I have been fascinated with the Great Northern War for years and made a start on a Swedish and a Russian army a number of years ago. This didn't get very far and the figures are long gone but my interest remained. The idea that a number of powerful nations should band together to take advantage of the death of the King of Sweden whilst his son the new king was only 15, only to find themselves on the wrong end of a series of military defeats as this dynamic young king led his superb blue and yellow army to victory after victory over the Danes, Saxons, Poles and Russians inspired me. Add this to the colourful uniforms and the some of the more exotic troop types in the North and East of Europe such as Cossacks and Polish Hussars, whats not to like.


A couple of things have brought this to fruition, firstly some of the guys I game with, particularly Dave and Howard, had been discussing a project around the War of the Spanish Succession. Having shared with them my enthusiasm for the more Northern theatre and the fact that the Saxons and Danes fought in both wars, Dave in particular was interested. This coincided in a small upsurge in the 28mm figures available. Ebor started a kickstarter with wonderful Paul Hicks sculpts, then an extremely dynamic range from Warfare Miniatures, add this to excellent plastics from Wargames Factory for the Danes/Saxons plus the Reiver Castings and Wargames Foundry ranges and the project was born.





So having decided to start the project there were a number of things to start to consider.


1. Who else fancied getting involved and collecting some troops.
2. What nation did I want to collect
3. What rules would we use.
4. What figures would we use.
5. What basing size and unit size would be appropriate.


I have already mentioned that Dave was interested, he liked the idea of Russians which was great, I had already decided that I wanted to do the Swedes. One of my close friends Mark then threw his hat in, opting for the grey coated Danes and I decided that I would consider some Saxons too. This has meant that the project becomes manageable and three of us are investing time and effort so the project also will hopefully take shape a bit quicker.


Rules, surprisingly this was quite easy to decide, we have already used Black Powder for AWI and enjoyed it. The Last Argument of Kings supplement even has ideas on what rule additions to use and a scenario.



I particularly like the options to tinker with troops abilities, making the Swedes more robust and upgrading their hand to hand ability, whilst having different abilities for the more irregular Cossacks and Poles. This also means that basing becomes easier, we simply decide what we want this to look like and decide on a basing format for Standard, small and large units that suits us and we are off.


Next post I will have a look at figures and the on-going discussions around basing.