Cossacks

One of the more colourful units I wanted to build for the Great Northern War were Cossacks. If you have read my previous posts you will already be aware that I like to produce units that have multiple uses, value for money I like to think, others might just say I am a tight Yorkshireman.

Cossacks are a good example of this. Traditional irregular auxiliaries of Russia, these can also be used as Polish irregular Cossacks or Ukrainian Cossacks. When you consider that Poles and Ukrainians fought on both sides at different points of the war then you start to see how useful a unit or two of these might be.

I picked up some of the fantastic Wargames Foundry Cossacks, sculpted by Mark Copplestone, from ebay at a very good price (you see value for money again) and this might mean I now have enough for 2 units. I do love Mark Copplestone figures, they are full of character and really suit my painting style, fun to paint too.

The above and below give examples of Cossack clothing, being irregular of course they wore whatever they fancied but there were probably some dominant colours, browns and greys with brighter reds and blues where the Cossack was able to afford it (Or loot it!) Fighting often against the Turk there was probably plenty of opportunity to loot some fancy cloth.

I have tried not to get carried away (which wasn’t that easy) but still maintain that wild, irregular look on my figures. Below are the first couple which I hope you like.

Command

In wargaming terms they are going to be of limited value. Cossacks came into their own raiding and disrupting the enemy supply lines, cutting up stragglers and foragers and then pursuing broken enemy after a battle. They can however fill out an army to give the gamer a false sense of the volume of his own forces. In Black Powder terms this could well mean that Cossacks have a lower stamina or are possibly wavering. In hand to hand however they should still be quite savage.

I have played about a bit with basing (which still needs finalising in general) on a 50mm front 80mm deep Cossacks do have that “horde” look, a mob of unruly state sponsored bandits, if I am to reduce the depth a bit I may want smaller numbers of riders, perhaps a unit of 7 across 3 bases, rather than the usual 9 I have for cavalry, with 3 in the middle base and 2 each on the outside’s. I don’t want a dense formation but a loose mob. That said I want some uniformity to basing. 50mm frontage still remains my preference. The Swedes almost certainly on 80mm deep to accommodate all the pikes, bayonets etc. of the charging figures. The Saxons will probably be on 50mm by 60mm as their foot will all be marching and don’t need the space. The Poles, including Cossacks, will all need to be on the same depth and I am not sure that I will need as much depth for the winged hussars who want to be slightly more formed. The key thing is that frontage is the same for all units, outside of that depth is just more about how the thing looks, so keeping depth the same within armies but only frontage the same across the whole collection works for me.

In other news I spoke to Nick from Ebor the other night about his Great Northern War range. He has just released Swedish artillery which is available on his website and exceptionally nice indeed, the infantry are apparently all now ready to go and he has the figures ready to post but not on the site available to order yet. Nick had wanted to get some painted up by the fantastic Dave Imrie (check his paintjob on the gunners below) but Dave, I understand, has a lot of his own projects on the go so Nick is now thinking to get ink washed examples for pictures sorted soon and painted ones can follow.

Nick has also shared with me that Russians are not too far from ready either and these will be followed by Danes, no dates yet. So I am now figuring out how many battalions of Swedes I want from Nick so I can get an order in before Christmas. I have a couple of Swedes on the way along with command figures for my Saxons, once I have some figures I will share my thoughts and maybe some pictures.

Thanks for reading.