Mission: Finish the damn brigades! Part 4.

Project get it done damnit has met its 5th goal.

I finished the Danish brigade, while looking for a Danish brigader I knew I had I found another one. Don't remember painting him. And his base is bigger than the other brigader bases I've done. No idea what I planed to do with him. But it saved me the trouble of painting a Danish brigadier, so I finished my battalion of Fynske, completing that regiment, as I had done another battalion of the regiment with Ebor figures long ago.

This brings my Danish infantry up to 5 battalions. 

The brigade of Christopher Bjelke

Livgarden til Fods
Veteran, Elite, Flintlock
All Musket
3 points

Grenadier kropset
Drilled, Elite, Flintlock
All Musket
2 Points

1st Battalion Fynske
Drilled, Flintlock
All Musket
1.5 Points

2nd Battalion Fynske
Drilled, Flintlock
All Musket
1.5 Points.

Prinds Georg
Drilled, Flintlock
All Musket
1.5 Points.

I'm on the last straight before the goal now, I will use the Danish brigadier I knew I had and after a lot of looking found. For my last Anti-Swedish Brigade. This only leaves 2 or 3 Swedish brigaders and the CiC, and a single arm for a poor Swedish cavalry trooper who has lost his. 

 

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.

Grenaderkorpset

Well, I've finally finished a unit, I started on this right after I finished the cavalry in the last post but it's taken forever to finish them, mostly because I'm yet again trying to start a 30YW project. 

But after long and longer than long its' done.
These figures are the very new Danish from Warfare, I wanted to do the grenadier corps, it was one of the best regiments at Helsingborg, together with livgarden til fods they held out far longer than most of the Danish infantry units. The uniform isn't perfect as they had rather unique cuffs, and the mitre isn't exactly right etc. 

 Red with light blue facings is very striking. 

 The flags are also Warfare

 Grenaderkorpset was a rather new unit, raised in 1701, I don't think they ever fought in any battle in western Europe. 

My Danes now have 4 battalions and 4 BLB squadrons. I'll post an "army" picture when I finish the last 12 Danish cavalry.

I do plan on doing more Danes, they will get a cannon, and some dragoons(waiting for warfare to come out with dragoons in tricorne) The grenderkropset will get it's second battalion.

It's cavarly time

So I got an order from Warfare miniatures last week, and got to work right away.
The order included a whopping 54 cavalry, 36 Swedish and 18 Danes.
So far I've done 12 Swedish and 6 Danish.

So let's get to the units.

 A squadron of Gyllenstierna dragoons. This one had 8 squadrons at Poltava, that would be 24 figures, I have enough to make 18, so I might stop there or I might order more to do all 24.

 I also did a squadron of livregimentet til häst.

This one will be 24 strong by the end.

Both these units were planed back in 2015 when I started my GNW project, I wanted the Gyllenstierna for the red colour just to be different. And I wanted livregimentet because I've only really planned 1 guard unit for my swedes and this would be it.(now I might add liv dragonene and mabye a guard battalion too.

I've later found out that Gyllenstierna mainly consisted of POWs from the battles in Poland so that works well to add some variation in grading of my swedes. This one could be rated lower then the other Swedish units. 

 And finally, a squadron of Danes, since the Danes only fielded 2 squadrons for their cuirassiers, this unit is done(except for missing flag.

 1st Jutland(Jylland) was the only Danish cavalry regiment to keep the lobster helmet. 

The would fit right into late 30 years war with their buff coats and armour. 

The Danes are from the tried and true warfare range, while the Swedish are the completely new cavalry codes we have been waiting for for over a year now. This means I've now painted 156 warfare cavalry. I still got 24 more Swedish and 12 more Danes to paint, I also have 6 Saxon dragoons to do. 

BUT I've run out of 60x60mm bases, I got just enough left to do some Danish grenadiers(also completely new from warfare) And finish my Russian guard battalion, but after that, it's full stop, as I use 60x60 for almost everything in my GNW project. 

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.

Say hallo to my medium sized friend

Well it's one day shy of a month since my last post. I've been lost, I started a new Napoleonic project. I thought I had about a 20% chance of actually getting into it. As it turns out the 80% won. After painting 12 French infantry and 3 French dragoons I was bored with it.  Just can't seem to get into it. 

Before I started on the Napoleonic project. I had done half a Russian GNW battalion. The first base was done and almost done with the pikemen. When I started on those evil Napoleoincs. But I got back and managed to finsih the unit. It is the Narvaska regiment.  I really like the Warfre Russians, Especially the officers with their Russian sashes and all that gold. Proper Dandies!

My Russians now have a Brigade, The two battalions behind are Musketeer/Footsore which I don't like. so they don't get any closeups.

