Happy New Year. 

Last post of this strange 2020, with more GNW Russian Dragoons.

The Life Regiment in its 1708 uniform. The regiment was raised in 1707 from men of Zybin’s Dragoon regiment (disbanded in 1706). The first uniform was with a red coat. It was at Holowczin, Lesnaja, Poltava and Perevolotjna. Then at Riga 1710, at the Pruth disaster in 1711 and finally in Poland 1711-18. From 1719 it becomes the St. Peterburgski Dragoon Regiment.

The other newcomers are the dismounted dragoon from the Zvedza box (with some Strelets added). They are not intended to represent specific regiments, rather act as war-games “tokens” to represent the dismounted status of a unit.

That’s all for 2020. I wish you all to have a happier 2021.

Cossacks and other gentlemen

A Great Northern War army can’t stay without Cossacks: there were the Russian ones, the Polish, the Swedish Allied Mazeppa’s and the Swedish Valacker which collectively are all Cossacks. My idea is to have a suitable numbers of them and then add a base with a Polish flag or a Swedish officier in blue to represent Polish Cossacks and Valacker respectively, whereas all the other not identified units would represent Russians.

Thus far I painted the 12 miniatures from the Orion box. The only fault of an otherwise very nice set are the horses: never Cossacks dreamed of such beautiful horse like those sculpted by Orion. Aside form this remark, the miniatures are well cast and detailed and it was a pleasure to paint them. Browsing Pinterest of other websites I found many images, painting and reenactor pictures to have a basic guidance to the dress of riders and horses.

With 12 figures I painted 6 bases which can represent when paired twice three V&B irregular Cavalry units, or one and half Maurice unit. The wild bunch:

A closer view of the bases:

On the more responsible side of the army, another Russian dragoons regiment, the Archangelgorodski in the yellow coat in use in 1705. The regiment was raised in 1703 in Jamburg from men of selected regiments as “Field Marshal Sheremetiev dragoon battalion”. In all the major campaign from 1704, at Poltava, then in Pomerania 1711 and in Poland 1716-17.

I finish with two command bases were I was able to use some weird figures from Strelets boxes. The first base represents a generic general in white coat: with him the giant kneeling figure from the Strelets Swedish artillery box. 

The second base represents Prince Menshikov: with him one of the many Semeonovski grenadiers I was left with and the weird surrendering Streltsi from the “Streltsi Bonus collection” series.

Swedish temporary foot and Danish cuirassiers

To add some variety in my Swedish army I added two “temporary units” in gray coats.

The first one is the Smaland Tremannings. It was in Livland and then with the Lewenhaupt army. After the disaster at Lesnaja the survivors were placed in the Livgardet. According to Hoglund the coat was blue but the “gray vadmal pajrock” with yellow linings and cuffs was in use for the privates. The second regiment is the Södermalands (och Östgota) Tremannings (blue lining). It was a short lived unit, broken in 1703 after the Colonel Putbus death, one battalion transferred to Livgardet, the other to the Upplands Tremannings. Reraised in 1712 with an history of reraising and breaking till 1721. Miniatures are the usual mix of Strelets and Mars.

As it can be seen in previous post, the Danish cavalry for Helsinborg was painted with one base for each regiment. However, as I did for the Swedish and Russian cavalry all the regiments will be double-based. In this way two bases can be used as “regimental base” for V&B and a four-bases unit for Maurice will represents a two-regiment brigade.

The first regiment I put in full strenght is the 1st Jyske (Jutland) Cavalry Regiment in its “vintage” XVIIth century cuirassiers attire. The ensign has a converted hat from a tricorne into the old-fashioned one wich is depicted in the Snorranson article on the Danish Army, whereas the cuirassier in the other base had an head-swapping with another miniature.

More GNW miniatures

End of holidays painting: the Busch Grenadier regiment, raised in 1708 from the grenadier companies of the Belozerski, Lefortski, Viatski, Kievski, Rentzel, Rostovski, Tobolski, Olonerski, Koporieski and Ivangorodski regiments, from 1715 Weide’s Regiment. Present at  Holowczin and Poltava, then at the Prut an from 1711-19 in Pomerania. The blue uniform was introduced in 1711. Three grenadiers are from Zvedza “Russian Infantry of Peter the Great” box, the other three are converted from the Preobrazenski grenadiers from the Strelets box “Guard of Peter I”, by modifying the grenadier cap.

The cavalry was from the Zvedza box “Dragoons of Peter I”: they are simply outstanding, areal pleasure to paint. The flag has the motif in relief but it was not a problem since it was exactly the motif of the Moskowsky regiment I opted to paint. The only drawbacks of the box is that it has only 10 figures on the horse, the other being dismounted dragoons (nicely done with the horse holders and different arms): this requires a disproportionate amount of boxes to obtain a sizeable force. However one can have also a sizeable force of dismounted dragoons. The Moskowsky regiment was raised in Moscow in 1700 as Gulitz’s (Goltz). At Narva, then in the baltic theatre, at Kalisz 1706, Poltava and Pruth. The officers wore the red waistcoat with blue cuffs, a nice variation.

