Learning about the GNW while painting

[wolfkarl]

Those are turning out terrific! I can see way people like 6mm, single base units are nice and handy and they look great. I love the Swedish cavalry bases, very representative.

[jambo1]

Cavalry are very good! Love the way they are based, really look top notch.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@wolfkarl: heyhey. Yeah, I think for depicting battles, especially from 1700 on, 6mm is a great choice of minis. Easy to store, easy to paint, easy to transport, take up next to no space (same with the terrain), you can do actually large battles which also LOOK like large battles, the minis are rather inexpensive, you can show actual formations, ...

@jambo1: Cheers!


Right, tiny changes about the flags. Each base now gets a flag of the kingdom as well as a regimental flag. I got mosrt of the infos on the flag, but still had to do a little extra research (and a little freehanding on one of the flags).



The cornets (the little flags the cavalry got) are painted now as well. Next step is getting everything based. In the mean time I also prepared and primed the Russian army.

[DintheDin]

I would like to suggest:
Lars-Eric Höglund, The Great Northern War, 1700-1721, Colours and Uniforms Volumes I and II

https://books.google.gr/books?id=NPlQNAAACAAJ&dq=Ake+Sallnas&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_4MCbhPHYAhXD3SwKHWYjCKIQ6AEILjAB

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@DintheDin: Thanks for the suggestion! Keep'em coming!


Has anyone of you read the GNW Compendium? I hear it's basically the standard work to get into the period.


Right, this is what the Swedes look like now:

original size image: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2018_01/5a69538b575ba_swwip4.jpg.c33596ae7d6a2ab61d88ddec2118f74e.jpg

A few bits are still left to fix. Basing will be done on all the bases at once right in the end, along with the bases on the Russians. Speaking of whom, here they are:


original size image: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2018_01/5a6953265bb4f_ruwip1.jpg.578868009e489c3caea59cdf190c5796.jpg

[jambo1]

The Swedes look brilliant! Great looking army.

[The Grim Mariner]

Looking good.

The GNW Compendium is an excellent resource and full of information. 

[WFGamers]

Has anyone of you read the GNW Compendium? I hear it's basically the standard work to get into the period.

The GNW Compendium is a series of articles by various people. Some of the articles are excellent but some are awful, and of course many in between. Also there tends to be a single article on every subject. So relatively minor things get roughly the same coverage as major things.

That said overall it is probably the best overall book on the war available at the moment in English.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@jambo1: Cheers!

@Grim Mariner: Yar, that's what I hear. These armies may or may not go to one of the contributors to that tome... 

@WFGamers: Judging from some books I read which seem to follow a similar format I assume it's not quite a 'full history', but instead sheds light on specific aspects of the war.


Hooray for Russian Infantry!


full size image: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2018_01/5a6a95942c9a1_ruwip2.jpg.8d6a969127c59dc798ad295587948cb6.jpg

I sat now for a while, trying to think of a better opening to this post, but I just couldn't. I blame the hour, antibiotics and painkillers (got a tooth thing).



Anyway, above you can see that I started working on the Russian infantry regiments. Over the course of the Great Northern War the Russian army under Peter I. the Great, along with most of the empire, got westernized. This was a long and painful process, with lots of uprisings and counter-plotting involved. However, the most striking effects the whole Westernization plan had on the army. In 1700 at the battle at Varna (that thing at which the Russians were beaten horribly by a much smaller Swedish army) troops still wore distinctively 'Eastern' outfits (to go along with their drill and training).
 



Felt-laced hats and a long coat of polish/russian/hungarian cut. I think the general term for the outfits was "Hungarian", but it may very well be a Western thing to call them that. I assume that in Eastern Europe it was just called 'outfit'.

In the years between that and Charles XII.'s campaign against  Russia the Tsar didn't only change the army in terms of training, but also in terms of looks.


full size image: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2018_01/c301af1278140844702faf6feeba1b63.jpg.f0989cdc2addf7b395b28d4d51188621.jpg

For a very interesting and detailled look at the changes to a Western appearance have a look at this article: http://peter.petrobrigada.ru/unif/project3342/page23296.html


A few words on the figures above: Russian regiments at that time didn't have a completely common uniform. Within a regiment uniforms were the same, but colours differed between regiments. Among other reasons it was just not possible to produce like 50,000 identical uniforms just like that. While it was possible to send out sewing templates and goals for the material quality to meet, dying all of them the same was was the biggest problem at a time at which dyes were made from natural resources. There was a tendency to wear dark green overcoats with red turnbacks, cuffs and collars and Peter the Great's long term plan was to establish that as his empire's army's uniform. Mostly because at the time no other major power had already taken Green for their national uniform.

