Russian artillery and skirmishers

Cracking on with the last few pieces which I still need to round out a division of 1808 Russians.

The artillery is a mix of Perry and Warlord Games figures; the artillery pieces are Perry and Elite miniatures (I think?). The Elite and Perry 6-pounders look very similar, and as I happened to have enough models, I replaced the Warlord guns I had previously, as they look quite weird to be honest. The artillerymen are WG and Perry; the WG figures are very easy to convert, as they come with separate heads and have gaiter type false boots which are appropriate. The Perry figures needed a little more work (Ive described this in an earlier post). The heads on all the figures are from Brigade Games infantry. Four more figures need paint and Ill have three batteries of two guns each including limbers, which is the goal at the moment.

The jägers (of 26th and 24th regiments) are skirmish bases, with the goal being three bases per brigade. These bases can also be combined with the existing battalions to represent several smaller units, as the scenario or rules requires.

The idea with the musketeer skirmishers is similar. These cant be combined with the battalions, as those are in close order, marching. For that reason I will be doing one command base for each set of three skirmish bases. The skirmish bases can then be used either as skirmishers detached from the close order battalions, or as representing small independent companies or small patrols or pickets. This was a very common occurrence in Finland and features more or less in most battles Ive read about.

This use of command bases also turned out to be quite a good idea for a practical reason. I have a surplus of both drummers and officers for the Russian infantry. This is because the Brigade Games command pack consists of 2 flag bearering officers (ensigns), 2 officers, 2 drummers and 2 NCOs. Problem is that you need 2 flag bearers per battalion, but only 1 officer, 1 drummer (and 1 NCO, if you want him!). Having painted 7 (into the 8th) line battalions, needless to say, I have a big bag of left over officers and drummers. With a few surplus miniatures, I figured itd be nice and interesting to experiment with them a little. I have consequently converted a couple of officers to have shakos. Wearing shakos were in accordance with regulation for the Russian officers already at this time. However, many officers seem to have preferred the bicorne, and most miniature makers sculpt Russian officers with a bicorne, at least prior to 1812. The Brigade Games range of figures includes no officers in shako, either in their musketeer, grenadier or jäger packs. I dont know how common it was for officers to wear the shako – but Ill have a go at painting some anyway! As you can see, the goal here is to have 3×3 skirmish bases of musketeers just as with the jägers (the grenadiers, apparently, did not skirmish, probably due to their massive plumes…).

Russian artillery limber

A small step for the Russian 1808 collection. In fact, even though this is just one piece, limbers are always some of the most labor-intensive models that you would do for Napoleonic figures. This 6-pounder limber is the third I have done, which means I have one limber team for each brigade, two 6-pounders and one 3-pounder. Id like to do a 12-pounder battery with limber as well at some point. However, the 6-p team will do nicely as a stand in for a 12-p limber team until then – and I havent even started on the guns and artillerymen of the 12-pounders yet. 12-p teams were of six horses rather than four. However, I know that the Swedish army reduced the number of horses for their artillery during 1808. It would not be impossible to imagine that the Russians might have done the same, and actually used only four horses for the 12-pounders as well. In any event, Ill be quite pleased when I have finished the rest of the Russian artillery that I have prepared. I have about 10 crew and three cannon still to go. Having done the third limber team, the largest hurdle is now behind me.

The model is by Perry miniatures of course, with heads taken from Brigade Games line infantry. The model comes without the ropes which connect the limber to the horses. I added these with some string. This time I used some modelling string which I bought especially for the purpose. Previously, I have used regular kitchen string which worked just as well. Tying the strings to the model pieces is tricky, as the string has a tendency to unfurl at the edges. This is why the ropes look somewhat wonky here and there. I did the best I could, and it works well enough. But the connecting ropes were the reason I hadnt finished this model for so long. In more recently produced limber teams, the Perry bros have included connecting ropes with the model, which is a huge improvement. But even without those, the Perrys’ limber teams are probably the best on the market, and they have a wide selection of them as well. They havent produced a limber team for Swedish artillery yet, so I am lookin forward to that. In the meantime, I have used one of their Austrian sets. Ive also acquired their recent Danish limber team and will try to convert that into a Swedish team. The Swedes lack a third limber team, so that will be a priority project looking forward.

Chevaux de frise and gabions

Painting is quite slow at the moment, but I did finish some chevaux de frise and gabions. These are metal models made by League of Augsburg/Warfare miniatures https://www.leagueofaugsburg.com/

They are well detailed and were a fun detail to do. They are designed for the early 18th or 17th century, but these things changed very little and will work great for later periods as well. The gabions come as single pieces (packs of 6), with some extra stuff, like smaller gabions, packs of fascines, unfinished gabions etc. So the sets of three and the fascines over the top are my doing. Putting a pack of emtpy fascines over the top of the gabion was common apparently (something I picked up from some googling).