And Sinc I've been gone for almost a month, I now give you my Allied army.
7 battalions, 9 squadrons. 185 figures(131 infantry 54 cavalry)
3 Danish, 3 Russian and 1 Saxon battalion, 3 Danish, 4 Saxon Cavalry squadrons, and 2 Saxon dragoon squadrons.

I'm now working on a Swedish battalion, After that, I'll start work on my two remaining Saxon squadrons(1 cuirassier and 1 dragoon) I also have 1 Saxon battalion and 1 Russian battalion to do, And a Second Swedish battalion. By the time those are done I hope the new Swedish and Russian cavalry from Warfare are out. I got 9 more squadrons of Swedish cavalry to paint.

Review Warfare Miniatures "model cavarly regiment" part 2

So not a proper review, just showing you what else can be made with it.

Last  time I showed 18 Saxons, with their mix of floppy hats and  tricorns, with cuirass under the coat.

Well here you  have the same deal but painted as 18 Danes,  this time all tricrones with front and back  plate over the coat. Also they are painted with buff coats.

These poor guys have been almost done for months, by the end of September I had 15 of them bases and ready to go but the last 3 lingered primed but not painted. So yesterday I   painted the horsies and today the troopers. Even had time to take them out for a photoshoot.

They look ok, I'm half way satisfied with  the buff coats, but lets just say,  they are kinda drab, next to those red coated Saxons or Blue coated swedes. 

They are painted as 2nd Sjælandske, And it's to  big,  my regiments have a tendency to be too big. This is 3 squadrons, while I've only found them fielded as two squadrons. To add to that, BLB  squadrons are the same as two real squadrons. So this unit isn't one squadron to big, but 4 squadrons to big. 

In the end it looks quite nice, I'm overall happy with  them. And  even  tho it's kinda drab colorwise, they are kinda at the same time striking in the buff coats. 

But it was cold and they needed to huddle togeather for warmth. So I brought out their friends.

My Forces so far to stand against the Swedes. 36 cavalry, 54 infantry and  1 commander.

I still have  12 Saxon cav and 20 Saxon infantry waiting to be painted. 

Of course this is just a fraction of the planned army. With at least 9 battalions and some 20++ Squadrons planned. To face the Swedes. 

Suddenly Brigade!

Here  you are  walking along minding  your  own buissness,  and then suddenly right in your face a   Danish brigade!

I got these from Ebor, and i decided to try something new, Normaly I paint one  and one unit  then post it. This  time  I  decided  to try and paint  the brigade "as one"

To do this, I  painted every  other base a diffrent battalion.  So 1 base  of fynske, then one of livgraden and one of prinds Georg, This  way I the brigade  would be  done as one!

It was though  going,  two weeks of intense painting. It went  swimmingly the  first few  bases, I had done 1 regular base of each  and 2 of the command, but then  on the 3rd command(prinds Gerog) I got hold up,  I  had  things to do in the house those days, and while the 5 first bases  took 1  day each, I spent  3 days to finish the command of Prinds Georg. Then  came the week end with some painting. Then in   an  epic  strugle I did the last base of both livgrarden and Prinds Gerog yesterday(painting into the night)

 Each unit  is  18  figures, each has 2  grandiers, 1 sergants,  2 drummers,  2 standarbarers 1 offiser and  regular musketeers.

I  forgot to order a briadier to my brigade, I  didn't have  any apporiate one, So a footsore russian  officer got highjacked to become Christopher  von Bielke(also seen his  name  as; Kristoffer Bielke  and Christopher Bjelke) He is  only a  stand in, as I don't  like the figure, while the man  him self look ok, (good face) The horse is  just all wrong. for some reason footsore only has one horse for everything in the GNW range. The horse  has no propper horse saddle blanket,   and no cover for the pistol holster, the  horse looks more  like 30   years war  horse then  anything  to do with early 18th Century, Must  be  a poor general who can't aford a saddle  blanket....

Fynske  regiment was not in Bielkes Brigade, but I like the grey and green, So he gets added  to that one. I had  to find "danish grey" Luckely unlike  the Dutch and French  uniforms that verious sources describe as "off white/white/light grey" But often shown as white on plates.   The Danish clearly has "light grey"  coats. Mine might  still be a tad to dark. But I like the  look.
In the   end  the grey  was:  Slate Grey B, Slate grey C   both from foundry, then   a mix of Foundry  Artic  grey A  and Granit C  as highlight.

