Again, I mixed these with some converted Totentanz Miniatures and miniatures I sculpted myself. The result is nice, you can hardly tell which is which:
Showing posts with label Renaissance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Renaissance. Show all posts
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Muscovite Reinforcements - Hidden Progress 2
Over at Crisis, I also grabbed some more Infantry - Field Dragoons.
Again, I mixed these with some converted Totentanz Miniatures and miniatures I sculpted myself. The result is nice, you can hardly tell which is which:
Again, I mixed these with some converted Totentanz Miniatures and miniatures I sculpted myself. The result is nice, you can hardly tell which is which:
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Muscovite Reinforcements - The Hidden Progress 1
Back in November it seems like it stopped taking photos...
A lot of progress has been made on my Muskovites that I haven´t bothered posting - it is now high time to get back on track with these photos.
The first major step forward was the discovery of Fighting 15s Medieval Tannenberg Range. As I spotted the Lithuanian Boyars, I knew I could use them as Russians with almost no conversion effort. Here they are, dressed up as my Skirmish Sotnia:
In November, I went to Crisis and had my first eye to eye contact with the original Fire and Sword miniatures. I always hated them from the pictures I had seen online, but on personal inspection, they didn´t look that bad after all. Wargamer.pl needs to amp up their product presentation on these, the pictures online are horrible compared to the real deal. While they are not amazing - certainly not as good as Totentanz miniatures - they are good enough and certainly better than expected.
I mixed them up with the Fighting 15s Boyars and created a few more bases of regular Boyars.
I also ended up mounting most of the Wargamer miniatures on AB horses, which are way better than the original pieces.
A lot of progress has been made on my Muskovites that I haven´t bothered posting - it is now high time to get back on track with these photos.
The first major step forward was the discovery of Fighting 15s Medieval Tannenberg Range. As I spotted the Lithuanian Boyars, I knew I could use them as Russians with almost no conversion effort. Here they are, dressed up as my Skirmish Sotnia:
In November, I went to Crisis and had my first eye to eye contact with the original Fire and Sword miniatures. I always hated them from the pictures I had seen online, but on personal inspection, they didn´t look that bad after all. Wargamer.pl needs to amp up their product presentation on these, the pictures online are horrible compared to the real deal. While they are not amazing - certainly not as good as Totentanz miniatures - they are good enough and certainly better than expected.
I mixed them up with the Fighting 15s Boyars and created a few more bases of regular Boyars.
I also ended up mounting most of the Wargamer miniatures on AB horses, which are way better than the original pieces.
Friday, September 15, 2017
Your orders, Sir?
By Fire and Sword requires order markers to play - three kinds, to be precise:
Being a cheapo, I refuse buying expensive tin order markes when I can build them easily. After our latest game with paper markers I decided it was time to prepare some proper markers.
These are pretty simple if you know how they are made.
The base are my usual synthetic cork pieces cut into slices - you might as well use metal, plastic or coins, doesn´t matter.
The symbol on the marker is a slip of plasticard cut into triangles and rectangles, which I then used to build these simple symbols by gluing them onto my base. Then they got a treatment of oxide paste and a bit of gravel on the symbol-side before they went into painting.
Done.
Of course orders aren´t the only thing I´ve been working on. I also completed the last base of Cavalry to add another 3 Boyar Son bases to my force for our game scheduled tomorrow.
As these troops are not exactly high performers, I also prepared some casualty markers for my Muscovites. These were a bit more work than the orders, as I sculpted these from scratch.
I actually tried the Tony Barton tile technique (read more about it here) using oven-baking clay for some of them. For casualties that worked quite well - which prompted me to take the experiment one step further and try a full figure.
Read more about how that went soon ;)
- Move
- Charge
- Defend
Being a cheapo, I refuse buying expensive tin order markes when I can build them easily. After our latest game with paper markers I decided it was time to prepare some proper markers.
These are pretty simple if you know how they are made.
The base are my usual synthetic cork pieces cut into slices - you might as well use metal, plastic or coins, doesn´t matter.
The symbol on the marker is a slip of plasticard cut into triangles and rectangles, which I then used to build these simple symbols by gluing them onto my base. Then they got a treatment of oxide paste and a bit of gravel on the symbol-side before they went into painting.
