More Swedish with Poltava in mind

I am thinking about Poltava: it is an interesting battle to play and not so one-sided as it can looks at a glance. My idea is to play it with V&B at the regimental scale and Maurice (so I can use my Notables). Looking at the Orders of Battle I realized that I am short of units, since my Swedish army is based on Holowczin and Helsinborg whereas the Russian one is based solely on Holowczin.

Accordingly I started to paint units and here I proudly present the first results (never, never forget that I am a very slow painter….)

Kalmar Regiment: with the King Army from 1701, captured at Poltava, raised again and at Helsinborgs 1710 and in the Norwegian campaign 1718. The flag was scanned from the Hoglund book. The miniatures are from the Strelets boxes “Swedish Infantry of Karl XII” and “From Narva to Poltava”. Interestingly the fifer has red facings and the rank and file hat lace are blue twisted white.

Kronobergs Regiment: with the King Army from 1702, captured at Poltava, raised again and at Helsinborgs 1710. Captured at Wismar 1716, reraised for the Norwegian campaign 1718. Also in this case the flag was scanned from the Hoglund book. The miniatures are Strelets with one pikeman from the Mars “Swedish Infantry” box.

The King at Poltava. This is a very nice scene provided in the Strelets “From Narva to Poltava” box. The four soldier carring the litter are Drabants whereas the standing figure depicts the Hetman Mazeppa. For the Mazeppa dress I took inspiration from this romantic XIXth century painting of G. Cederstrom:

Now I must paint two more regiments to have enough swedish infantry. I choosed the Nyland and the Osterbotten Regiments, both with karpus, the Osterbotten regiment being a muskeeter-only unit. To show the process I follow when I plan to paint an unit here there are the pictures of the “raw” material.

The “Nylanders”. The first row is from Mars, the second from Strelets, the NCO which shall be modified to carry the flag wearing an hat.

The “Osterbotteners” (did such a word exists?). Again the grey are Mars, the brown Strelets whereas the green one is from the Mars box “Saxon Infantry of Great Northern War” which we met before under Danish disguise. Of course I have to replace the hats with karpus whereas the big-bellied officier shall be modified to carry the flag and bayonets will be added to muskets. I choose a fifer because the karpus and the coat are laced with yellow/blue/white braid, a nice and defying combination to paint.

When these two regiments will be completed I shall have 32 battalions (bases) which are the equivalent of 8 Maurice units or 16 V&B regimental bases, enough to play Poltava. I’ll return on the scenario the next post, before to deal with the Swedish cavalry and the Russians host.