This represents two boxes of Zvezda's Infantry of Peter the Great. You'll no doubt notice a paltry number of pikes for an army that continued to use them longer than their European counterparts. By the way, the Swedish box has the same issue.
So, for now my units will be very unhistorical without any pikes at all - save one unit that will be made of 50% pikes, also unhistorical.
I'm torn on picking up some Irregular Miniatures 25mm pikes (the Irregular Minis seem to play nice with Zvezda), the Strelets box with tons of pikes (although the figures look chunky compared to Zvezda), or buy more Zvezda boxes.
For now, I'm not worrying about it - I'll wait (so I tell myself) until I figure out whether or not it bothers me in an actual game. Which, given that I have the same number of Swedes to paint, plus horse and gun for both sides, won't be for some time yet.
Zvezda figs are ace and that is a good job on them. Painted the Swedes among my very first minis.
ReplyDeleteThanks, András. I do love the Zvezda figs - which is a good thing, as I have so many more boxes of them to paint!
DeleteVery nice work. Just curious, why GNW? Maybe you touched on this in an earlier post, but I can't remember.
ReplyDeleteHi Chris,
DeleteI'm not sure I've ever mentioned why I'm interested in the GNW.
My first exposure to it was a few years ago on Bluebear Jeff's Saxe-Bearstein blog (http://saxe-bearstein.blogspot.com/). Before that, I had never heard of it - which, of course, resulted in a mad dash to Wikipedia.
Between Jeff's figures and my inexplicable fascination with Russia (I'm not Russian, not even a little bit. I can only assume that it has to do with the growing up during the Reagan - Gorbachev years), I was hooked and the idea percolated for several years. It always seemed something beyond my ability - most specifically, my attention span.
When I finally decided I wanted to make the commitment and try my hand at a "big" game (for me, as most of my forces number 10-20 figures), it seemed like a good fit.
Yeah, it's a mystery as to why there are so few pikes in these sets. I converted some of the kneeling figures to pikemen by cutting out their muskets; the scale is small enough that a lot of the surgical scars are covered up by a decent paint job (which all of yours have anyway, incidentally!) The Strelets figs actually don't look too bad next to the Zvezdas; again, a good paint job does wonders. For what it's worth, both sides had almost entirely phased out pikes by about 1715, so the lack of enough pikes is not as bad as it might seem.
ReplyDeleteMy response to the other Chris's question as to why the GNW, for me it was entirely the quality of the Zvezda figs. I had bought a few boxes for the WSS in Spain, but they looked so nice that I couldn't help myself. Not that I needed much persuasion.
Chris J.
Thanks, Chris!
DeleteYou've convinced me to give the Strelets figures a try. Worst case, I sequester them to their own units.