Swedish Dragoon Workbench and Review

I did this post before I left for my cruise so posting now to keep you busy and will share some of the exciting other stuff I have over the next week or two.

Before I pass these on to the basing department I thought I might take the opportunity to photograph and review some of the figures from Warfare Miniatures new Swedish Cavalry individually.

Bit of a different approach  but I really like some of these as individual characters so wanted to photograph them singly before they are all based up as a unit which will lose some of that individual character.

So here they are above as a group as I varnish them.

Below is the officer. There are two different officers, I might do a second of these reviews with the other officer and the figures with shouldered sword.

The drummer is one of my favourite figures and is really full of character, cracking figure.

This cornet is really nice as well. lots of "GA PA" here, the horse is OK but my least favourite of the four.

The two packs of charging riders are excellent, I like all of them and as each comes with separate arms lots of room to create individual figures. The below rider is on another of the horses which is very nice indeed.

This figure is a favourite of mine, the right eye covered with a bandage which you cant see in this shot, I like this horse too and think this particular one came out really well.

Another aggressively posed rider from the charging pack.

This is the only figure for this unit using the older models, this is the original test figure for the Swedish horse, he fits in and fits the horses OK but his coat tails raise him up slightly and the sculpting is not quite as nice as the new ones.

This trooper is letting out a yell as he charges forward, very nice this one.

I really like this bareheaded rider.

Here they all are together, these will be Schlippenbachs Dargoons and make a very colourful show I think.

And here they are based up ready to pass to the basing department. I should have these back shortly to share with you.

Thanks for reading, more to follow.

Livonian Adelsfana

Another unit back from the basing department. These are the Livonian Adelfana, Swedish Troops from of course Livonia. Each of the territories rules by Sweden, including Sweden itself had an Adelsfana or Noble Banner of cavalry usually from 150 to 600 men, The Livonians had 300. This unit could be any of those for the early war but I liked the Livonians.

The Livonians fought at Riga and Gemaurtauf and also Lesnaya, that they didnt fight at Poltava after Lesnaya suggests they could not raise a full unit after the battle of Lesnaya, although they were fighting again at Riga in 1710 so perhaps reformed.

I like the contrast of the Grey faced yellow, by Lesnaya they almost certainly were wearing Blue faced yellow. So this is an early war uniform.

This is another unit started nearly 2 years ago in preparation for Warfares release of Swedish cavalry so 4 of the figures are from the older range. The horses are all from the new range and I like them a lot, there is one horse that doesnt seem quite as nice but its still OK, see if you can guess which it is!

In the below shot you can see the command base and the Cornet is from the earlier cavalry range, still a good fit I think. I also like the officer peering to his left to check the dressing of his "flying wedge".

This base shows figures from 3 different packs from left to right is the original test pack, one of the shouldered swords pack (the others of these will all make a separate Dragoon unit later) and one of the charging pack.

This last is also three packs, from left to right is a new charging pack, then a generic 17th century horseman bareheaded pack and finally from the Swedish charging pack. The middle figure I only realised afterwards has a cast on blanket roll which is a bit odd as the horses also have cast on blanket rolls! Rookie error.

The older figures are not perfect fits for these horses but work OK, I dont think they look odd at all and even the one with an extra blanket roll doesnt look out of place (below second from left)

This unit takes me to 8 cavalry and two more nearly finished by the basing department. Lots still to share. However I will be setting off for my Baltic Cruise very shortly and I dont know if I will be able to post before I return. Excited to be visiting the seat of the Great Northern War, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Russia and Germany, I cant wait. St Petersburg promises to be amazing but I will also be looking forward to dragging the finance department around the Swedish Army museum next week as well. Hope to share pictures when I am back.

So hopefully there will be chance whilst away to post the odd blog but if not I will see you all when I sail back home. Bon Voyage shipmates!

Another Great Northern War After Action Report

Steve kindly hosted another game utilising the 18th century rules from Olicanalad "Piquet amended for large 18th century battles". This time introducing a level of morale checks which utilise chips for morale.

Each side having a number of morale chips, every time they loose a melee or morale check a chip is removed, once they are gone that sides stats all fall and if they continue to loose chips after they have all gone, it adds them to the opposition pile of chips. Interesting concept.

Perhaps it was the heat but the game didnt quite seem to have the same flow as the others. Perhaps it was too big a gap and we had all forgotton the rules or maybe the cards came out funny and it didnt flow quite as well. Either way it wasnt quite as good a game as the last three.

As we were adding unknown elements to the game and had not played for a few weeks we decided on a small game. Mark and Chris had 12 battalions of foot, 4 regiments of horse and 3 guns with a large earthwork to defend. I had 9 battalions of Swedes, including 3 guard, 4 of horse, 1 was guard, and one gun. The Swedes of course were attacking.

The quality of the Swedes should balance the numbers, firepower and defences of the Danes. The colourful Danes are all Marks troops (Apart from 2 saxon cavalry) and the Swedes all mine.

My new Swedish Jonkoping regiment was also getting its first outing, we had no hopes of this lasting long, new units usually run away very quickly.

I deployed first with 2 regiments of horse on each wing and 6 battalions in the centre with the gun. Chris and Marks cavalry conformed to mine and the majority of the foot massed inside the earthworks along with 2 of the three guns. I was then allowed free deployment of my guards brigade of foot after the Danes had deployed, I chose to load these up on my left flank supporting the cavalry and hopefully being able to smash through the Danish foot brigade outside the defences on this wing. Well that was the plan anyway.

The cards fell in such a way as I was able to get my horse forward but not the foot for nearly an hour, only managing one move forward during that time, Mark and Chris were also able to manouvre their horse and chose to keep their foot sensibly in place and wait for the Swedes to march into their guns. Some initial cannonade was relatively ineffective from both sides at long range, the Swedes rolling a D4 against the a D6 defensive dice and needing to beat it by three to get a single casualty, it wasnt really worth the spending of a chip and eventually I gave up wasting the powder.

