From SylvainR: Tray 4 - 6mm WW2 Cossacks (part 1 of 3) (129 points)

Why am I painting 6mm WW2 Cossacks?  There are 2 reasons.

I am currently working on the early allies armies of WW2: Norwegian, Dutch, Greek, Belgian and Polish. My plan was to use the French army as proxy and then add whatever heavy weapons and vehicles would be needed. Of course, no Polish army would be complete without cavalry, but it's a lot of work to paint a whole battalion, even (especially?) in 6mm. To save me some work, I decided that I would create only one cavalry battalion for the Axis (coming later in 2024) and only one cavalry battalion for the allies, and the one allies cavalry unit that is most commonly known to operate during WW2 would be the Cossacks. Thus, I am painting this soviet unit now so I can use it as a proxy for Polish Cavalry.

The second reason is because among the 6mm armies I have to paint, there was already a good amount of unpainted Cossacks, and this happened to be a project I abandoned about 40 years ago. Let me explain. In the mid 80s, I was introduced to a group of people who were playing 6mm WW2 "micro-armor" as we used to call it. My friend MarcV and I paired up to build a Soviet army and we shared the cost and the painting. After a few years, the group started to play 6mm Modern, and we started new armies. Since we were not playing WW2 "anymore", MarcV and I gifted our Soviet army to RobertR. The last project I was working on, before giving away that army, was a company of Cossacks. A couple of years ago, RobertR, who still had my Soviet army, offered to give me all his 6mm WW2 miniatures and scenery, among which I found my Cossacks, still unpainted after nearly 40 years. Talk about an overdue project!

Before I present the tray, I want to say a few words about the scale. For that purpose, I chose cavalry models at 3 different scales but mounted on bases of the exact same size. Below, you have a stand of WW2 Cossacks at 6mm in front of "massive" 15mm riders, WW2 Cossacks as well. You can see there is still room for good details at 15mm, like the red line on the blue pants, or the cross on top the Ushanka hats. At 6mm, I don't have the patience to do that, so I paint more in an "impressionist" manner. Here's a spot of blue, that's for the pants. Here's some beige for the hands, etc. You can see that the 6mm minis look a bit fuzzier while the 15mm ones look a lot crispier.

In the picture below, 6mm horses are trying to keep up with a colossal 28mm destrier. This is to show that, to me, there is a lot more "room" on the base to be filled at 6mm, to make it look a bit realistic. Since the area covered in real life would be a lot bigger with the 6mm, I try to make the terrain more varied with different sizes of rocks, different colors of grass and a variety of bushes. For the Cossacks, I tried to reproduce grassland/steppe type of terrain with mostly dried grass. I also want the base to look interesting and varied between squads, so I apply the patches of grasses as if it was a camo pattern. It's fun and I'm very happy with the result.

Now on to tray number 4! Below, you can see 2 companies of Cossacks. There will be more in the next 2 weeks, since this is part 1 of 3.

First, a family picture of one of the 2 companies. For 6mm WW2 foot infantry, I usually put 9 men per base, but here I decided to use only 7 horses. Even if the base is twice as big, I wanted to leave enough room between the riders to give the feeling that they are galloping (toward victory, for sure). I also wanted to test what "double flocking" the base would look like, as I explained earlier. The miniatures are a mix of models from H&R WW2 Russian cavalry, H&R WW2 Cossack cavalry and GHQ WW2 Cossack cavalry. Each pack has only one pose, but mixing them works great for variety. GHQ's horses are slightly smaller, but not by that much and the difference is hardly noticeable. As usual, the details on GHQ's miniatures details are better defined and easier to paint. Each pack came with pack horses and I mixed them with the cavalrymen for more variety.

In this close up, you can see that I used two different kinds of material on the bases: burnt grass fine turf and harvest gold static grass flock, both products from Woodland Scenics. When I was working on my French army bases, I mixed turf and flock together, but it did not look anything special. This time, I decided to apply each one at a time and I'm very happy with the result. It looks more natural. I also make sure to let some small rocks and dirt peak through the grass.

Here is a close up on a company HQ with a pack horse. The captain is showing the direction with his saber. Even if there are fewer miniatures on the base, I opted for a large one, for consistency.

Each company of Cossacks would have a detachment of anti-tank rifles. Here they are in action, hiding in tall grass, forgetting that their supply horse is a deadly give-away.

Points claimed:

18 foot troops at 1/2 point each = 9

120 mounted at 1 points each = 120 points

Total = 129 points

This will also count towards the "Really Little Guys" duel.

Thanks for reading!

Cracking work here on your little guys, Sylvain! I like the groundwork. Woodland Scenics products have always been good to me as well. Kudos to you for getting back at this project after literally decades. Great production and looking forward to more!

129 points for you!

Dallas