Mission: Finish the damn brigades!

Project get it done damnit has met its first goal.

I finished up a battalion from Semenovsky regiment, I started this one over two years ago. And that will let me say I'm done with my Russian brigade for my GNW project. I have enough unpainted Russians for another brigade. But that will have to wait and wait.

I now have  12 battalions for my Anti-Swedish Leauge army. But I'm missing a bunch of brigaders. So in the coming weeks, I plan on finishing the brigadiers and show their brigades. With their Beneath the Lilly Banners points.

So first up is the Russian brigade, led by Brigadier Golitsyn.

Consists of 

Semenovsky  Guard battalion

Drilled, Elite, Flintlock.

Regulation

2 points.

Ingermanlandski

Drilled, Flintlock

Regulation

1.5 points

Sibirski

Raw, Flintlock

All Musket

1 point

Novgrodski dragoons, on foot.

Raw, Flintlock

All musket

1 point.

Next brigade up will be the Saxons.

 

Glory to the great northern war.

Well, 5 years after I started I've collected all my GNW painted forces and put them on the table. 

No game, as I'm waiting for appropriate dice, and I need more generals. 

I put my flayed teddybear on top of my old not very nice terrain tiles. The tiles weren't properly taken care of, so the flocking has disappeared on most of them. But the road parts are still working and so are the rivers. I cut the fur where it was needed, Some places the terrain tiles were exchanged for styrofoam so I could put trees into them. the trees are woodland scenics. I drilled holes in the bottom and glued two cut-up wire spears into the holes. So I just shove them through the mat into the styrofoam. I think the rivers need to be dazzled up a little, so I'll pour some woodland scenics water on them at a later date. 

 With some cutting my 5x7 feet teddy mat, it covered my 4x8 table.

 The Swedish being Swedish has decided to charge 8 enemy squadrons, 4 battalions and a cannon with 10 squadrons of cavalry.

 The Saxons have hidden themself behind a river crossing. 3 battalions are supported by two squadrons of Goltz dragoons and a big 16pdr cannon.

 Grendiers and cannon ready for the Swedes. 

Danish will have the "honour" of dealing with most of the Swedish infantry. Unlike the Saxons with their river and the russians with their stonewall. The Danes only have some woods.

 Russians have backup of both Saxon and Danish cavalry. It's not easy standing up to 3000+ Swedish cavalry. 

 The Swedish look ready to Gå på!

 The Danish have put their Livgarden til fods and grenadier korpset in their front line. Hoping their best battalions will stand up to the Swedish onslaught. 

Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg looking confidant. 

 To take on the Saxons hiding behind their river. You got the elites. The Drabants, followed by the liv garden til hest, and the liv dragonerna as reserves. Liv dragonerne is by har the most powerful unit on the table. With 2 squadrons, being veteran, elite blade and Swedish they are worth 7 points in BLB3.

For reference, the danish 2nd Sjælandske is 50% larger and still only has 6 points.  7 points is also more than all 4 Russian battalions combined. But if the 3 guard cavalry units can't handle the Saxons, they might get support from the Björnborg battalion, which was placed there as a lynchpin between the right flank cavalry and the centre infantry. 

 The Standards blowing in the wind, drums and cronets blowing...

It's time to GÅ PÅ!

I plan on running this game, once my dice have come and I get like at least 10 generals done.(and Maybe a squadron of Russian dragoons)

Last unit of 2019

I did the last half of the last 6 on New Year's Eve.

This is the Joyeuses grenadier battalion, made up of french POWs yet did some of the hardest fighting at Fraustadt.

The figures are Warfare Prussians.

 Except for the mitres, I'm very happy with them. Even just painting a yellow rectangle is beyond my freehand skills.

These are actually a gift from a good friend. I got 10 last Christmas and the rest this Christmas.
I had painted the first 6 a couple of months back. So I only had 12 to paint over Christmas.

Besides the grenadiers, I also got With Talons and Claws the much anticipated GNW/eastern Wars supplement for Beneath the Lilly Banners.  A great book very good inspiration.
The book comes with a simple point system, partly to just balance and partly to help to make the game feel like it should.
If you are playing the western wars, most units will be quite similar. But what makes the GNW so unique is the asymmetrical gameplay. And this point system makes it much easier just to keep track of how effective you force is.

I have been painting on my GNW project since late 2015, I had a plan and kinda just worked towards it.
But now I've gone through all my GNW forces and given the units points, based historic precedence and recommendation/balance in the book.

The results are


Danish 8 points for the infantry. 8 Points for the Cavalry, for a total of 16 points
Saxon 4.5 infantry 10 cavalry, 1 artillery, total 15.5 Points.  
Russian 5.5 infantry, 4 cavalry  0.5 artillery. 10 points.

The Danes have the best average score, as they are basically a well-drilled well supplied western-style army. Their Liv garden til fods are their best unit with 3 points.

The Saxons are in theory the same as the Danes but they had like 6 years of defeat after defeat.
But given the infantry, just fine stats and these grenadiers are drilled elite, same grading I gave the danish grenadiers. The Saxons are let down by the cavalry I've given one regiment raw grading to make the whole of the cavalry more brittle. But most of the cavalry too are drilled.

