A tabletop gaming blog, with a vague bias towards Central/Eastern Europe and the Early Modern period.
Showing posts with label Swedish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swedish. Show all posts

Sunday, February 2, 2025

It's a Dead Man's Party

 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.

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.





Friday, February 11, 2022

Cuirassiers

 Another new cavalry unit, 11 warlord games cuirassiers. No conversions, the only deviation is a single TAG horse mixed in. I couldn't decide on blackened, russeted or polished armor, so I did a few of each.





For Dirschau, the Swedes will have three units of Cuirassiers, but since I don't feel like buying any more, I'll mix in some medium-armored cavalry to make up the difference, with units looking something like this...




Thursday, February 10, 2022

Finnish horse

 My Swedish list for Dirschau contains one unit of Finnish horse, of the sort that would go on to gain fame in the Thirty Years War as Hakkapeliitta / Hackapelit / Hackapelite / Hackapell / Haccapelit / Haccapelite. This unit has six TAG hackapells and two converted Warlord plastics. I painted them with a pretty restricted, earthy palette to really lean into the perception of them as backwoods ruffians, and also, all their horses are brown to represent the finnhorse breed, as opposed to how I normally have some black or grey mixed in for variety.





Sunday, December 24, 2017

Carl X Gustav of Sweden

As promised, a historicals post.

I recently realized that, while I have converted several Polish and Cossack personalities, I hadn't yet done any Swedes despite being potentially able to field a decent force of them in Pikeman's Lament. So, off to wikipedia I went!

I let myself have a bit of fun with this one. Most paintings of good ol' Carl show him as a standard dour Swede in cuirassier armor (scarcely distinguishable from a Wrangel or a Wittenberg). But this rather idealistic/allegorical work gives him a bit more panache, so I went with that, even if I don't know how realistic that weird tinsel coat actually is.

(This is mostly just a standard Warlord Games P&S cavalryman, with a Anglo-Zulu War arm, an ACW hat, and plenty of greenstuff)







Sunday, November 13, 2016

Halloweekend 2016 pics

The weekend before Halloween I had some friends over for a bit of historical/horror Mordheim. Warbands from all over Europe had been pursuing witches and vampires, and all the monsters had converged on a remote Carpathian town for unknown, but presumably dire, purpose. The hunters formed a makeshift alliance, and assaulted the village from all directions to cleanse the evil gathered within.



Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Diorama Extras (infantry command)

I'm slowly getting through the cold-weather conversions for the diorama characters, but I did just finish painting some of the other guys. Goblet Guy and Telescope Guy could both be characterful pirate captains for this era. Halberd Guy is just one more infantry sergeant.




Sorry about the moldline, I'm fixing it now.

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Conversions for contest and fun

My miniatures arrived about a week ago for the Warlord diorama contest, and I'm partway through converting them for their intended purpose. Dahlbergh is basically the stock model, just with some slight arm reposing and subsequent repair work. The driller is a mortar crewman, with added winter clothes, and his artillery ladle converted into a drill. The other henchman is a plastic pikeman with WiP winter gear, a converted arm, and what will eventually be a measuring rod.




And here are a couple other miniatures that came with the command unit. The officer is "supposed" to be holding a flag or partizan, but I couldn't resist putting together a chalice out of sprue bits.


Monday, January 25, 2016

Pike and Shotte and Tentacles

aka Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Men

So I've recently finished watching a Bloodborne playthrough on youtube, and that really got me in the mood for some creepy pseudohistorical gothic weirdness. Since I have more Firelock Storming Party bodies than I know what to do with, I mixed a few (and a spare pikeman) with some scrap plastic for this band of gross mutants, who would work quite nicely for a Possessed warband in Mordheim.





And here are WiP shots, along with a random anachronistic kitbashed musketeer who's still being painted:



Thursday, December 24, 2015

Merry Christmas!

...and happy holidays, and in case I don't post again this month, happy New Year's too!

I have two new projects for the winter. One is a diorama contest entry, and the other is still secret because I don't have any good pics for it yet.

The contest basically has just three rules: Warlord minis only, no more than 20 cm in any dimension, the theme is harsh/hostile environments.

I've started a thread on their forum to document my planning and execution. I've pretty much decided I'm going to model Erik Dahlbergh and his assistants on the Baltic ice during the Great Northern War, checking the thickness to see if Karl X's army can safely perform the March Across the Belts. I'm thinking Dahlbergh himself will be a metal infantry officer, the assistant(s) will be various gun crew models, and I'll also have the dragoon horse-holder minding their mounts, and if the base isn't too crowded by then, a couple reiters keeping watch.

Unfortunately, my card is having weird issues with foreign transactions, so I don't have the miniatures I want yet. But I've been playing around with a mock-up, and 20 cm isn't a whole lot of space. This will be interesting...




Sunday, November 9, 2014

Friday, November 7, 2014

Some Commandery Types

Figured I'd show off some works-in-progress. I've got some genuine Eastern Europe character types on their way from TAG, but my out-of-period Perry miniatures arrived earlier.




All of these started off as ACW generals (of the treasonous racist variety), but by tweaking the headgear and a few other details they can make passable Cossacks and Poles. The leftmost is going to be Filon Djalali, one of the Khmelnitsky's subordinates at Berestechko. But if he turns out well enough, I might swap his sword for a mace and have him replace my earlier Ivan Bohun. They have a similar sort of dashing heroic pose.

The dude on the right is supposed to represent Jeremi Wisniowecki. I love his cool, imperious pose, and I added longer hair and a bunch of fur lining to represent this portrait of the guy. Also a hat, even if the portrait doesn't have one, because headgear seems almost mandatory for the era.

The guy in the middle doesn't represent any particular historical guy. His gloves looked quite reiter-ish to me, so I gave him a floppy western hat and plume from the Warlord infantry box, and sculpted a quick lace collar. I might just have him be Wisniowecki's aide, they do look like they're conversing. Or of course he could be a Swede if I ever run my western-style guys as Swedish force.