First of the Russian Line

It's the last day of my holiday and I managed to finish of the first of my Russian SYW Line infantry units, the Azovskiy Rgt. 

Here's them before they were topped off with the flags. They are Savoia Infantry Marching from Crann Tara's range and are intended as generic figures, hence my use of them in my Russian Army for HOW. 

They are lovely figures, very well animated as are all of the CT figures. I recommend them. 

The flags are copied from Kronoscaf, the excellent SYW website and I can quickly copy, paste and fettle them up to flags, adding a little paint here and there just to lift the colour sometimes, at least at the edges, in this case with gold paint. The flags are mounted on brass tubes, meaning I can swap flags, if I want to, simply by lifting the flag off the wire pole. 

I aim to have a further two units of line infantry for the demo game at Kirriemuir and a total of 6 line units for my army. As they're all in green and red I will be breaking the monotony a bit by interspacing my other units, officers next and after the next one, some cavalry.

Serbskiy Hussars

Some more blue to contrast with my red Russians. The mounted version of the Serbskiy Hussars. I've still to flock the base, and decide what pennant to give them - possibly a white, blue and red streamer with St Andrew icon in the corner as they didn't carry flags.

The base is designed to represent a loose cloud formation. These guys are not very disciplined or organised at all, even compared with other nations Hussars. The figures are mounted individually too, for skirmish gaming, just like the Cossacks.

Russian Artillery Crew, Grenadiers and Cossacks

It's been a busy month! However I have some goodies which have all arrived within a few days of each other. A sizeable portion of my Russian SYW army is now resident on my pairing desk. A unit of infantry should be completed today and a further unit lies waiting. My Grenadiers arrived - Wargames Foundry bought off eBay and my Cossacks eventually showed up from The Assault Group. Only a month late - Gregorian Calendar perhaps!. Finally a box arrived from the States with 4 unicorns and some Crew - my guns from Fife and Drum. (Thanks Jim!!)

A few different manufacturers there - but a bit of variety didn't hurt anyone did it? 

Let's see.... 

Fife and Drum Russian Artillery 

Lovely sculpting, clean castings and nice simple poses. I like these a lot. 

Compared to the Ingo Artillery -

They're smaller but better sculpted and the poses are similar for these chappies, but not the rest of the  Ingo crew who suffer from odd arm and hand positions - if caught them swinging the sponge and porte fire around like in an action that I'd give them a thick ear! 

I'm tempted just to use the F&D figs as I have some labourers who can lend a hand with the spare tool which come in the pack.

The guns are 12llb Unicorns - lovely solid castings and I like the open box of roundshot. Nice touch.

Next up the Grenadiers. 

I'd describe these as a little well fed and rounded, but plenty fierce character. Height ways they are pretty close to Ingo's Infantry. Sadly I wasn't a fan of the Ingo's Grenadier figures. Some of them are in coats and I wanted the unit in summer uniform and again the poses are a little limited.

Finally the Cossacks.

Nice figures, smallish perhaps but well posed and animated. The horses.....hmm. Not so pleased with these. I might hunt around and see what I can come up with from my spares box.  Overall though they are nice and will make an interesting bunch of baggage botherers for my games.   They'll be mounted on my round skirmish base as individual figures so I can use them