Done.
Of course orders aren´t the only thing I´ve been working on. I also completed the last base of Cavalry to add another 3 Boyar Son bases to my force for our game scheduled tomorrow.
As these troops are not exactly high performers, I also prepared some casualty markers for my Muscovites. These were a bit more work than the orders, as I sculpted these from scratch.
I actually tried the Tony Barton tile technique (read more about it here) using oven-baking clay for some of them. For casualties that worked quite well - which prompted me to take the experiment one step further and try a full figure.
Read more about how that went soon ;)
Saturday, March 18, 2017
Onto the Field of Battle - Deploying the Muscovites
It is time.
After weeks of preparation and relentless efforts to muster and train the forces, the Golova is finally ordered to move his troops into battle against the Ottomans...
So today he moved out to fight a first resounding defeat against a much larger Ottoman force...
More details on the battle might follow in a later post, if I ever feel like working my way through the foto-editing.
After weeks of preparation and relentless efforts to muster and train the forces, the Golova is finally ordered to move his troops into battle against the Ottomans...
So today he moved out to fight a first resounding defeat against a much larger Ottoman force...
More details on the battle might follow in a later post, if I ever feel like working my way through the foto-editing.
Saturday, March 11, 2017
The Golova - Russian Skirmish Force Command
Time for another update on my ongoing project. Next week I´ll have to be ready to field at least the most basic skirmish force for our wargaming day. To work towards that goal, I´ve greated my Commander and russified the Musician and Bannerman from the Totentanz Mounted Cossacks Command set.
Together, thes should make a nice command stand to represent my Golova, the commander of my Muscotive Skirmish Force.
With all the work done so far, I´ll have to finish the Command Stand and the last two Boyar Son cavalrymen to get a basic playable skirmish force on the table. I´ll probably have to lend a unit of cavalry to represent a skirmish sotnia if need be - but we´ll see.
Then I can focus my attention on adding the Reiters and paint mounted Cossacks to represent my Servant Cossacks when mounted and moving on horseback.
So far, my Scratch-Build Boyar Sons unit looks like this:
Two more to paint.
Together, thes should make a nice command stand to represent my Golova, the commander of my Muscotive Skirmish Force.
With all the work done so far, I´ll have to finish the Command Stand and the last two Boyar Son cavalrymen to get a basic playable skirmish force on the table. I´ll probably have to lend a unit of cavalry to represent a skirmish sotnia if need be - but we´ll see.
Then I can focus my attention on adding the Reiters and paint mounted Cossacks to represent my Servant Cossacks when mounted and moving on horseback.
So far, my Scratch-Build Boyar Sons unit looks like this:
Two more to paint.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Recruitment Rapport - Mustering the Tzarist Forces
The buildup of my Muscovite Skirmish Force is progressing.
Since my last entry, more Miniatures have been sculpted, painted and purchased.
Dismounted Servant Cossacks - left and middle base with my own designs, right base with Totentanz Foot Cossacks - lovely figures :)
First member of my Reiter unit who are supposedly better-performing than any of the other cavalry options in my intended build....
Since my last entry, more Miniatures have been sculpted, painted and purchased.
Dismounted Servant Cossacks - left and middle base with my own designs, right base with Totentanz Foot Cossacks - lovely figures :)
First member of my Reiter unit who are supposedly better-performing than any of the other cavalry options in my intended build....
...such as the Boyar Sons, one of which can be seen below. These are the Muscovite Levy of the Nobility and are said to perform poorly.
My intended build for the first skirmish games:
Basic Skirmish Force with 2 Boyar Son Sotnias replaced by 2 Servant Cossacks of equal strength (4 FSP)
- Servant Cossacks (3 Bases)
- Servant Cossacks (3 Bases)
- Boyar Son Sotnia (2 Bases)
- Boyar Son Sotnia (2 Bases)
- Boyar Son Sotnia (2 Bases)
- Additional Skirmish Sotnia (3 Bases) - for the Miestnichestvo Special Rule
- Reiter Sotnia (2 Bases) (+1 FSP): + 2 bases by the "Ludiej Unas Mnoga" Special Rule
- +4 Boyar Son Bases (+1 FSP) - to bring the base force up to strength
- Skirmish Sotnia (+1 FSP)
This will be the guiding template to build my force. Most of the Base Force is complete, the most annoying part is the Additional Skirmish Sotnia as I don´t know if I´ll actually use it in my first engagement.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Raising the Levy - Muscovite Army in the Works
It´s time for a little update! Since last I posted about my plans to raise my Muscotive Army, a lot of progress has been made.
