Saxon Dragoons

For my Saxon forces I wanted to keep cost to a minimum. My initial thoughts were to use the Ebor WSS range, these do come in at great value for money when you buy the battalion or brigade packs. However I noticed a good deal on the Wargames Factory WSS figures, both horse and foot, via eBay. I was initially quite sceptical about the plastic figures, but having seen some in the flesh and some great painted examples I decided these would in fact be very nice.

So two boxes of foot and 2 boxes of horse later, I was building up some very nice and very easy figures. The figures are quite slim and each sprue gives you three figures, the first two just need a head and hanger added to be finished which is nice and simple, exchanging tricorne heads with the cavalry pack also gives you some more variety. The third figure on the sprue has a huge variety of options and I have made Grenadiers, officers, sergeants etc. from this figures, there are also drummer options and standard pole and officers partisan on each sprue so lots of useful spares. However building command figures was slightly more complex and didn’t give me as great a final result so I decided to add Ebor command to the plastics, roughly 6 metal figures to each battalion of 18, this seems to be working very well indeed and I hope to have pictures of the progress soon for you.

The Wargames Factory Cavalry are very multi-purpose with 5 different torso’s to choose from, however this does also mean there is a bit more to the building of these. The horses are also very nice and like other plastics take oils very well.

The first unit of Saxon Cavalry painted are the Goltz Dragoons. Black facings and saddle cloth with the usual red coat for Saxon troops. The Goltz dragoons fought at both Kliszow and Fraustadt so saw plenty of action. A unit of 9 figures as with most other cavalry I am doing, we still have the basing to resolve but 50mm by 60mm deep is looking pretty good as above.

I will also be painting a unit of Cuirassier at some point, same figures different torso, tempted to do the Leibregiment just to have a unit that is anything but red as below. That will leave me with enough Cavalry for a further unit, I am tempted to add a second Dragoon regiment but have plenty of time to decide as painting these will be a few months away.

With all of this talk of Saxons, Poles and Cossacks you could be forgiven for assuming I have forgotten about the Swedes, not so!

I have been beavering away in the background and now have the first two battalions painted to go with the first regiment of horse. I will pull a post together soon to update the Swedes, I expect to have some Ebor Swedes by then too so I can share my thoughts and perhaps a picture or two of the figures.

Thanks for reading.