Since my last post about two or three weeks ago, I have been painting some more cossacks to get the army closer to completion. The painting was focused on completing a couple of artillery pieces and doing the cossack dismounted cavalry. I have now painted virtually all of the cossack figures that I have, so I also placed and order with The Assault Group for two cossack peasant hordes and some Gulay Gorods (walking fort sections).
The cossacks will have a number of artillery pieces. Each of the ten war wagons has a small cannon attached. However, I also wanted some larger artillery pieces. The cossack artillery was typically made up of captured Polish ordinance. I therefore decided to use two of the SteelFist artillery pieces that I had recently bought – these come with two barrels, a French barrel and an Imperial barrel. I selected the Imperial barrels.
For the artillery crew I used TAG figures. I still need to decorate the bases a bit more with a selection of grass tufts. I may also add a few wooden barrels and miscellaneous items to the scene.
The cannons were painted with brass barrels and natural steel trim using Vallejo paints. The brass was washed with a Vallejo sepia wash and the natural steel was washed with a black wash. I also used the black wash on the end of the barrel and around the firing port. I then used three different rust colored powders on the steel parts, but only very lightly as I wanted the guns to be weathered but still in good condition.
The cavalry units of the cossacks often fought dismounted as they were no match for the more organized Polish cavalry. My groups of cossack cavalry are each made up of two skirmish bases of four figures each for a total of eight figures. For shot infantry I typically represent small units by eight figures and standard units with twelve figures. I decided to represent the cossack dismounted cavalry unit with a skirmish base of twelve figures. The eight mounted figures and twelve dismounted figures tend to look right on the table – the purist may ask how can you go from eight to twelve figures, but since they are never on the table at the same time, I don’t think that it is a problem.
Behind each unit of cossack dismounted cavalry I have placed a horse-holder base with three horses. I had intended to use one horse-holder base behind each group of twelve infantry to indicate that they are the dismounted cavalry. After seeing how they look, I now plan to have two such bases behind each unit. I have placed an order with TAG to get the extra horses and figures.
I am looking forward to the arrival of my new order from TAG. I plan to paint two peasant horde groups each with about 30 figures. These peasants will be armed with a mixture of farm implements. I hope to have the cossack army completed sometime in September, I will then move on to the Polish army to finish the project.