17th century Polish project

[Doom Beard 78]

 a few more casualty markers and a cossack priest

[WillPhillips]

Cossack priest on horseback? That's pretty awesome!

[Doom Beard 78]

Went rummaging through the lead pile and found the last 6 Krakow Militia, plus 6 assorted infantry that I will pass off as Cossacks.   Plus something which could be the start of a new project

[Friends of General Haig]

More great looking figures! 👍

Those militia look very smart.

Ottomans?  I think this is where I will be heading next once my Poles are ‘done’ (obviously no army is ever finished really  ).

[Doom Beard 78]

Ihave a game scheduled for the may bank holiday of By Fire and Sword - so much will depend on how I feel about that game.  If I like the game then perhaps an Ottoman army could be on the horizon.  or perhaps, more likley, I may just collect some Cossack Spear as I am rather short of them

[pete]

Tidy looking units.

Upload to the TAG Gallery?
https://theassaultgroup.co.uk/my-account/user-gallery/?ug-gallery=upload-photo

[Doom Beard 78]

I played By Fire and Sword yesterday but adapted for 28mm.

For those unfamiliar with it; By Fire and Sword is a 15mm scale game which uses element based troops, it features command counters and rules by which commanders have a set number of command points with which to change orders. Unless orders are changed a unit must fulfil its orders so that a unit on move or defend orders can not charge or counter charge.  The rules are very detailed with lots of nuances so they take a little while to learn.  I am not sure how figures are based in 15mm- my guess is that it uses the standard 40mm x10mm/20mm frontages I see for the DBX family and its derivative systems.  Given by own basing, I settled on 80x50 for cavalry and 60x20 for infantry.  Given that the frontages of the cavalry have doubled  while the depths have increased by 1.5 compared with the 15mm system I wondered how this would impact on the manoeuvre given that the rules require you to account for wheeling, turning, increasing/decreasing frontages etc.  However, neither me nor my opponent are completive or pedantic and so this was not an issue.

Movement rates for infantry are 10 to 15cm and for cavalry they are 20-40cm. These actually look Ok for 28mm being 4-6" for foot and 8-16" for cavalry. Which were about the movement rates used by the warhammer system.  Shooting ranges are typically 15cm ( for effective range) and 25-35 cm being the long range for most hand firearms ( the system distinguishes a number of different missile weapons)  Playing these straight as they are means that the game does not descended into a long range firefight and means that cavalry are a real threat to missile infantry .

Shooting is resolved as follows
1) determine range
2) determine how many stands can shot
3) each unit has a number of shooting dice, this is typically 2 although some cavalry have just 1 dice
4) you then need to roll less than or equal to the units skill level on a D10 to score a hit- units have typically skill levels of 3, 4,  or 5.
5) target then gets an armour save to
6) if the target suffers enough wounds to lose a stand (  usually 3) than they test for morale.

Colonel Wladowski's Haiduks comprise 6 stands. they are veterans shooting in the open at long range. They roll 12 dice requiring a "5".  However , as the shooting is at long range successful hits are re-rolled. So The Haiduks score 6 hots and re roll those down to 3.  The opponent is a unit of  Reiter with armour 4 , so they have to roll less than 4 to survive. if the shooting was at short range, there would be save modifier based on the firearm ( in this case 2)

My initial concern was that some of the distances in the game would have to change e.g the command radius for commanders and we found that these need to double ( i.e from 20cm to 40cm to regimental commanders) otherwise changing orders for units can become virtually impossible.

Played Poles v Cossacks and found that Cossacks are a tricky army to use.  I had a lot more missile infantry than my opponent so hoped to blast away with focussed firepower in the centre . However, the dice had other ideas. 

As I am suffering from pike fatigue I think that the Ottomans would be the logical paired army to collect

All in all enjoyed the game and figure that another 2 or 3 games are needed to get to grips. Some things which came as a surprise were that the Cossack cavalry are typically equipped with muskets and spears however, a musket cannot be used while mounted and the Cossacks are not designed for shock charges , so they are in effect dragoons rather than skirmish cavalry .  Also, we found it herd to work out of they could evade from a charge and in the end, so that we could see how melee worked we decided to see what would happen in they got charged by Panicerni.  It was a blood bath with the Paniceni punching through them with ease.

My first historical game in maybe 3 years and the first time I got to use the Cossack foot ; I keep a games journal and looking through it I see that the Cossack foot were painted in 2009!!

[wkeyser]

Hi i have played quite a bit of By Fire and Sword, have both a Cossack army, an Imperial army and Tartar.

I would not change the command distance!  it is the heart of the game and the command decisions you have to make about orders and where you commander is placed is a crucial.

Once a unit has an order it continues with that order until something changes for it, ie loss of combat etc. So planning your orders is important. If you increase the command distance as you suggest then that part of the game gets just too easy. You also change the dynamics of buying commanders if your commander can reach every thing with his range then extra commanders are not so important.

I use douple deep bases for my infantry as I love the look of the large Cossack units that comes from this.

DSC_0467 by William Keyser, on Flickr

And Wagons of death !!!

DSC_0470 by William Keyser, on Flickr

And of course how can you play this game without a Polish contigent. Totantanz Winged hussars!

DSC_0472 by William Keyser, on Flickr

[Friends of General Haig]

Thanks for the review and thoughts, Doom Beard and Wkeyser.  Two nice looking battles and sets of armies 👍. 

[Doom Beard 78]

Planning another game soon, possibly on a 12" table. Lithuanians v Poles.

I am wondering  how effective are winged hussars ; a unit of 4 stands costs 4 fp  putting that in context  for 5 FP you gt 12 stands of cossack style cavalry

[wkeyser]

They are very effective, however, take a look at the army lists that will give you a good idea of what you need with them and they are only available in larger forces. You could try Gosiewske Foray it has and interesting selection. The problem is that you end up with so few units vrs your opponent.

The game is designed by Poles and they are the supper army in the army lists!  But the structure of the scenario victory conditions makes it often interesting battles.

[Doom Beard 78]

The army lists I have are Republic in Flame which is set at regimental level.  I am looking at doing around 12-15 fps .

This weekend seemed like a good weekend to paint Sipahis.

[Hu Rhu]

Very nice painting on those ottomans. 

[Doom Beard 78]

I ought to have taken a photo with some proper lighting. 3 down another 12 to go.

[Doom Beard 78]

better pictures on my painting desk