To finish, a third artillery base for the Danish army, once again from the Strelets “Artillery of Charles XII”:

It is time to make the second base for all the Danish cavalry I did previously: then I shall have enough bases to replay Helsinborg with both Maurice and Volley&Bayonet. Stay tuned.

Russian Infantry, part III (or IV, maybe)

Three more russian regiments, in different coat colours. The first one is the Vojvod Apraxin Regiment: raised in 1700 in Moscow from volunteers. At Poltava 1 battalion guarding the camp, the other with the city garrison, then in Finland. Merged with Galitski regiment in 1712.

The second is the "whole red" Regiment Moskovski, here in its 1709 uniform: raised in 1700 in Moscow from volunteers as Col. Ivanitski’s Regiment. At Narva 1700, then in Russia. At Poltava in the Hallart division. Then in Baltic, Pruth 1711, Finland 1713-14 and at the Staket landing, 1719. 

The third and last is the Regiment Nisjegorodski: raised in Moscow trough conscription in 1700 as Col. Bolmann’s regiment. At Narva 1700, Baltic 1702-04. At Poltava in the Hallart division, then Baltic 1710, Pruth 1711, Finland 1713-14 and Swedish east coast 1719. Green uniform 1708-11.

With these six units the infantry for the Maurice refight of Poltava is nearly completed. Only a blue-clad grenadier regiment is still missing, then I had to paint 7 more Dragoon Regiments and a bunch of Cossacks.

The whole August production is here:

First redoubt finished

Some posts ago I showed the early stages of the redoubt construction for Poltava.  Now I have finished the first one:

I recall that these redoubt are planned for Maurice as a "immobile unit" and hence are not intended to host a base. Rather they have an intrinsic garrison (which will be materialised by a couple of minis). In Maurice terms the Redoubt characteristics are:

Redoubts are immobile garrisons

-1 Disruption point. Broken at 2

-Fire 2 dices as Trained at 4 BW

-Fires in any direction at a single target

-Hard Cover as in a city against enemy fire

-Combat value of 4 unmodified in defense. 

-Cannot assault.

-Cannot be assaulted by cavalry.

-Broken if Attacker doubles. Any other results is no effect.

There are still four of them to be finished. (In my planned Maurice scenario the redoubts are scaled to 5.

Still fighting

After a long absence, a little "sign of life". I was busy minding other business and so I put brushes aside for a while.

In the few spare time I was able to carve out, I finished these two "Morale Markers" for Maurice, one for the Russian and the other for the Swedes:

As far as the Russian army is concerned, I had the time to finish Regiment Butirsky, one of the oldest regiments of the Army, being raised in Moscow in 1642 as an "Old Foreign Regiment". Its colonel till 1705 was Gordon, a Tsar close acquaintance. It was in the Azov campaign 1695-96, then at the Narva defeat. In the Baltic campaign then in Poland. Present at Poltava and in the unfortunate Truth campaign, 1711.

It was disbanded by Catherine the Great and merged into the Kuban Jager Corps, in total careless of the Army tradition.

Russian Infantry (I)

Another step in my Poltava project, the Russian Guards and some Grenadiers (once again they are mostly Strelets with some Zvedza).

First of all the Preobrashenski regiment represented here with four basis, one for battalion:

there were of course some variations in the uniform details, as ever with the russians. I opted for the red socks/gaiters version. The grenadier headgear is of the type introduced from 1709-10. At Poltava they had more probably a grenadier cap of this sort:

The Semeonovski regiment which I painted in this shade of blue:

A nice thing of the Russian is that one can paint different regiments in various shades of the same color (indeed this happened at company level, many times with different coat colors within the same regiment). In both cases the flag were scanned from the Hoglund book. The regimental commander, Prince Golytzin, was wounded at Narva. The regiment was on three battalions.

The DuBois grenadier regiment: according to Hoglund it was raised in 1708 from the grenadier coys of  7 regiments. 

Its full name was “General Enzberg’s Grenadier Regiment” but at Poltava was know with the name of its commander, De Bois or Du Bois. From 1712 it became the 4th Grenadier Regiment.

One of the various Strelets oddities is the so-called “Streltsi Bonus figure”. In many boxes there is a single Streltsi miniatures, the full list here. By collecting those I had I was able to muster also a Streltsi regiment. 

I choose the 12th Moscow regiment (Nechajev), an unit with a long battle history, from Saladen (1703) to Poltava (1709) were it seems that it garrisoned some of the redoubts.

A final view of the russian infantry painted thus far, the equivalent of 37 battalions: to complete the Poltava OoB I need at least 14 more battalions whose uniforms will be red, white, green, yellow and blue, just to add some more uniform variations.