Ah Livgarden til Fods.  I think  I  would have  problems doing the brigade if not the straw to brake up the grey!
But STRAW!  bane of my existance! I've  tried  for years to get straw triad.
I think I nailed it!  I  had by chance  bought a citadel  bottle   of Tallarn sand, never used  it  before this time. But worked great as a shade, then coat de arms Horse  tone dun,  and highlight of coat d arms  desert yellow.  I  think   they look  very spiffy! and they are definatly straw  and not "yellow"
Both Fynske og Livgarden,  Saw  action in WSS and GNW(not the  same battalions)

Prinds Gerog had same grey  as fynske ofcourse, the orange was a little  tricky, my "dark"  orange called burnt orange don't cover propperly so needed to layers,  then a layer  of flame orange over.
Some sources  say the  regiment  had  blue  and orange instead of  grey. That is an awesome  color combo. But decided atleast that this battalion will get grey and orange.



So this is my  brigade of danes. It was tiresome at  the end. I'm  glad I only had 3 battalions to paint  or I might have gone   mad!

The flags are  cloth flags from Maverick   model! fantastic  flags  but I'm  really bad at cutting them out. Especaly fynske got their flags mangaled(had  to  by propper siccors after fynske)

Now I'm not sure if I   should  take a painting break and  wait for  my order from Warfare, or go and attack the french horse!

Review Great Northern War Comendium

So where to start?

Lets start with what you get for £115 pluss shipping.

You get to Volumes each about 300 pages long. They are both filled with lots of illustrations, maps, pictures of uniforms, drums, cannons, muskets and swords. All of which are great help for wargamers. A very good picture of a Swedish grenade pouch helped alot!

Besides all the viusual goodies. You have various articles places more or less in chronolgical order.
In between the articles dealing with what happend, You have articles dealing with armies, uniforms and the players in the game.

The books has around 20 comtributers, ranging from amateurs like us that has delved into the subject. to acedemics with lots of letters infront of their name,

There won't be much pictures in the reivew sinply because in theory they might end up random places online and people use them for references with out paying!

I'm dividing up the review into the diffrent types articles that is in the compendium

Part 1: Army/uniform info.

All major armies in the war gets their own article, Naturaly Sweden gets a big one, And Denmark, Russia and Saxony are all there. As well as smaller players like Polen-Lithuania, Cossacks ect.

The articles are some 5-10 pages long for the "formal" armies there is atleast 2 pages of uniform plates one for infantry and one for cav/dragoons/artillery. For army with less formal uniforms like Cossacks and polish hussars and light cav, There aren't plates as such but lots of texts and other illustrations. As well as photos from museums showing for instance Hussar armor.
They also deal with organistation, and recruitment for the countries and armies. This does not only give you lots of info but also really lets you compare armies. There is a striking diffrence between how the armies of Sweden was made and trained and equiped vs say Saxony. More then you would think since they where both modern European armies.

Allready I have gotten quite a bit of good info from these Army/unifom pages. I learned that Provincial regiments in sweden, did not have all their grandiers in a single company like most countries did, but spread them out! This was great info to get!
Also the very fleshed out Swedish article have lots of photes of drums, grandiers equipment ect. There is a great photo that shows a grandiers grenade pouch. This was very helpfull when painting grenadiers.

I should note that even with all the info you can't get it all in the volumes. Like in the Swedish article they do point out the Karpus was used at times by some swedish regiments. But if you want to know which regiment used the karpus in which battle. You still need to go to Tacticus.nu (if you see that page as a reliable source) The man that runs Tactics.nu is also a contributar to the compendium.

Part of the Swedish army article. The Swedish article is very good and filled out!

Not suprising as they are the stars of the show!

Part 2: Campaigns/battles

So there is alot of info here, Some of these articles are purely a campaign/battle desicription, while others like the one dealing with the Polish-Lithuanian civil war, has a broader scope to.

Some of the campgains/battle articles about eastern europe are very intersting, a period i personaly knew little about, Ofcourse others will know much more about this then what is coverd in the volumes.

This is where i feel the books lacks the most, tho it's purley my subjective opinion!
General a campaing/battle articale is less then 10 pages. The part leading up to the battles are generally very good, They are clear, gives you a great view of what lead to the battles.
How ever quite a few of the battle descritions are very short(almost all are 2-4 pages long) And they are often very dry. I can best describe them as wikipedia style. Very clear and good in info. But also dry. There is nothing that pulls you into the action most of the time. It's simply this happend, then this and it's over.

This might be because I'm used to reading books of 350-450 pages dealing with just one campaign/battle mostly Napoleonic period. In these books there is alot more personal stories descriptions. They help to paint a vivid living pictures of things.

Now I get you can't spend 30 pages pr battle in a compedium. I get that. But even a single page more pr. battle would help if that mean it helped paint a vivid picture. They might have choosen to to keep it this way for space? It might be the authors they don't normaly write that way? Not sure.

I'll give you two examples. One will be the most disapointing battle description and one will be the best. And the diffrences aren't that big.

