Here are my new peasants mixed with my old peasants, 125 angry Eastern European farmers. Quite pleased with the overall effect.
In this pic, I added a command base and some skirmishing musketeers to make it a proper rebel rabble battalia.
Here are the Peasant Levy / Dark Age unit builder mashups for my Khmelnitsky Uprising angry serf rebels.
First are seven of them that I just kinda think turned out neat. The Baron's War peasant arms don't quite match the Dark Age bodies but it's not a huge problem
These three guys sport looted German-style gear from Warlord Games' ECW/TYW plastics.
I wanted at least some to be in more casual, non-attacking poses. These guys could be objectives or civilians in a skirmish scenario, or even staffage for the terrain.
These four are armed with maslaks, a pretty region- and period-specific weapon for the poorest of peasants and tatars, just a horse or donkey's jawbone attached to a stick. I use the curved blades from the old Wargames Factory Persian Infantry to represent the jawbones, and greenstuff for the little straps holding them in place.
I've been meaning to for a while, but I finally bought a box of Peasant Levy and a Dark Age unit builder from Wargames Atlantic to combine into Eastern European rebellious serfs. The former has some delicious peasant weapon arms, including a variety of axes, billhooks, pitchforks and flails, while the latter has oodles of basic bodies and hairy heads.
I just took a handful of pics here for scale comparisons and to give a sense of the greenstuff usage this involves. These guys should go great with the Gripping Beast conversions and TAG minis that make up most of my previous peasant hordes.
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.
Here are all the infantry casualty counters I need for the next time I run my Tczew/Dirschau game. Models are my own. I need to cast a few more for the next batch which will cover cavalry and gun crew.
The little dice receptacles are just paper, I didn't want to worry too much about exact fit, the paper has some flex so it was easier to manage than hard plastic or whatever.
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.
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.
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As a bonus, here's a size comparison with a typical GB plastic, and an action shot.
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.
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".
I've been able to get a decent amount of painting done over my holiday break, even if I haven't been particularly inspired to blog the past month or so. But here's a bunch of crossbowmen! They are a mix of Warlord and Perry plastics, and Old Glory metals. In Novara the crossbowmen were Gascons and Navarrese, but since they are on the same side as the Landsknechts I let some of them have poofy sleeves for variety. You can also see some of the terrain I've been building from Tabletop Scenics.
Here's some more, these are all Assault Group (except the mace and mace hand are from Perry plastics).
Still messing around with rules stuff on a conceptual, pre-playtesting level, but I think I'm starting to close in on some gameable ideas...
Been painting up a variety of figures for an Italian-Wars-adjacent mini-project. Spinning off of my Novara (1513) project, I've been toying with an idea for a small-scale skirmish game set in the same era. I don't want to share too much of my planning at this point, but I'm happy to post these miniatures by way of preview.
I've organized them by manufacturer, for no particular reason.
First up are two unconverted Old Glory Landsknechts from their artillery crew set.
Next are some Perry "European Armies" figures, I'm done some modest converting to bring some of them forward a decade or two, but as you've probably noticed by now my sense of period-specificity is impressionistic at best.
Last up for this post are some metals from Warlord Games' landsknecht collection. Lots of character in these. No conversions except for a beard on the herald/town-cryer type character.
Got some TAG minis on the way, then after that I might start talking a bit more about the specifics of the new project...
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.