My lovely little horses have indeed arrived a while ago and I instantly started raising the Boyar Son Cavalry unit. Obviously stratch-building them with only the horses, putty, some metal dollies and plastic strips is taking some time, hence the long intervall since the last update. But I´m finally able to show you the first results both painted and the next batch as Work in Progress:
Here is the first base of Boyar Sons, sculpted on AB horses:
And another base finished as sculpts, but yet to be painted:
My lovely little horses have indeed arrived a while ago and I instantly started raising the Boyar Son Cavalry unit. Obviously stratch-building them with only the horses, putty, some metal dollies and plastic strips is taking some time, hence the long intervall since the last update. But I´m finally able to show you the first results both painted and the next batch as Work in Progress:
Here is the first base of Boyar Sons, sculpted on AB horses:
And another base finished as sculpts, but yet to be painted:
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Humble Beginnings - The Muscotives are gathering forces!
Today I´m going to show you my first results in building my Muscovite Forces, as promised in my last post.
The core of the force so far is formed by a pike and shot infantry unit. The miniatures were made all by me - my first attempts to do 15mm models - in one of my earlier attempts to start a force. Unfortunately I soon realised that this kind of formation is not suitable to field a quickly playable skirmish force, as these are either cavalry or dragoons, not pike and shot units.
Later, I laid my hands on some cheap cavalrymen that I found suitable to represent Russian Traditional Noble Cavalry - even if not historically accurate, these riders at least give the right feeling and impression. Here they are, painted up, representing some Boyar Sons Cavalry bases:
Some interesting features that you might not discover on first glance:
The core of the force so far is formed by a pike and shot infantry unit. The miniatures were made all by me - my first attempts to do 15mm models - in one of my earlier attempts to start a force. Unfortunately I soon realised that this kind of formation is not suitable to field a quickly playable skirmish force, as these are either cavalry or dragoons, not pike and shot units.
Later, I laid my hands on some cheap cavalrymen that I found suitable to represent Russian Traditional Noble Cavalry - even if not historically accurate, these riders at least give the right feeling and impression. Here they are, painted up, representing some Boyar Sons Cavalry bases:
Some interesting features that you might not discover on first glance:
Saturday, January 21, 2017
The Muskets will be back...
Hello again and sorry for the silence - again I´ve been working way to quietly on my projects without documenting and posting them here.
I´ve recently focused on my long term project of renaissance warfare. Remember, this blog is called Rifles and Muskets? Well, we´ve been skipping the muskets part way to much in the past. When I re-entered wargaming in 2012 one of my intentions was to create a 17th century army, as this period always held some fascination for me.
Back then I tried building up some 10mm forces, quickly aborted the attempt after moving into a region where this period is played in 15mm and never recovered from that setback. Then, about two years ago, I purchased a copy of the then new ruleset By Fire and Sword and set my mind to starting a muscovite army. Unfortunately, I was never happy with the figure choices on the market for muscovites. I sculpted some of my own 15mm Soldats Infantry and had them cast along with my 20mm Minis (pics will appear when the unit is fully painted) but that never kicked off either.
The problem is: I need cavalry, dragoons and cossacks to build a suitable skirmish force - not Soldat infantry that I built in the spur of the moment. I can only use these guys in engagements that are way larger than what I need to start. And while I managed to sculpt Infantrymen, I wasn´t able to do horses. Hemmed by this frustration, my focus shifted to other projects and miniatures.
In the last few weeks I´ve felt the urge to continue/restart the buildup of my muscovite forces as they were gathering dust on my painting shelf, waiting to be finished. After getting in the mood, I built some 15mm Cossack/Dragoon half-figures that I can fit with spears of muskets in different poses after getting them cast in metal. This will form the core of my dismounted light Infantry.
Yet I had still not found cavalry that suited my taste - there are some nice high quality choices for infantry figures that have been released by Totentanz. I´ll definitely purchase some at some point to supplement my own minis, but that doesn´t solve the cavalry-issue... Well, Totentanz has some nice cavalry for eastern europe as well, but it would require quite a bit of conversion work to transform them into Boyar Sons / Pomiestna Cavalry. I don´t mind the work, however, the miniatures are very nice and a bit pricy to cut them up and rebuild up to 60% of them.
The Wargamer figures / BFaS-Range Boyar Sons are an option, but I don´t like them.
All the other manufacturers I found don´t really offer nice Muscovite Cavalry with a variety of poses that would make an order worthwile.
At that point I went back to analyse my problem. I wanted/needed cavalry, but I don´t like the choices or chopping up nice and expensive figures when I can sculpt them from scratch on my own. But I´m not proficient enough to build horses. Well then, maybe we can find 15mm horses...
Yes we can! And very nice horses they are!
I found these excellent AB Horses in 15mm which they offer for their Napoleonic Range. I went ahead and ordered 4 packs, which will yield 48 horses to build my very own Russian cavalry force.
I´ll be building some dollies for cavalrymen and start customizing them according to my needs. That should enable me to field a sizeable cavalry force all by myself. It will probably take a lot longer, but I´m already 2 years behind schedule and don´t really care. This is a long term project after all. I´d be more than happy to field my first playable force in spring or summer.
I´ll do my best to document my progress here. Let´s hope this is not another failed attempt to restart this project ;)
I´ve recently focused on my long term project of renaissance warfare. Remember, this blog is called Rifles and Muskets? Well, we´ve been skipping the muskets part way to much in the past. When I re-entered wargaming in 2012 one of my intentions was to create a 17th century army, as this period always held some fascination for me.
Back then I tried building up some 10mm forces, quickly aborted the attempt after moving into a region where this period is played in 15mm and never recovered from that setback. Then, about two years ago, I purchased a copy of the then new ruleset By Fire and Sword and set my mind to starting a muscovite army. Unfortunately, I was never happy with the figure choices on the market for muscovites. I sculpted some of my own 15mm Soldats Infantry and had them cast along with my 20mm Minis (pics will appear when the unit is fully painted) but that never kicked off either.
The problem is: I need cavalry, dragoons and cossacks to build a suitable skirmish force - not Soldat infantry that I built in the spur of the moment. I can only use these guys in engagements that are way larger than what I need to start. And while I managed to sculpt Infantrymen, I wasn´t able to do horses. Hemmed by this frustration, my focus shifted to other projects and miniatures.
In the last few weeks I´ve felt the urge to continue/restart the buildup of my muscovite forces as they were gathering dust on my painting shelf, waiting to be finished. After getting in the mood, I built some 15mm Cossack/Dragoon half-figures that I can fit with spears of muskets in different poses after getting them cast in metal. This will form the core of my dismounted light Infantry.
Yet I had still not found cavalry that suited my taste - there are some nice high quality choices for infantry figures that have been released by Totentanz. I´ll definitely purchase some at some point to supplement my own minis, but that doesn´t solve the cavalry-issue... Well, Totentanz has some nice cavalry for eastern europe as well, but it would require quite a bit of conversion work to transform them into Boyar Sons / Pomiestna Cavalry. I don´t mind the work, however, the miniatures are very nice and a bit pricy to cut them up and rebuild up to 60% of them.
The Wargamer figures / BFaS-Range Boyar Sons are an option, but I don´t like them.
All the other manufacturers I found don´t really offer nice Muscovite Cavalry with a variety of poses that would make an order worthwile.
At that point I went back to analyse my problem. I wanted/needed cavalry, but I don´t like the choices or chopping up nice and expensive figures when I can sculpt them from scratch on my own. But I´m not proficient enough to build horses. Well then, maybe we can find 15mm horses...
