Muscovite Reinforcements - Hidden Progress 2

Over at Crisis, I also grabbed some more Infantry - Field Dragoons.

Again, I mixed these with some converted Totentanz Miniatures and miniatures I sculpted myself. The result is nice, you can hardly tell which is which: 

Muscovite Reinforcements - The Hidden Progress 1

Back in November it seems like it stopped taking photos...

A lot of progress has been made on my Muskovites that I haven´t bothered posting - it is now high time to get back on track with these photos.

The first major step forward was the discovery of Fighting 15s  Medieval Tannenberg Range. As I spotted the Lithuanian Boyars, I knew I could use them as Russians with almost no conversion effort. Here they are, dressed up as my Skirmish Sotnia: 

In November, I went to Crisis and had my first eye to eye contact with the original Fire and Sword miniatures.  I always hated them from the pictures I had seen online, but on personal inspection, they didn´t look that bad after all.  Wargamer.pl  needs to amp up their product presentation on these, the pictures online are horrible compared to the real deal.  While they are not amazing - certainly not as good as Totentanz miniatures - they are good enough and certainly better than expected.

I mixed them up with the Fighting 15s Boyars and created a few more bases of regular Boyars.
I also ended up mounting most of the Wargamer miniatures on  AB horses, which are way better than the original pieces. 

By Cannon and Musket

Throughout the last few weeks I have been  painting and preparing  some more Units for my Fire and sword armies:

After a devastating game using a Swedish Regimental Gun  (proxied during the game by some half-painted and scratch-built Russian piece) in a village defense scenario - in which the regimental gun devastated three units all on its own -  I decided that Artillery pieces would certainly see more action in the future and painted up all three bases I had got for christmas.

These are the By Fire and Sword (Wargamer.pl) originals.

 

During the same game, the Swedes had to hire some Russian Mercenary musketeers as they were unable to field enough bases on their own.  So, another base was made and as I was short on musketeers and didn´t want to order a whole batch just for another base, I sculpted two of my own.

I also made some swedish casualties - I had a lot of Russian casualties, but none of Swedish variety

 

Next in lin are another base of swedish reiters, two bases of Dragoons and Cossacks, all primed and waiting for paint.

 Then yesterday, I realized by browsing through the internet that I had no Forage Supplies marker - and as it was a rainy and depressing day, I started to build my own. This is the Work in Progress pic from today:

Eagle and Lion - A Fire and Sword Battle Report

 

In the Dark woods of the north, a duel between Lion and Eagle takes place as two scouting parties clash on their reconnaissance missions.  

A Muscovite Force led by the venerable Golova Rurik Borikov makes contact with a Swedish Detachment led by Malte Larsson. 

Borikov has deployed a Group of Servant Cossacks on his right flank facing Swedish Dragoons while placing his cavalry in the centre and on the left flank.  The Swedish Deployment mirrors the Muscovite troop placement as both sides seek to contest the broken ground with infantry while sending their cavalry along the clearings in the forest and onto the ploughed fields.

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 ;)

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:

Russifying Cossacks - Making more Boyar Sons

One of the things that are starting to annoy me somewhat is the ungodly amount of crappy Boyar Sons that I need to produce and paint only to see them flee from the battlefield at first opportunity.

After making most of the Boyar Sons for the first units from scratch, I´ve started to take some shortcuts for the next batch of Boyar Sons. There will be fully sculpted figures, but I´m starting to mix in converted Totentanz figures  (Tartars and Cossacks).  With a little bit of conversion, they can easily be russified - and much quicker than building an entire rider from scratch.

Below are two Totentanz Cossacks, one with minor conversion (just added a full beard), another one up-armored with a thick brigantine.

And here is the latest scratch-built cavalryman.

 

I was also able to finish my Reiter unit of two bases, but haven´t taken any pictures yet. This is something I´ll fix after my holiday.  Until then - happy wargaming to all readers! 

 

Frozen Horsemeat - Skirmishing with the Muscovites

Last saturday I was able to attend our local wargaming day after many months of absence. As agreed before, we had mustered our forces for a Skirmish game of By Fire and Sword.

My Muscovite Skirmish force found itself in conflict with a large horde of Ukrainian Cossacks with a mix of Infantry ranging from rabble to registered molotsoi.

We fought the Foraging scenario, the stronger player (Cossacks) had to defend the loot (Frozen Horsemeat) he found in the villages against the smaller force (Muscovy).  The Cossacks started the game split up between the two build up areas which enabled the muscovites to focus on one flank to even the odds.

Muscovy deployed all troops on the right flank, hoping to crush at least one half of the enemy force while their commander was on the other side of the battlefield.
Above you can see the Muscovite Servant Cossacks perparing to storm the village defended by a lot of Cossacks.

