Strelets Mounted Rif Rebels

I was browsing through the Plastic Warrior Review and came across Strelets Mounted and foot Rif Rebels and wondered if we could use them in Jack's colonial army to bump up the Dervish forces.

I am not sure if they were work but I went ahead and painted them anyway, starting with the mounted figures.  We have 20 or so B&B Foreign Legion figures so we can always try a small game with them instead.

There is a lot of detail on these figures if you want to go there, but my eyes are not up to it these days,   I think they would benefit from some of the Army Painter dip  or similar to bring out the detail, unfortunately, mine had gone rock hard and I am too mean to buy some more at this stage!!

Now painting the Foot figures

Bob's Petrine Army

Bob has been busy during the lockdown and here is his blog on his Petrine Army.

This is my latest project, and is not yet complete. It is the Russian army of Peter the Great, not to fight the Swedes in the Great Northern War, but to take on my Ottoman Hordes. It is dated to as close to 1700 as I can make it, a time when although there were uniform regulations they were not met, and the Russian army is at its most colourful with green, red, blue, white and yellow uniforms.

The two senior regiments the "play mates battalions" formed from the child Peter's playmates on two estates are here. The Preopbrasjenski Guards, 

and the Semonovska Guards. A private in the Preopbrasjenski Guards was the equivalent of a lieutenant in any other regiment. Its C in C was always the Czar.

One of the original "soldat" regiments that survived into the new army - Sir Patrick Gordon's regt.  His flag is listed as a white cross on a red field - since he was a Scot I have given him the St. Andrew's Cross.

At the rear of the army is two regiments of Streltzi -yellow and red coated. It is often stated that the Streltzi were disbanded and they were, but Peter could not manage without their numbers and they were reconstituted.

Peter the Great instituted new cavalry regiments, mainly dragoons and although by the 1720s all were in green at this time they wore yellow, red, white, light and dark blue as well. But as with the infantry there were not enough of them so Horse and lance units were used. These included the local nobility, as well as irregulars such as Cossacks, Culmucks, lancers and hussars as well as reiters.

This is under construction and not all are shown but the noble cavalry has been painted.  All the noble cavalry including the command (but not the dog) are from Hinchcliffe. The Dog is from Irregular Miniatures..

The dragoons/Horse grenadiers are from Irregular and Lancashire games.

The first 5 regiments of infantry are from Ebor, others from Irregular Miniatures; Lancashire Games and Wargames Foundry. The Streltzi are from Old Glory.

The 2 mounted officer and the engineer section are from Reiver.  

The Orthodox priest is a resin figure from V&V Miniatures and appears with my Russian Napoleonics as well as supporting Peter the Great.

Still as work in progress - hope you enjoy them.

The large card building is a Russian kit of the cottage that Kutozov used as his HQ.

S Range Projects that won’t happen

Unfortunately, my cancer means that I am unlikely to have the time, or frankly the desire to complete various large scale projects that I had started/thought about, but I thought you might like to see some of the ideas.  I am adding units to my existing armies instead which seems a more sensible use of my time as I will hopefully once we are released from house arrest mean I can use them.

Italians

Sardinians

The first of these projects was the Italian Wars of Unification.  I already had the Austrians and French so to some extent it was a matter of producing some of the Italian states.  The Sardinian Lancer I made for John Cunningham’s Crimean War range gave me some cavalry and the Bersaglieri a start with the infantry.   I had also made an Italian General to lead my army.   I then created this ‘master’ for the Sardinian infantry based on a picture from Uniformology.  The French 1840’s Infantryman which John already sells also works for Italian infantry of various states and the French Guard from the CW range can also be used for Italian forces.

Papal States
I have a 25mm ‘S Range/mid range minifigs’ Zouave figure which makes an excellent Papal Zouave with the backpack swapped, or it can be left as it is.  

The actual uniform can be confusing both in the shade of grey and the jacket piping.  I addition to the 2 pictures below I have also seen them painted all grey!

I opted for a straight grey with red piping.  I decided to cut away 'civil war' backpack the figure comes with file the back flat and superglue what I call the Jacklex backpack on the figure which more closely resembles the backpack in the pictures above.  

You can now get this backpack from jacklexminiatures.com.  The Papal Zouves were disbanded and many went to fight in the Franco Prussian War on the side of the French were they formed the Volontaires de l'Quest. 

The picture below show then with the fuller French backpacks.  To get this figure in the past I had do a head swap of a kepi head onto Zouave figure. 

                                     

In fact I have since discovered that jacklexminiatures.com have a separate backpack for the Foreign legion which does the job and is much simpler, again just remove the Civil War back pack and glue on the Foreign Legion one.  I think this is a nicer figure than my original conversion.

This figure has proved to be very versatile from being a ACW Zouave to an 1870 FPW figure.

I have a mould for the original ACW figure and many casting which are no longer of any use!  I intend to offer them to John  Cunningham, and assuming he wants them you may be able to order from him.

Schleswig-Holstein War

Having already got a Prussian Army I thought that I could build a Danish force for the first and/or second Schleswig-Holstein Wars.  A search on Google left me totally confused as to what uniforms were for which war.  I started with this picture.

This is listed as Danish troops returning after the First Schleswig Holstein War.  They looked very ACW but with a different backpack.

So I converted a Union ACW figure to make both an infantryman and a Grenadier and changed the backpack for a Jacklex one.

I then came across picture of infantrymen in red jackets and bell top shako and lost the plot about what I should be trying to make and shelved the idea. The Friekorps troops I was going to use I turned into civilians and were the subject of another blog.