Hello Old Friends! Back to Great Northern War Swedish Cavalry

 I needed a break from Sikhs and Tartans and I have been promising for a while to try get the Swede's finished for the Great Northern War project so decided to have a little go at some this weekend.

The process was eased by the prep I had done on these when last I was working on them in September 2019! I know crazy, has it really been so lon? So whilst the riders were already primed with arms glued in place and the horsea already oil painted, they needed a good dusting off and a touch up of the primer before I could crack on.

This will be my twelfth and last unit of Swedish cavalry and I decided that somefhing other than blue faced yellow was in order so went with the Sodra Skanska or South Skania regiment.

These are all Warfare Miniatures figures and very nice indeed, although their do seem to be slightly too many officers horses for some reason. The trumpeter and Ensign are both from an earlier more generic range but fit in quite well, the officer has actually sat in a box painted for nearly 2 years awaiting the rest of his command.

The troopers are lovely figures and I like the mid blue faced light blue contrasted with the buff and white hat lace. The bareheaded trooper is particularly nice.

The second lot of troopers have slightly more aggressive poses, the faces are full of character, especially the chap with a bandage over one eye.

A quick picture of each one here, juts to give you a flavour. The bareheaded chap first. The expression on his face is brilliant

This next figure also looks to mean business.

This fellow has not quite worked himself up yet, I like how his hat is slightly off centre.

The bandaged head is my favourite, not the best angle but captures the bandage.

This is a better angle, he looks fired up to give someone back for the bandage on his head.

Lastly here they all are glued to bases in formation ready to ship off to York for basing.

Painting for the Great Northern War again has also given me some food for thought. Up to press we have developed the rules to allow numerically inferior but well trained, led and motivated Swedes to take on forces far larger than their own and win as they did historically. It was important to me that we could get to that point so we knew the rules could reflect the history.

The issue with that though is its not really any fun for the enemies of the Swedes, so once we have the rules working it then becomes about developing scenarios that give the Swedes some headaches and the allies a more fun game to play. 

With all the extra Poles I now have I think that aiming for a battle of Klisow might be interesting. The Swedish army was very small with most of its foot Garrison troops, far inferior to the best of the field army, some made up of ex-prisoners of war and trained in the more standard infantry drills and tactics of the period rather than the agressive Swedish GAPA. They were also allied to a large Polish contingent of very dubious quality facing a massively larger combined Saxo-Polish-Russian army with a particularly large cavalry contingent. I think that might give us a really interesting and challenging game. Perhaps one for the summer.

In the meantime I might see if I can get a few more Poles completed whilst I am in the mood for the Great Northern War.

See you soon, stay safe!