A skirmish Sotnia was sent out to block and drive off the approaching commander.  Unfortunately they ended up charging the large group of cosscaks on the far edge in the flank, tempted by the opportunity, but ultimately failing.
However, they succeeded in their mission to hold off the enemy commander for a long time...

On the right flank, the battle commenced with several waves of indecisive charges of Muscovite Servant Cossacks against their free brethren in the village.
The Russian Cavalry rode close to the spearmen and let lose several volleys of close range fire.

After several failed attempts of the servant cossacks to storm the village and a long period of indecisive shooting of the horsemen against the spear-armed cossacks defending the rear of the village, a charge was ordered and the spearmen broke.

However, there was still one unit of cossacks stubbornly holding on to the village.
Just before the Muscovite Boyars and Reiter managed to crush the Cossack spearmen, their Infantry became exhausted and disorganized after several failed attempts to clear the houses.

On the left flank, the Skirmish sotnia had now charged and broke against the much larger cossack unit. The commander was free to ride to the part of the battlefield were the main action was raging and coordinated the defense. 

The Russian cavalry tried twice to drive of the defenders, but without help of the infantry (still disorganized) they failed to complete their task.

In the end, after a futile attempt to disrupt the enemy foraging party, the Ukrainians got to take home the frozen horsemeat, resulting in a major victory for the Cossacks.

Onto the Field of Battle - Deploying the Muscovites

It is time.
After weeks of preparation and relentless efforts to muster and train the forces, the Golova is finally ordered to move his troops into battle against the Ottomans...

So today he moved out to fight a first resounding defeat against a much larger Ottoman force...

More details on the battle might follow in a later post, if I ever feel like working my way through the foto-editing.

The Golova - Russian Skirmish Force Command

Time for another update on my ongoing project.  Next week I´ll have to be ready to field at least the most basic skirmish force for our wargaming day. To work towards that goal, I´ve greated my Commander and russified the Musician and Bannerman from the Totentanz Mounted Cossacks Command set.

Together, thes should make a nice command stand to represent my Golova, the commander of my Muscotive Skirmish Force.

With all the work done so far, I´ll have to finish the Command Stand and the last two Boyar Son cavalrymen to get a basic playable skirmish force on the table.  I´ll probably have to lend a unit of cavalry to represent a skirmish sotnia if need be - but we´ll see.

Then I can focus my attention on adding the Reiters and paint mounted Cossacks to represent my Servant Cossacks when mounted and moving on horseback.

So far, my Scratch-Build Boyar Sons unit looks like this:

Two more to paint.

Recruitment Rapport - Mustering the Tzarist Forces

The buildup of my Muscovite Skirmish Force is progressing.
Since my last entry, more Miniatures have been sculpted, painted and purchased.

Dismounted Servant Cossacks -  left and middle base with my own designs, right base with Totentanz Foot Cossacks - lovely figures :)

 First member of my Reiter unit who are supposedly better-performing than any of the other cavalry options in my intended build....

 

...such as the Boyar Sons, one of which can be seen below.  These are the Muscovite Levy of the Nobility and are said to perform poorly.

 

My intended build for the first skirmish games: 

Basic Skirmish Force with 2 Boyar Son Sotnias replaced by 2 Servant Cossacks of equal strength (4 FSP) 

• Servant Cossacks (3 Bases)
• Servant Cossacks (3 Bases)
• Boyar Son Sotnia (2 Bases)
• Boyar Son Sotnia (2 Bases)
• Boyar Son Sotnia (2 Bases)
• Additional Skirmish Sotnia (3 Bases) - for the Miestnichestvo  Special Rule 

•  Reiter Sotnia  (2 Bases)  (+1 FSP):  + 2 bases by the "Ludiej Unas Mnoga" Special Rule
• +4 Boyar Son Bases (+1 FSP)   - to bring the base force up to strength 
• Skirmish Sotnia (+1 FSP)

This will be the guiding template to build my force. Most of the Base Force is complete, the most annoying part is the Additional Skirmish Sotnia as I don´t know if I´ll actually use it in my first engagement.

Raising the Levy - Muscovite Army in the Works

It´s time for a little update!  Since last I posted about my plans to raise my Muscotive Army, a lot of progress has been made.

My lovely little horses have indeed arrived a while ago and I instantly started raising the Boyar Son Cavalry unit. Obviously stratch-building them with only the horses, putty, some metal dollies and plastic strips is taking some time, hence the long intervall since the last update. But I´m finally able to show you the first results both painted and the next batch as Work in Progress:

Here is the first base of Boyar Sons, sculpted on AB horses:

And another base finished as sculpts, but yet to be painted: