AHPC XI - Mike W - Late 17th Century dismounted Polish Dragoons

Second post of the day is a group of dismounted Polish Dragoons that have just been completed. These eight figures were added to the painting pile to bulk out a similar group of 12 figures that I had completed over the summer. You can find a link to our club website <HERE> to see further details of this earlier group...

Unpainted figures ready to be painted

The aim was to add enough figures to the existing unit to expand it out to 3 full squadrons each of 6 figures, plus a couple extra to allow additional flexibility for the fielding of a second regiment - hence an additional standard bearer and officer figure in the new group. Painting was designed to allow the new group to be integrated into the existing figure group.

Finished group of Polish Dragoons

Figures were old Essex models acquired via eBay and they appealed to me as they give a good motley mixture of poses and dress types that agrees with my view of how these early dragoons operated.

Another view of the new group of figures

Figures were undercoated in white before having blue jackets added to red trousers and hats. the hats were varied , I even added one figure with out a hat by replacing this with a plastic Gripping Beast Dark Ages Archer's head.

Mixture of dress styles to promote the diversity of dress 
likely to have been found in such units at the time

I also kept the fire lock muskets on this group to add another layer of variety to add to the over all group.

The flag is based on an image of an old Polish Cossack flag that I found on the internet.

A simple blue flag with White cross was selected as an alternative regimental banner.

I washed the painted figures with watered down Dark tone Army Painter ink and varnished with Newton & Windsor's Matt varnish.

The two groups of figures deployed together for the first time

Bases were completed with fine sand cover and electrostatic grass.

Off the Workbench - Late 17th Century Polish Dismounted Dragoons

This group of twelve figures has just been completed, they will fight alongside their countrymen against the Ottomans at Vienna, they are an eBay lot (as usual) and the figures are by Essex.

I don't have very many Essex 28mm figures in my collection, but after some conversion work they have ended up as being quite serviceable in their table top role.

Dismounted Polish Dragoons, in a variety of dress and poses.

The lot was a mixed bag of infantry and mounted troops, a half dozen Pancerni, Officer and Winged Hussar types that I'll take a look at later plus a bunch of rather disappointing Hungarian Hussar type figures, not really sure if I can make any use of these - although the horses will be useful.

Along with the horse was a bunch of Polish foot, many of those were actually dismounted Dragoons, so I have created a unit of these, the remainder will be made up into Polish Peasant Infantry.

So on to the figures, I will present these in batches of four, as each batch has a similar story...

Four Dragoons Firing

These are the most standard figures in the unit, I have simply swapped heads for more Polish looking ones from the less useful figures in the lot that I received. 2nd Left and extreme right figures are as delivered the other two have had head (and hat) transplants.

As ever the figures were undercoated white, I opted for blue coats and red trousers. Hats and some coats had fur trim and the guns are a mixture of matchlock and flintlock weapons.

Four running Dragoons

These four running dragoons had a badly moulded musket cut off, along with their left hands, the missing  hands were replaced by open plastic hands from various 28mm plastic kits and then a musket with sling from the Warlord Games 28mm plastic Marlburian Infantry range was added to each hand.

Command Group

The command group s made up of a Halberdier, Officer, Standard bearer and a Drummer. The drummer was created in exactly the same way as the running dragoons above but with the addition of a drum strapped to his back.

The flag is a generic Polish Cossack banner, I need to find out what Polish regulars used

I repositioned the sword arm of the Officer, to make the pose look more realistic, whilst I had to adjust arm positions on the standard bearer and turn his head, to get the look I was wanting. The Halberdier was as supplied, with the Halberd shaft straightened out as much as possible!

These guys are in the new basing format or dismounted dragoons, i.e. individually based rather than on regular multi figure bases. I have used round bases - previous ones have been square or oblong (for groups of two figures), aim here is to depict the loose order that these guys ought in.

I may go back and update the older figures one day.... 

AHPC X - From MikeW - 32 x 28mm Late 17th Century Figures (160 Points)

This submission is in two parts, the first and biggest part is the representation of the Spanish Tercio 'Los Blancos', officially known as the 'Tercio Provincial de Segovia'. The second part of the post is a follow on from my earlier post where I did 8 x French Dragoons of  'La Bretesche Regiment', see original post <here>.

The 'Los Blancos'

I originally got these figures from North Star Miniatures sometime in the late summer last year, I have already painted-up one 24 figure Tercio of little guys but wanted to complete a second Tercio, to join my other Spanish tabletop forces.

Spanish Tercio in waiting, figures based, awaiting undercoat

For, anyone that is interested, these are relatively new additions to the North Star 1672 range, they replace similar figures that North Star were stocking up to about 18 months ago, that were based upon the original Copplestone Casting figures that are the basis of this range. As such some are a little smaller than the old range, which makes up the majority of my Spanish Army.

Pike stands formed up around the central with

Command stand, OCD at work here!

As you may know Spanish Tercios of the period tended to adopt distinctive colours to distinguish them selves form other Tercio units. This was the beginnings of the move towards regimental uniforms - in the Spanish world each unit picked a coat and facing colour. It wasn't until the early 1700s that coat colours became standardised and the distinguishing feature was the facings colour!


So for the challenge I decided to do a unit based primarily in white with red facings. I had seen pictures on the internet of a couple of Tercios that had these colours - the 'Los Blancos' and an enigmatic 'Tercio Alemana' or German Tercio, for which I could only find an illustration of an officer. I opted for the former with the option of changing unit flags to allow for the later if scenarios required.

Another view of the Pike Block

Well I have always struggled with White uniforms - especially getting the shading right, and this unit was no different!

As usual I undercoated in white, before doing a top coat in white, then adding in deep red facing colours. I then built up the other required colours - browns for musket and darker brown for shoes and scabbard. Tan leather was added for the straps, gloves and boot laces and then flesh, steel etc.

4 x Musketeer Stands

I then went to fix all the mistakes and in doing so ran into the challenge with white - most colours show through it - and with reds the colour seems to bleed into the white paint and stain it pink. I had to leave the figures to dry for a couple days, when I returned to them the bleeding issue was solved!

In the meantime I started work on the French dragoons - see below...

When ready I used Army Painter dip to add shading, I deliberately left the tin unshaken so that the level of pigment in the dip was as low as possible, nevertheless for a number of the figures the white uniforms ended up being over-stained and looking rather grey and dull.

The command stands, featuring the speculative flags I made

So after applying matt varnish, I over painted the white coats with white paint again - using a semi-dry-brush method, really just to emphasise the highlights and lightening up the coat colours.

Completed Tecio lined up just as I like them!

I based the figures as per other units, on 40 x 40mm bases, Pikemen and command stands on 40 x 20mm half-stands to enable my OCD tastes in figure placement within the units - i.e. A central block of 8 Pikemen, surrounding the command stand , flanked by two musketeer stands on each side....

Final touch was to make two speculative flags for the unit, if finding info about uniforms is hard for the period it's even harder finding info on Tercio flags - plenty of pictures but no one seems to know which units they belonged to!

So I kept it simple a couple of Burgundy crosses on white backgrounds, they came out a little small for my liking so may have to redo them a bit bigger!

The 'La Bretesche' Dragons

These four guys were painted to add to the 8 other Dragoons that I recently painted - enabling me to bring the unit up to two dismounted squadrons of 6 figures each. I still need to do the mounted versions at some point!

Completed - Additional French Dragoons before integrated with existing figures

These also enabled me to continue being productive whilst pulling out what little hair I have left waiting for the Spanish figures to thoroughly dry!

And the figures integrated into the existing unit.

I have also re-worked the bases of the original 8 figures to integrate the new figures into the stands.

POINTS
28 x 28mm Spanish Infantry @ 5 Points ea = 140 Points
4 x 28mm French Infantry @ 5 Points ea = 20 Points
Total Points 140 + 20 = 160 Points