The Russians have one drilled elite infantry unit, this is Ingermanlandski which was kinda halfway a guard unit, they have a regular drilled battalion too and two raw infantry.
The cavalry are grenadiers, so is one of the better cavalry units the Russians can have.

Then came the swedes, Now I don't feel I've over rated them, The Swedish infantry even have a raw battalion, so in fact 1/5 of the Swedish force is raw, The Danes doesn't have any Raw units at all.
The Västerbotten battalion is rated veteran, elite, and with the bonuses for Swedish etc. It's 3.5 points. It will be very powerful.

Even so, the Swedish infantry is only 11.5 points. not that much more than the Danes and the Swedes have a battalion more than the Danes.

But then comes the cavalry, I might have gone overboard. A total of 30.5 points. 
Not only have I more Swedish cavalry than all the enemy cavalry combined, but I have 2 squadrons of liv garden til hest, and 1 squadron of liv dragoons(almost finished and I added them to the list) These are very powerful units. But I also have like 54 more regular Swedish cavalry, all quite good.
 So The Swedish are actually half a point stronger than all 3 others combined, now this is a good thing, as I always planned on having 3 vs 1. But my Swedish cavalry alone is almost twice as strong as the Danish or Saxon armies and is over 3 times as strong as the Russian army.


So yeah powerful Swedes.

I hope to do more than 2 units this year. I have like 4 or 5 unpainted Russian battalions. A Russian gun somewhere. I have a half-painted Danish battalion. I have 12 Danish cavalry somewhere to paint. and 6 Saxon Dragoons. I've now primed the first 3 of 12 Russian dragoons.

But I'm itching to do some 30YW stuff again, and my Barons' War figures are at the post office begging to be picked up and painted.

Generalsky

I plan on doing a photoshoot of my Anti-Swedish force once the battalion I'm working on now, is finished. But I realized I lacked lots and lots of brigadiers.

So between doing some Russian infantry, I'm going Generals.
First up is a Russian infantry brigadier.

I did him in the "classic" Green with red facings, since my Saxon brigadiers will be in red coats and my Danish in white/light grey, I didn't want my Russian to look Danish or Saxon(since Russians could be seen in White or red coats, I might do one in blue, to lead my second Russian infantry brigade.

 The figure is Warfare Rusian general

 Doing early 18th century generals, lets me do one black tack.

I find it extremely boring that black tack became standard for every nation and unit.

So letting me do some red leather tack is nice.

Queens Regiment(and lots of cavarly.

So I finished another 12 Saxon cavalry, this time from Queens Regiment.

 I decided to do them with red hat tape, as one source says the had it, just because it's almost always white, yellow or black. So red makes them unique.

This means the Saxon cavalry force is now 48 strong,  and Anti-Swedish cavalry force is 78.

To fight them I got 54 Swedish cavalry.

And here it is, 132 Warfare miniature cavalry. 

Soo it will be expanded with 24 new Swedish and probably 12 or 18 more Danes too, and probably some Russians.

Palate cleanser

So I like doing early 18th Century artillery, you don't have to worry about making large batteries. So you can crank a small cannon and crew out in a day(I did this cannon and crew in about 4 hours yesterday, and another hour doing the basing today) The gunners have less gear then musketeers, so it's 70-80% of the job of a musketeer, so when you only got 3 to do, it goes fast.
My anti-Swedish coalition is starting to outgun the Swedes now.  A Saxon 12pdr, Russian 3pdr, and soon a Russain 1pdr)
I was unsure if I should do the metal yellow or black, it appears both styles were used by the Russians.  I'm starting work on my next 12 Saxon cuirassiers, this will bring my Saxon cavalry force up to 48, add to that 18 Danes and 12 Russians and the Anti-Swedes will have 78 cavalry. 

Also finished the first 6 of 22 for my first battalion of Semenovski Guards, I have all the figures needed for the full 3 battalion regiment.

 I'm very happy with this gun, I continued the technique I learned, with a think drybrush of earth, then a think drybrush of black ink, before a drybrush of bronze. I've used this technique several times now, but this time I nailed it. Even before I put on the bronze layer, the gun looked kinda bronze, so it was a very light drybrush of bronze used.

Ingermanlandski

So I had done 2 of three bases on this unit, I started on the last 6, got the first layer of yellow and red on it, and lost inspiration, instead, I wanted to do ACW, but I had only a few random ACW figures left. So once I did that, I thought I might as well try and finish this one.
And I did, but the last 6 didn't turn out that well because of lack of inspiration.

But this was one of two battalions for my project clean up, trying to finish a few GNW units.


This is one of my experimental units, I tried a new yellow homemade triad(with mixed resaults)

 I also tried to show a different tactical option for the use of pike, while the standard was in the center, they could also spread them out along the entire battalion, so this is what  I tried with this one.

And the resaults are in.

But not really.

When I did the first 6 of these Russian Horse Grenadiers, I asked if I should do 3 figure companies or expand the companies to twice the historic size to make each company 6 figure big.
I asked several places and in the end, it ended up about 50/50 maybe 55/45 to double sized companies. 
But since I kinda leaned toward 3 figure companies, I placed my 30% vote power and so that's how ut ended.


