Your orders, Sir?

By Fire and Sword requires order markers to play -  three kinds, to be precise:

• Move
• Charge
• Defend

Lacking these markers turned some of my first games into an ugly mess, as we had to improvise using paper slips to display our orders.

Being a cheapo, I refuse buying expensive tin order markes when I can build them easily. After our latest game with paper markers I decided it was time to prepare some proper markers.

These are pretty simple if you know how they are made.
The base are my usual synthetic cork pieces cut into slices - you might as well use metal, plastic or coins, doesn´t matter.
The symbol on the marker is a slip of plasticard cut into triangles and rectangles, which I then used to build these simple symbols by gluing them onto my base.  Then they got a treatment of oxide paste and a bit of gravel on the symbol-side before they went into painting.

Done.



Of course orders aren´t the only thing I´ve been working on. I also completed the last base of Cavalry to add another 3 Boyar Son bases to my force for our game scheduled tomorrow.

As these troops are not exactly high performers, I also prepared some casualty markers for my Muscovites. These were a bit more work than the orders, as I sculpted these from scratch.

I actually tried the Tony Barton tile technique (read more about it here) using oven-baking clay for some of them. For casualties that worked quite well - which prompted me to take the experiment one step further and try a full figure.

Read more about how that went soon ;)

New SpecOps available

Today I put the new Special Forces sets online at Enfilade Figures.

Two new sets have entered the shop:  Another group of Special Forces in Light Gear in skirmishing poses and a pair of Snipers. 

Klick on the banner to go to the shop if you want to get them :)

Lurking in Broken Ground

Broken ground is some very useful terrain in a lot of settings. As my terrain still sucks compared to the figures I have available, I recently invested a minor sum into extruded pvc-boards and started leveling up my terrain.

After a lot of cutting, carving, gluing and flocking, my broken grund pieces are ready for the battlefield and will provide some nice scatter terrain.

And here are some potential occupants of the Terrain:  Some Servant Cossacks - a dismounted base and a horse holder base.  Again, the AB Napoleonic Horses are doing a great job! I just added a saddle and boom:

The Northern Lion - Sweden joins the fray

As usual when I start an Army, it doesn´t take long until I start a second faction to provide enough figures to play a game even if my gaming compagnions cannot field their own minis.

With my recent Fire and Sword adventure, I´ve decided to add a tiny Swedish Force - though I tried to cheat a little by making the Reiter units suitable both for Russian and Swedish Service.

This way, I only had to paint a few bases of Dragoons/Musketeers and a Command Unit. For a Start, the Reiter squadrons would be dual-use for my Muskovites as well as Swedish Service.

Here are the Dragoons: 

The Swedish Commander - I have to work some more on th Banner, it´s a freehand design and needs a bit more shading and highlighting. I´m going to rework it as some point once the Command Unit has earned some renown.

And finally, two Bases of Reiters.  I added some beards and painted the coats in colors that would be suitable for my Muskovite Force a well.  The Swedes will get some dedicated units later, right now flexibility and economy is important as I am trying to paint them to a nice standard.