The Saxon Guard

The first battalion Saxon Guard are now ready to take the field against the Swedes, I intend to do 2 battalions for each regiment including the Saxon and Polish Guard. One of the reasons for doing this is that my Wargaming colleague Steve Shann already has an army for the slightly earlier period with units having 5 bases each, if I remove two bases from the second battalion and add to the first this will allow me to create 5 base units to fight Steve's armies.


The Saxons are particularly useful having sent battalions to fight for the Anglo Dutch under Marlborough as well as simultaniously  fighting the Swedes. The Guard like other units had battalions fighting the French in the War of the Spanish Succession at the same time as the Swedes in the Great Northern War. So really useful troops to have.





You can see from the above plate that the early Saxon units had floppy hats rather than tricorns for the first couple of years of the Great Northern War. However as this is 2-3 years out of 21 I figured units in Tricorn would be more useful.

The majority of the figures are wargames factory with just 6 being Ebor, officer, ensigns, drummer, seargent and casualty figures.


I have found these figures to be really nice for the basic foot soldier. The command figures though were fiddly and did not come out as well so the excellent Ebor filled this role.

In this picture we see the right hand as with a casualty at extreme right and Ebor Seargent at the back. Wargames Factory provide enough flexibility that each of the musketeers looks like an individual.

The Ebor officer is excellent, the flags are so large that the picture doesn't do the Ensigns justice.

This provides a slightly better view of the Ensigns, then again maybe not.......

In this left hand base we see the usefulness of the Wargames Factory separate heads for the Grenadiers. The drummer again is Ebor and the Gabion adds a nice little touch too I think.


These were the most persistent of Charles of Sweden's foes and I intend to have at least eight battalions of Saxons to fight alongside Marks Danes or Dave's Russians.


We have a largish Carlist Wars game upcoming so I may have pictures from that next.


Big thank you to Steve Shann who kindly did the base coats on these gents. Mucly appreciated Steve.




Cheers for reading.

Great Northern War Compendium

This new book has had a lot of Hyp and I have been considering buying it for a while. However at £110 it is about double the most I have ever paid for a book, even in two volumes.


However the finance department \(The missis) decided to put half to and I gave in to temptation. The book has arrived today and I thought I would share my first impressions.


First of all its pretty big, as you would expect at the eye watering cost, below are the two volumes next to an Ebor Saxon General who seems happy enough they have arrived.

In terms of content I have to say first impressions are that its fantastic. First of all each participant (even the Turks and Prussians) have a whole section or their army, below is the page for the Swedes. The artwork is really first rate.

There is a uniform section, this has a colour guide to all the main arms, foot horse, artillery and officer uniforms followed by pages of specifics for individual regiments as pictured below. There are even loads of colour pictures for the elusive Polish army. My one criticism so far would be that the Russian Army receives less coverage for some reason. Maybe I will find out more when I get stuck into reading them? 

Each campaign and major battle is covered as you would expect with maps, battle plans, major characters and orders of battle. There are other smaller actions and events covered too such as the Don Cossack revolt I was previously unaware of.

The book also has whole sections on foreign policy, interesting side lines like the role of Pastors in the Swedish army and Cossack raiders in the Russian army.

All in all I would have to say first impressions are that this is money well spent and a read I will enjoy for a long time to come.

Swedish Artillery

Basing department has returned to Uni but has left me with a couple of units based to share with you.


First up is my first Great Northern War Artillery, a Swedish Gun and crew from Ebor Miniatures. Really lovely figures especially the officer

They come in a pack of 6 crew but I reckon 4 is plenty so the 4 spares from my two crews will make an extra crew for a third gun.

Close up of Officer and Gunner.

The gun carriage was blue faced yellow and I decided that a blue/grey would be a better fit dry brushed pale grey to give a more weathered effect. The yellow is a faded sand colour.

The crew in grey faced blue have a very simple but elegant uniform. Quick and Easy to paint. This is a field gun and probably the largest gun I will do for the Swedes, artillery found it difficult to keep up with the army who relied on aggressive shock action in combat, only light pieces really stood a chance unless the Swedes were on the defensive.


Next up is likely to be either my third Swedish foot battalion or my first Saxon foot.