Category: Huns

During the Covid lock-down the painting of the lead pile continues with some work on the Poles and Tatars. I have finally finished the entire Tatar force of 98 figures. For the cossack uprising project I have also completed 24 Polish Pancerni.

First off here is a photo of the 3 units of 8 Pancerni. The figures are all from The Assault Group. I decided to keep them fairly uniform in contrast to the Cossacks and Tatars that they will be facing. I like the way that they turned out with all of the flags and pennants.

To accompany the Pancerni, I will be fielding a unit of winged hussars, a unit of Reiters, five units of noble levy and three to four units of Polish Cossacks.

The photo above shows the Pancerni facing off against the Tatar horde. They are a little outnumbered at the moment so I hope to get some more figures painted over the coming weeks.

The next photo shows the size of the Tatar horde. It took me quite a while to paint this entire Tatar army. The figures are Steppe Nobles from Aventine Miniatures and the horses are from the Assault Group. I will now be taking a short break from painting Poles and Tatars and moving on to paint some mounted and foot cossacks, hopefully the war wagons will arrive soon.

The Tatar figures are quite versatile. I am also using them as Huns in a small 450AD army that I have put together (280 points in Hail Caesar rules). During lock-down I also completed a couple of Frank War-bands and a small group of archers to support them. The Franks are all from War-games Foundry. It is nice to have an ancients army without having to do to much work over and above the painting of the Tatars that I did for the Cossack uprising project. I plan to take on a club member’s late period Roman army once normal gaming resumes.

I have been painting my Italian Wars project for the best part of two years. I still have a number of units that I am in the process of painting for the Battle of Bicocca, but I decided that I need to work on one of my other projects to keep me sane during the quarantine. The project that I chose was the Khmelnytsky Cossack Uprising of 1648 and in particular, the 1651 Battle of Berestechko.

In this post I will give an overview of the scope of the project and show some photos of some of the first units off the paint bench. The main protagonists of the Khmelnytsky Cossack Uprising were the Zaporozhian Cossacks, with their Tatar allies against the Polish forces.

The first units off my paint bench will represent the Tatars. I have chosen the figures as they are typical Steppe cavalry and will be able to be used in games to represent anything from 400 AD Huns, Tatars allying with the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century, to Tatar in the Khmelnytsky Uprising. When representing early Tatar, I will eventually add some Tatar flags and when representing 17th Century Tatar, I will eventually add a few muskets.

So far I have painted 56 of these Steppe Cavalry figures. Here are a few photos of the growing horde.

The figures are Aventine Miniatures Steppe Cavalry. When I chose the figures I bought some samples from Footsore, Gripping Beast and Aventine. My personal preference was for the Aventine figures as they came with a lot of attachments to personalize the figures. However, the Aventine horses did not suit my personal tastes, so I decided to use horses from the Assault Group. Luckily Aventine sell the riders without horses and The Assault Group sell the horses without riders. The Aventine figures fit perfectly on the Assault Group horses.

My plan for the Battle of Berestechko is to have the following figures:

Polish:

1 Group of 8 winged Hussars

3 Groups of 8 Pancerni

10 Groups of 8 Noble Levy Cavalry (Pospolite Riszenie)

2 Groups of 16 Haiduk Infantry

Cossack/Tatars

12 Groups of 8 Mounted Tatars

5 Groups of 8 Mounted Cossacks

4 Groups of 24 Cossack Infantry.

For the Pancerni, Haiduks and cossacks I will be using figures from the Assault Group. For the Winged Hussars I will using Warlord figures. This leaves the large group of Polish levy noble cavalry which no-one makes in 28mm. For this figures I plan to use a mixed selection from the Assault Group ranges. I will use a combination of Cossacks, Hungarian light Hussars, Hungarian light horse and Ottoman Akinjis. The reason for the selection is that some of these nobles would have worn clothing similar to the cossacks, but their style was also influenced by the Hungarians and Ottomans of the period often with feathers in their hats. this mixture should allow me to represent the levy noble cavalry.

I will also need some wagons for both sides to make the defended positions.

Next up on the paint bench are 40 mounted cossacks.