I was fortunate enough to receive some extra gabion pieces which were slightly miscast – these turned out to be very useful. Some of them were shorter in height, which looked great in some of the combinations I did, so that the miscasts were, in a way, more useful than more of the standard pieces would have been!

I should particularly mention League of Augsburg, who of course do a range of absolutely excellent figures for the war of the Spanish Succession/Great Northern War (and related conflicts). I have some of the figures and will have to dig them up and continue painting them at some point, hopefully rather soon (so far Ive only test painted one or two). Its difficult with all these beautiful miniatures and all the projects you really want to do but dont have the time for…

Skirmishers

Continuing to re-base my Napoleonic figures. Ive now done almost everything, even down to these old figures. First off are the Warlord Games 95th rifles, some of the first Napoleonics I ever painted. Ive had some ideas about doing a brigade or two of British to use for a “what if?”-scenario for the Finnish war. in the spring of 1808, a British division arrived in Gothenburg to support Sweden, one of Britain’s last remaining allies. The division was primarily intended for the Swedish invasion of Norway, which never happened. For that and various other reasons, the British division never came ashore. The Swedish king even tried to convince the British to use this force offensively against Russia, something the British were not prepared to do. Understandable considering the circumstances, but also sad, as the Swedish army could certainly have used some help!

The Russian jägers are part of a larger collection which consists of quite a few miniatures, although mostly too few in each unit to make up useful battalions/squadrons in the new basing scheme. The skirmishers are of course easy to do as they are. Im hoping to add the necessary figures sometime in the future, so maybe more to come there further down the road. In particular, Id be looking to paint a jäger battalion in the style of these chaps.

These French dragoons just happened to be very nice figures which I really enjoyed painting. I think there are a few more of them somewhere, including a horse holder with a couple of horses. Most of that stuff is packed deep down into boxes since we moved house about a year ago though. I do have some more Napoleonic French, but not more than a single battalion’s worth of infantry and some officers. Itd be great to paint up some more to make at least a brigade. I have a lot of left-over French figures I could use for that…

Finnish cavalry (once again)

In the past couple of weeks, Ive been re-basing my 28mm Napoleonic figures. The Finnish army was already re-based, apart from the cavalry. I waited with the re-basing as I was planning to add more figures anyway. Now that Ive painted some additional figures to these, getting them up to 9 men per unit, it was time to re-base them. The closer basing does look better for cavalry and it somehow seems that this is the way the Perry figures are meant to be based. Also, these 9-man units now take up exactly the same amount of frontage as they did before as 6-man units (based less closely together).

Someone also pointed out to me that having metal cavalry figures based closely together is a good idea for another reason than them looking good. Metal cavalry have an unhealthy tendency to bend at the hooves, and this can be pretty difficult to repair when the metal weakens and breaks. However, when based closely together, the figures can actually support each other instead of bending at the hoof – its takes a lot more force to bend the hooves of three horses at once. I was a bit sceptical at first, but it does indeed turn out to be quite true.

Some field fortifications

Ive recently finished these resin pieces by a maker called Baueda. They are very nicely detailed and of great casting quality. I do have some more fortification type pieces in the pipeline, so Ill do some more hopefully soon. These were easy enough to paint, with the sawn off short ends of the logs requiring some detail work. But even that was surprisingly quickly done and adds very nice detail to the pieces.

The models are sold as WW2 pieces, but I think that fortifications like these were in use earlier – at least they are similar enough to Napoleonic fortifications. Ill combine these with some gabions, which are more typical of the period.

In the bottom picture, you can see some gabions with the Baueda pieces. The gabions are made by Warbases. They are made of resin just like the Baueda stuff. However, the Warbases gabions are, unfortunately, not of the same quality. Not only are they less well sculpted, they also came with many air bubbles which had to be filled in with green stuff before I could paint them. Because there were so many, this did take quite some time. That is also why there are only two small pieces. I have many more, but the air bubbles put me off finishing the others. I should say that once they were properly prepared, they were easy to paint and very quickly done. They were also relatively cheap.

Prussian brigade, half-way

As my inaugural post for the new year, here are some pictures of my 1813 Prussians of which about half of the infantry is now done. Ive been busy completing the basing of miniatures I have painted during the past year or two. It has turned out that I had accrued quite a mass of figures which were on queue to be properly based, including a lot of re-basing. In fact there are quite a few more figures still to finish.

Russian division 1808

As I have already mentioned in previous posts, I have been working on re-basing my Russians for the 1808 setting. This has included expanding some of the units, so that all line infantry is in 24 man units, and the jäger units of 16. I have now come as far as rebasing all of the infantry, excluding some skirmishers – of which I plan to do a lot more btw. The basing is now on bases of 45x40mm for the infantry. Marching close order infantry will be six figures per base, jägers four and skirmishers two, all on the same size of base! The cavalry will be three horses on 60x60mm. This is of course the same sizes I have used for the Swedish-Finnish army. The bases have been ordered from Warbases, who provide a huge range of different sizes and shapes of bases, at a decent price. However, if ordering (as I do) from Europe, it will be a good idea to try to make one large single order all at once, as they will suffer import fees because of the Brexit nonsense.

