing among my regiments. Sorry it's so blurry, but you get the idea.

Another test game

The good news is, I played a more complete game than my long-ago first trial run. This one has multiple battalias, some terrain, and a little bit of artillery. Unfortunately, I rolled absolute garbage for both sides' command tests, so the game itself was super lame. That's where there's no proper battle report this time. Just a few of the better pics, and some random thoughts.

I lost my own D6s a while back, so I borrowed the dice from a housemate's Farkel set. This gives me a dozen flag-themed dice per army, with another dozen (green and black) for casualty counts.

My table is only about 3'5" by 5', so I halved all distances (movement, ranges, etc.)

I used my own Cossack list, available here. I guess Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy just published a Cossack list, I'll have to check that out some time.

While I blamed my luck for the dullness of this game, I also could have played better, remembered to use initiative moves, and maybe included some Cossack horse for a more dynamic game. Oh well, live and learn.