Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Great Northern War - part one

The year 2010 has been, I think, my most productive ever in terms of getting stuff finished. The most recent completed project is my small Russian force for the early eighteenth century - the period of the Great Northern War. The army is made up from a Baccus 6mm army pack with a few additions.

The Baccus pack contains enough mounted officer models to make up several General stands. This one, on his prancing grey horse, will be my CO. I've been forced to add some Green Stuff undergrowth to strengthen his horse's weak ankles. Do horses have ankles? Fetlocks or something?

Another command stand features an Irregular Miniatures farm wagon.

This General receives directions from a friendly peasant boy. I think he's a Roman ballista crewman - not sure from which manufacturer.

The infantry are based and painted as four, two-battalion regiments.

These guys in the red-trimmed tricorns and grey coats are Gulitz's Regiment. I've still got to add a flag to the front rank command figures.
Next come the Semionevski Guards in their blue coats and yellow-trimmed tricorns. Again, a flag is to be added.
The Baccus pack doesn't include any figures for dismounted dragoons so I've based the cavalry as "Horse". These are Viatski Regiment. The plain flags are until I can find the historically correct colours.

My other, larger Dragoon regiment is that of Meierfelt.
The Baccus artillery is lovely. Definitely my favourite elements.

Finally, I've added some train - wagons converted from Irregular Miniatures Hussite war-wagons.
Actually, that's not quite final - I've just realised I didn't photograph the Cossack allies. Maybe next time!









5 comments:

BigRedBat said...

Those are pretty!

Simon

Thomo the Lost said...

As if I did not have enough on the painting chain at the moment, you're inspiring me to drag out the GNW figures I have at home and to start getting some paint on them!

Nice work mate. I look forward to more,

Unknown said...

Hi,
Good to see someone else putting together a GNW 6mm army. Some very nice figures - especially like the command stand with pointing peasant ! I've painted up a Swedish army and loads of Russkie infantry - just the cavalry and artillery to go... I must admit that I haven't been too fussy about the flags (the Baccus Russian GNW flags didn't match up with the various Regiments I had so I just gave them random flags..). Some pics if you fancy having a quick squint.
http://s761.photobucket.com/albums/xx254/glorfindel-666/Great%20North%20War/

Cheers, Phil (Wolverhampton)

Counterpane said...

Nice work, Phil! Better painting than mine but I new I had to stick to a fast painting style if I was ever to get the buggers finished!

I went for wider spacing between the ranks to I could get the base texturing material (tile grout) into the gap. I see you went the other way of not having a gap to fill! I've no idea what the historic spacing would be.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the kind words. I know what you mean about the speed of painting - I've painted up some ACW Union figures and gone for a much quicker 'dunk & wash' style just to get them on the table!

I've used the 'Baccus' basing system to finish the figures off - well worth it in my opinion and lasts for ages. It is sometimes hard to work out the most effective way to base these figures.

When I started painting the GNW range, I liked the figures but didn't have a clue about the history or colours - the Osprey 'Poltava' book was useful together with their 'Peter the Great' books. There's not a huge amount of info available though in English. Have you seen the Wyre Forest site ? very good :
http://www.wfgamers.org.uk/resources/C18/gnw.htm

Cheers,

Phil