The worst is Narva. It was short and very A-B-C. It made is sound like the Swdes just walked up and the won. Yet they did loose about 1800 dead and wounded. Granted thats not a lot for a battle that size. But still I did not get drawn into the battle. I'm painting Björneborg regiment now and I knew it took part in the battle. I was hopeing to know what that regiment did in that battle. But no. None the wiser.

The best so far has easly been Fraustadt, I dont't think its actually that much longre. But it paints a much more vivid picture. About how the Saxons fired to soon and the Swedes run up place their muskets on the chevaux de frises and fire point blank into the Saxons. (yes I'm a warmogorer) It little things like that that help. It also mentions regimental names more. who fought who ect. I want to know which Saxons or Swedish regiment that did what ect. As I said I don't think the battle description is any longer. Just much more enganging.

Poltova is ofcourse a biggy, it gets two articles with slightly diffrent angles on it. It's quite good stuff. but still Fraustadt is my favorite.

Don't get me wrong. the campgain and battle info you get no mater what battle you read in these volumes  are the best you are going to get. Nothing online comes close!
Also all articals have a list of other sources to read. So those sources might very well have more detailed info on battles.

Each Campain/battle article starts with a great piece art!

Part 3: Miscellaneous articles

So these are the type of articles like Siege warfare during the great northen war, or how chaplins worked in the Swedish army.
They provide a good insight into the period, fleshing out the parts that don't get mentioned in to much detail other places. The one on siege warfare is quite straight forward, most that will read this book allready have a good grasp on how this worked in this period. But still it has lots of illusrations and pictures of siege cannon, mortars ect. And ofcourse like all wars there are slight variantions from GNW or say NYW or WSS. So there is always something to learn. It also explanes in breif how many of the the sieges in the war played out. And how most of them in one or more ways where diffrent from the "classic Vauban" siege.  Another one is about the plauge that hit Sweden.
There are many more, about what ifs ect.
The articles are well writen and lovely to read.



Part 4: Biographies 

Many of the big names of this period gets a bio, So far all of them have been very good. Peter The Great bio is not so much a bio of him, more what he did during the GNW not much about his early life ect. I'm glad to see that Tordenskiold got his own bio, me being a Norwegian patriot! I also very much enjoyed the bio of Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld. And I now what to paint his Swedish volunteer regiment that fought against the french!
Another one is Poul Vandelbo Løvenørn(Poul Vendelboe de Lovenorn in he book) A Danish soldier, minister and diplomat. He had the honor of overseeing three Swedish surrenders. I also want to do his regiment now!


Part 5: Finaly thoughts/is it worth it.

So I have added 3 points here to judge if it's worth it. Because I want this review to help people decide if they want to buy it.

1: Is it worth it for me?
Yes it is. I do not regret getting it, It has been great inspiration infact because of reading this I've decided to change my GNW project focus from Sweden vs Russia. To Sweden vs Saxony.  Partly becasue of many of the articles about the Saxon war are very well writen. Also it will let me do a brigde or so of Russian in suport. There was even a battle where the Saxon had Polish hussars on their team(so finnaly an excuse to paint this iconic soldiers) And as mentioned I want to paint sevral regiments what where the regiments of some of the people that have bios. Not only inspiration but great info on uniforms and organistation.

2. Is it worth it for you!
I think I can say yes! Infact I would not only recomend it for those very intrested in GNW but all that are intrested in late 17th cenutry/18th century warfare. Yes it does have a high price but some of the info you get get here, you can't get any other place in english. Just one example is Poul Vandelbo Løvenørn. This man does not have an english wiki page, so unless you can read Norwgian/Danish/Swedish or Polish you are out of luck. It's perfectly possible you can find some info on him in english some strange dark place of the internet. Or a book writen in english. So even those with just a hint of intrest in ther period should get it, if they have the money.

3. Did the compendiums forfill the auther/editor goal?
From reading the introduction, Reading just how monumental the task of making this project happen. And the goal of the project. To bring the most comprehensive english source of the GNW  I would say they deffinalty succeded. Yes some wikipedia aritcles might be longer. There might be more words on Peter the great in wikipedia then in this compendium. But I would say 80% of what is in this book is not avalable for free online. Atleast not in english. And a decent part of it is not even avalable in english even if you pay for it. And honestly I can read swedish, but I do find it tiresome. Hell I find reading danish tiresome and that basicly bad norwegian. And so I will probebly not read swedish books on the GNW, Reading sevral 100 pages in swedish not enjoyable for me.
And i can just forget to read German, Polish or Russian. So even for me that is capable of reading Danish and Swedish this is a great thing!

This is a book that is a must for any GNW wargamer or 18th century wargamer. The book even mention miniatures at the end, as well as list of museums that deal with this period. All in all stop reading and buy these two volumes.