So now my Russians have a massive 12 horse grenadiers, that won't do against 54 Swedish, I do plan on one day finishing the entire Horse Grenadier-Regiment Nr. 40, that would be 30 strong.
But my next Russians will probably be regular dragoons.
But before that I need to finish Swedish infantry and Russian infantry and Artillery, I also got 6 Saxon dragoons and 12 Saxon Cuirassiers to finish.


In total, I have 123 infantry and 18 cavalry to paint, I also hope those damn new Swedish cavalry for warfare gets released soon.


I'm unsure what to put in the hands of the standard-bearer. apparently Horse grenadiers did not have standards.

The companies are from Moskovski, Vladimirski, Siberianski, and Smolenski. Moskow are totally white, so I tactically made them the command base, so I could add some gold, thereby cheating away from having all white uniforms.

I have no idea if Slomensk had blue horse blankets, but again, if in doubt I'll go with more colour. 

Right now I'm working on "project clean up" trying to finish my Russian and Swedish half done battalions. While I also plan on starting on a Russian Guard battalion and a Russian gun. 

Russian Horse Grendiers

I think only Leauge of Augsburg's own blog has shown these so far. They came out right before Christmas.


I'm posting these partly to get a new blog post up, as I have 5 half done units and will be some time before I can get up a blog post(one unit is done but awaiting bases )

The other is I need peoples opinion, but more on that later.


I decided to do horse grenadiers because I already got a crapload of tricorne cavalry for my Saxons and Danes(and Swedes) so I wanted to do something different, also Horse Grenadiers are awesome.
The new Russian cavalry comes with new wonderful horses, and yes the horse reins are separate! and not one "mono-rein" like most other are on miniatures. This started for warfare with their dragoon horses. and I hope they continue. Warfare now has a huge amount of horses. They have their oldest "cavalry horses" both standing, trotting, and galloping I believe. Then you have the dragoon horses and now these that I believe both Russians and Swedish will use, and some new generals horses too.

I think these are some of the best faces from warfare so far, which has always been the one thing on the warfare range I've never been that happy with.((mostly because of my own limited skills)) but these are wonderful.

ON TO THE PICTURES!

 Bad lighting today, and so the first pic is the only pictures I'm truly happy with when it comes to showing the colors correctly.

I'm looking forward to finishing them. which leads to the need for your opinion. 

The Russian Horse Grenadiers were 1 company out of 10 from Russian Dragoon regiments, they were combined in ad hoc formations, until 1708 when they became permanent, in numbered regiments 38, 39 and 40. In 1709 they were all given the classic green coat with red facings. I thought this was boring, so I decided to do it before 1709 even though most of my Russians are modeled for Poltava. This has led me to a conundrum, A BLB squadron equals 2 real squadrons so anywhere 200-300 troopers and horses. 

But a Russian Horse Grenadier company was 100 on paper, this leaves me with two options.

1. Each company equals 3 models(half a BLB squadron) This is what you see here, 1 company from Vladimirski and 1 Sibirski, I have 6 more to do, and if I continue this way those 12 figures would be in 4 different uniforms, That would be colorful, but I'm also afraid it will look untidy and messy, with problems seeing "units"

 2. I can expand each of these companies into a BLB squadron each, so 6 green and 6 blue, this would make each company 100%-200% bigger than they would have been(200/300 men instead of 100) It is only visual of course, and it would make units more distinct and easier to recognize.

So what do you think?

Moscow Dragoons

I've done 2 out of 3 squadrons now, I was planning on doing all 3 squadrons before I posted them, but I'm kinda bored with them, so I'll so some French, Prussian and Russian infantry before doing the last squadron. In the end, I want all 5 Squadrons for this regiment.

So I've started on 6 French line infantry, I have 2 bases done from some time back and hopefully, I'll be able to finish this battalion in now too distant future.

Those 1805 Russians somehow manage to make mostly green and grey uniforms to be very colorful, it helps with the pink&rose facings but adding those white, red and orange "caterpillars" to the command helmets helps a lot too.

Azov regiment

Well well well, 3 Napoleonic posts in half a month!

By accident, I found 24 painted 1805 Russians, I threw the brave Russians in a glass of Acetone and ripped off their faces. I had already painted 6 of them that I found named in a clutter box.
So I painted up the remaining 18.

The regiment is Azov with lovely pale yellow and turquoise facings.

I got enough figures on the way to finish the 2 remaining battalions in the regiment as well as a 4th battalion to form the start of a 2nd regiment. 

 A colorful battalion, the Flags are Brest inspection, but I have Azov specific flags on the way, so these are just temporary if the battalion wasn't colorful enough the Azov flags are pink!

 The figures are Brigade games and they are very nice with realistic proportions.

Flags are as usual Maverick models.


PS. I also got some sample figures from a new company called Three Armies. He is making French and Prussians for 1806, While also working on Austrians and Russians from the same period. He is even making some fantastic looking 1808 Spanish.

I did paint up my sample Prussians