The Cavalry engaged first on the Swedish left, honours were even with one unit of Saxon horses being routed by the Swedish horse guards and one unit of Swedes being routed by the other Saxon unit.

A bit more manouvre and a second engagement saw the Swedish horse guards routed by the Saxons. Oh dear, this wast in my plan at all!

On the Swedish right the cavalry had also now engaged and things started a little better. two wins forcing the Danish horse back in disorder. Eventually this led to both Danish cavalry units routing. It didnt all go my way though, one of my cavalry failed to rally and pursued the broken Danes, as the morale card came out straight after the melee and they were within one move of the table edge, the Danish cavalry fled the table pursued by my Swedes, now lost to the game.

The morale card also allowed me to rally my routing horse, the Guards rallied and shook off their casualties, the other horse though continued to rout straight off the table.

The cards for the foot now started to come and I was able to get forward into the earthworks, but a couple of units took a severe beating, particularly from the guns, in doing so. Guess who broke first, yes it was the brand new Jonkoping regiment having taken too much damage from musketry and artillery.

Over to the left the guards brigade now had three move cards on the trot and quickly closed with the Danish flank. The guard horse charged the Danes and was able to win this time routing them off.

The Danes poured musketry into the guards as they closed, Honours were even, the Guard Grenadiers took 5 casualties and were destroyed whilst the extreme left guards battalion routed the Danes on the end of the lines opening room up for a potential swing behind the Danish line by my horse.

A fierce melee in the centre saw first one and then a second Swedish battalion drive back the defending Danes and gain a foothold in the redoubt. The Swedes on the extreme right forced back the Danish foot, again leaving the potential for my remaining horse to sweep around the rear of the Danes.

It had been a close run thing all said but the Swedes were now in a very strong position and the Danish advantages of artillery and earthworks had been negated.

The Jonkopings however could not be saved and continued their rout off table.

The game ended with both both Danish flanks exposed and two Swedish battalions inside the earthworks. It wasnt all over yet, the Danes still had 4 uncommited units who could pour fire into the Swedes and some of the Swedish foot were particularly shakey but all told it was unlikely the Danes could now win. At this point 20 minutes later than planned we called it a night.

The card system for some reason did not seem to go as well as previously. I guess thats to be expected with random systems though. I cant put my finger on what didnt feel right, perhaps it was just not a good night for the game, who knows. The outcomes and responses all felt right.

The Swedes have had it all their own way last few games, they are difficult to stop when they get a roll on. That said we have used guards brigades as a sledgehammer in most games so far, the Russians faired much better against the Swedes in the Baltic where the Swedes had no guards units and utilised a lot of the Tremmaning regiments which were not quite as battle hardened. Perhaps a game with less quality for the Swedes is worth trying, adding Polish allies in to make things more interesting may also change the feel of the game.

I hope to run another game in a few weeks on a bigger table with a greater variety of troops to really test the game mechanics now that we have got our heads around the systems.

Thanks again to Steve and Julie Shann who are great hosts and Chris and Mark for sticking with what can sometimes feel like a one sided game.

A couple more units of finished figures to hopefully share with you before the Baltic Cruise.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it.

Jonkoping Regiment and Magnus Stenbock

The basing department has come up trumps again with another unit. More on the workbench for her but the first of these is a Swedish infantry regiment, Jonkopings. This is an early war unit with a distinctive Karpus, black front plate piped white. For a change all of the figures are from a single range, in this case from the Warfare miniatures range of figures. Despite all the advice that the grenadiers didnt wear their mitres on campaign I could not resist adding these, sorry!

Jonkopings were a provincial infantry unit recruited from Swedes in a  particular county (Jonkoping is in the South of Sweden) and fought in some of the larger battles so are a really useful unit, as a bonus I already had the flag too, which again is very colourful and again is from Warfare miniatures. They fought in the Polish campaign against the Saxo-Poles and Russians and then accompanied Charles into Russia to fight at Poltava, re-raised they fought again at Helsingborg under Stenbock and later at Stralsund.

Photography not quite as good as usual for some reason so apologies. Above shot from above showing the Virtual three ranks I try to achieve with the basing.

I particularly like the pikeman to the right leaning nonchalantly on his pike waiting for something to happen.

Close ups can be a little unforgiving, especially as I find the Warfare figures fine features dont always suit my painting style (or should that be ability?)

Alongside the Jonkopings let me introduce General Magnus Stenbock. Again a Warfare miniature, I have pinched a generals horse from the earlier grand alliance range as its suitably heroic.

Stenbock was a general with a good record, defeating the Danes at Helsingborg (along with the Jonkopings regiment above) before defeating another much larger force of Danes and Saxons at Gadesbusch in Northern Germany.

I do like this model which is why I did it first out of the pack of three, again though I am not sure I have done it justice entirely. Still it looks OK.

The model is based on a famous painting of Stenbock leading his hastily raised troops to victory at Helsingborg, the painting has blue saddle cloth and holsters, but another image from nearer the time shows these as yellow and as they look more striking I have gone with this.

We have a game tonight so hopefully both of these will see action and I can report back to you at the weekend with how the game went.

I also hope to share the finished Livonians before I break up for my Summer holiday, the basing department promises them middle of next week so just in time. This year I have a cunning plan. The finance department has wanted a cruise for a while now, which I have not been sure about. So I agreed as long as it was a Baltic cruise. Yes I will be visiting the seat of the Great Northern War as a "favour" to my wife!

I will share some of the thoughts on where we might go whilst there. Limited of course by timings of the cruise liner.

Thanks for reading, see you all soon.