Ideally, I would say that 60x40mm bases with eight figures per base is even better. However, if one is doing a large battle on a small table, narrowly based 24-man units of four bases per unit is pretty good. They can then still be expanded to 36-man units if (or when) I feel up to it. The Finnish war had many smaller actions in which only one brigade was engaged on each side. In such cases, larger units might be nice, as it does look better.

I took some pictures of the finished lot. Ive organized them into brigades, although these are not historical, but rather generic. They just include four infantry units, an artillery piece and one or more commander figures. The idea is that each brigade will fit into one storage box, so it is a practical thing as much as anything else. However, with three brigades this does amount to a division. A neat brigade and division structure was not upheld in practice in the summer of 1808, but this is a good basis for the type of army one would field for such a scenario.

First brigade

These are a good foundation, but a number of additions will hopefully follow soon. As I said, I will paint more skirmish figures soon (Ive already prepared them). One artillery limber is also missing (it sits unfinished in a box…). The plan is also to do two artillery pieces in each brigade rather than just one, although one is probably enough for many games. The artillerymen are already primed and ready for painting. The cavalry is also almost done. For them, the plan is to expand into 9 man units. The cossacks only need rebasing, and the hussars are almost there as well, still lacking a few finishing touches and basing. I also have plans for a command vignette, like the ones Ive already done for the Swedes. Again, the figures are already primed and ready to be painted.

Second brigade

Third brigade

As you can see, the basic infantry figures are all Brigade Games figures (of the old Victrix range). The colonels are also by Brigade. Some commanders are Perry figures and some of them are Warlord figures. The artillery crew pictured here are all Warlord, with Brigade heads; the limbers and artillery pieces are all by Perry.

Russian progress

I have been working on rebasing my 1808 Russians for way too long. But now everything is at least mounted on the new type of bases and I have applied the Vallejo texture goo, which is the more time consuming part of the process. After that I will drybrush the bases and paint the edges. In the final step I will apply some flock and static grass. Pictured is half of the total Russian force, the other half I have already finished basing.

As you can see, I have a few skirmishers, of the Sevsk and Mogilev regiments. The plan is to have three skirmish bases of jägers and three of musketeers for every brigade. My main goal right now is to get to a position where I have a fully useable army of three brigades of four battalions and one artillery piece each. Cavalry is not a priority for this setting, but I have painted (but not yet re-based) one cossack unit of 9 figures and will need to paint a few more hussars to get them to the same strength. For the Finnish war, one will rarely need more than two cavalry units, although there is certainly room to paint both uhlans and dragoons – although dragoons only participated in one or two battles and they were not present at any of the major engagements. Uhlans however, were a bit more commonly seen. Also, it should be said that the Russians often did field slightly more cavalry than the Swedes.

Some Russian additions

With little painting time, I have at least finished some additional figures and guns for the Russian army of 1808. I have prepared many more. The primary goal is to be able to field a battery of two guns for each of the three brigades. Two of these will be 6-pounders, the third a 3-pounder battery. At the moment I have finished three guns and crew, which is fine in itself. One gun per brigade can be good enough in game terms. I already have three limber sets, although one of them still needs some finishing touches.

The figures are conversions from Perry and Warlord figures, with the heads of Brigade Games infantrymen. On the Perry figures in summer dress, I sculpted boots, which I think may be more appropriate. But the long white gaiter trousers which they wear were already in use in 1808 as far as I understand, so this wasnt strictly necessary. I get the feeling that such elegant white trousers would have been useless in Finland though.

In the future, it would be nice to add a battery of 12-pounders to this collection as well. But thats about it, as I dont see me ever fielding more than three brigades at once.

Russian 12-pounders played an important part in the war in Finland, as the Swedish army never fielded any equivalent artillery and could not match their range. Exactly why no Swedish heavy artillery was used in 1808–1809 is unclear, as heavy guns were available in Finland. It may just be that those guns were considered to be no better than the new model 1804 6-pounders, which were light and mobile, yet had decent range. For that reason 12-pounders may not have been considered worth the effort. I cant recall any discussion of this in what I have read of either in primary sources or secondary literature. Theoretically, one would assume that heavy guns would have been useful at least in defending some of the prepared positions that the Swedes constructed at various places, such as Rouna, where the Russian 12-pounders seem to have been very effective. As was the case with this war in general, it seems that the Russian army proved more capable in the logistics department if nowhere else, despite the fact that the Swedes were on home ground.