Sources for Russian uniforms of the early 18th century are sketchy (much more so than on the Swedish side), so we have to mainly rely on eye witness accounts of their enemies or international observers. Russian archives in which such sources were stored of course had often fallen victim to Germans, French, rebels, civil wars, communists, looters and other people (often the same people taking on several of the roles listed here). What we do know is the preferrence of the dark green with red details and some of the other colours used on other regiments. Details on flags are problematic as well.
 

A few variants

Lace trimmings on the tricorns were also much less common than on the Swedish uniforms (because they're expensive and the first thing you'll get rid of when you have to cut costs due to a complete restructuring of your army and the rest of the state). However, it does look cool, and most of what you see of the minis is the tricorns, so I'll paint them on at least a few of the regiments. On some, like the two guard regiments, we know that they had lace trims in white and if they were present it seems like they were in white. Apart from that I went with colour schemes to represent the findings of my superficial research: More than half the regiments wear variants of green coats and red detailling. Some regiments wear red uniforms with green details and then there are a few odd ones out: One with white coats, one with dark blue coats, one with grey coats, and one with mid-blue coats (on one of the guard regiments. We know that these guys wore the mid-blue with red at least at a parade aroun 1704), all with red details. I avoided the use of yellow in general because the Swedes got plenty of that and the belts will be buff/sand yellow anyway. Oh, and one more thing - the regiments changed their uniform colours every few years (mostly depending on what was available). So it's really a bit of a chaotic mess to 'get the colours right'.

As I mentioned above, the Russian army, just like the Swedes at the time (and pretty much nobody else) used Pikes. The Russian army used them a bit less than their adversaries in the war (only 25% of each battalion carried pikes, on the Swedish army it was a whopping third of the men). One of the main differences between the deployment of these armies was that Grenadier companies in the Russian army were removed from their regiments and combined into hard-hitting, shocktroop-like Grenadier battalions.
 

A bit off-topic, but a thing I notice more and more lately - pinterest is getting on my nerves. Majorly. I do quite a lot of research using google image search. By now pretty much the first 300.000 hits are useless reposts on Pinterests with NO additional information of what's shown at all. Very, very annoying.


On a more positive note: Tomorrow we'll play Sellswords&Spellslingers!



It's Ganesha Games' new cooperative fantasy miniatures game. Very, very keen on playing that one. I assume it's heavily based on Rogue Stars (from the same author), which itself of course heirs from the excellent Song of Blades and Heroes. So that should be cool. 

[WFGamers]

@WFGamers: Judging from some books I read which seem to follow a similar format I assume it's not quite a 'full history', but instead sheds light on specific aspects of the war.
 

Yes indeed but unfortunately it also repeats many of the same mistakes of others. Which in turn has led to many errors in things like your posts and most wargames rules. Your posts are nice but I am afraid contain many 'problems'. But like your posts the Compendium should increase knowledge about this fascinating war.

The good news is that there are some better books around and more on the way. They tend to be on single aspects of the war like a particular army, battle or campaign rather than on the whole war. Hopefully they are/will help give a better picture of the war.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Which in turn has led to many errors in things like your posts and most wargames rules.

Like what?

I'm sure that it's in the spirit of this thread if you could share a bit of these findings here.

[jazbo]

Very nice work.  Any GNW project gets my vote.

I would also like to know what all the errors in the OP's info are.  I can see a few things, but am curious....

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Very nice work.  Any GNW project gets my vote.

I would also like to know what all the errors in the OP's info are.  I can see a few things, but am curious....

Like what?

I'm sure that it's in the spirit of this thread if you could share a bit of these findings here. 


Thanks for the compliment. I'm aware that this is a very abbreviated version of what I read and of course it's going to be faulty. And it's perfectly cool to correct me on stuff I get wrong, but I fail to see the point of pointing out that things are wrong without correcting them.

[Ogrob]

Just a quick note, you should be able to use the search term -pinterest to remove those hits.

[jazbo]

Hi

Can't remember all, but I thought that the Swedish foot were in four ranks. You mention two, and a single fire and charge.

I understand it as the first two ranks gave fire at around fifty yards, then an advance, then the the two rear ranks gave fire, then all would charge.

Like what?

I'm sure that it's in the spirit of this thread if you could share a bit of these findings here. 


Thanks for the compliment. I'm aware that this is a very abbreviated version of what I read and of course it's going to be faulty. And it's perfectly cool to correct me on stuff I get wrong, but I fail to see the point of pointing out that things are wrong without correcting them.