Yes we can! And very nice horses they are!
| AB Horses - Picture from abfigures.com |
I´ll be building some dollies for cavalrymen and start customizing them according to my needs. That should enable me to field a sizeable cavalry force all by myself. It will probably take a lot longer, but I´m already 2 years behind schedule and don´t really care. This is a long term project after all. I´d be more than happy to field my first playable force in spring or summer.
I´ll do my best to document my progress here. Let´s hope this is not another failed attempt to restart this project ;)
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Genoese Galleys
Hi again,
easter holidays are over and here´s some cool new stuff!
I got inspired by a fellow german wargamer when looking over his project log over on another forum I frequently visit. He had been scratch-building galleys out of thin air and achieved some very decent results...
Being a long time fan of renaissance galleys and only lacking the right models (most are too big for my taste, and almost all too expensive for a sideproject) to give serious consideration to starting a small fleet, his work fell on fertile ground.
As I returned home yesterday, I decided to give this method a try, did some very quick and rought research and calculated how large my ships should be to suit my taste. I ended up with a scale of 1:1000, which turns a historical ship of about 40-50m into a nice and tiny 4-5cm Ship.
Then, I got my sheet of plasticard and started cutting the pieces then gluing them together and created my first two ships within about 2-3 hours next to doing some other things.
easter holidays are over and here´s some cool new stuff!
I got inspired by a fellow german wargamer when looking over his project log over on another forum I frequently visit. He had been scratch-building galleys out of thin air and achieved some very decent results...
Being a long time fan of renaissance galleys and only lacking the right models (most are too big for my taste, and almost all too expensive for a sideproject) to give serious consideration to starting a small fleet, his work fell on fertile ground.
As I returned home yesterday, I decided to give this method a try, did some very quick and rought research and calculated how large my ships should be to suit my taste. I ended up with a scale of 1:1000, which turns a historical ship of about 40-50m into a nice and tiny 4-5cm Ship.
Then, I got my sheet of plasticard and started cutting the pieces then gluing them together and created my first two ships within about 2-3 hours next to doing some other things.
The raw ships where then primed an painted - all the details and textures I tried to add are brushwork
In the end, I held two Genoese Galleys in my hands, and I´m definitely going to build more ships using the same techniques!
I already got the raw body of a smaller Galiot on my desk to add some scouting and screening capabilities to my small task force. Then I need to decide which enemy would be suitable. Ottoman are the obvious choice, but I consider doing some berber ships, maybe from Algeria or Tunisia instead. Nothing is settled yet.
And don´t ask me why I chose Genoa. The flag appealed to me...
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Fetch the Muskets! - Some Renaissance stuff
Hey folks,
some of you might have asked yourself why the blog is still called rifles and muskets. Well, one obvious reason is that "Just Rifles" sounds dumb. The othe reason is that I never gave up entirely on the idea of doing renaissance warfare.
Unfortunately, the initiative lost steam when I moved 2-3 years ago and abandoned my 10mm stuff as everyone here plays 15mm renaissance with Field of Glory. For financial reasons and as I was not super-happy with the rules (very long and "static" feeling game, I fancy more dynamic gameplay) I did not build up my own army.
However, recently our club has begun trials with "By Fire and Sword" and so far we´re feeling very positive about the game - and as it is much more dynamic and fast-moving, I´m very tempted to start up my own army in the next few months.
Until then, here are some pics of our game yesterday, where the Ottomans obliterated any enemy force they encountered through the power of their die-rolling:
some of you might have asked yourself why the blog is still called rifles and muskets. Well, one obvious reason is that "Just Rifles" sounds dumb. The othe reason is that I never gave up entirely on the idea of doing renaissance warfare.
Unfortunately, the initiative lost steam when I moved 2-3 years ago and abandoned my 10mm stuff as everyone here plays 15mm renaissance with Field of Glory. For financial reasons and as I was not super-happy with the rules (very long and "static" feeling game, I fancy more dynamic gameplay) I did not build up my own army.
However, recently our club has begun trials with "By Fire and Sword" and so far we´re feeling very positive about the game - and as it is much more dynamic and fast-moving, I´m very tempted to start up my own army in the next few months.
Until then, here are some pics of our game yesterday, where the Ottomans obliterated any enemy force they encountered through the power of their die-rolling:
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