From KristoferD: Mission Accomplished

Well that was an eventful three months to say the least. Thank you for this amazing experience, Curt and Sanders in particular, but also all the rest of you who have contributed in some way or form.

As we were getting close to the end of February I was very confindent in meeting my target and then as usual, life happened. Workload, a 1:1 painting project in one of the childrens' rooms and other topics conspired to keep me away from the brushes. Such plans I had for Cossacks and terrain, but it had to go in favour of finishing the Swedes for the Krakow tournament. Despite having started in December I was still doing bases last Thursday night before getting on the plane in the morning. I had intended to make a final post, since I managed to finish a few more pieces to a reasonable standard (some bases still need dandelions), but then I realized that I hadn't planned how to pack everything and that stole away the last moments of time I had before leaving. In the end everything worked out very well, and I could simply put the miniatures back in the original packaging. Excellent work there Wargamer Poland!

The tournament was an absolute blast! And I say this despite the fact that I finished third to last. I was placed just over two players who lost all their games since I at least managed one draw. I have much to learn, but I will point out that I took out a unit of Winged Hussars by charging them in the flank in one game, so at least there is that. You have to take the small victories when you get them. My opponent advised me that it would have been better to withdraw a unit later in the game to preserve it, and then added: "But you're [clearly] a cossack." I will bear that as a badge of honour coming from a Pole.

The game has a very vibrant scene in Poland, and everybody I talked to was extremely friendly and welcoming. The terrain was amazing and the support from sponsors and the community is mindblowing. Everybody in attendance got a fan list for Polish volunteers with historical background and rules. It looks like it plays great. I had more luck than in my games in the raffle at end of it and won unit of Musketeers. If you ever have the chance to go to Poland and play By Fire and Sword, take it! 10 out of 10 kopis.

One of the friends I travelled with has family in the area so we spent a lazy Monday strolling around Krakow and getting showed the sites including Wavel Castle with a beautiful collection of weapons and armour from the appropriate period. A perfect ending to a perfect trip. Sadly most of my pictures are zoomed in on details for later reference or contain people whose consent I don't have to post online, but here is at least a picture of the city gate in Krakow. I hope I made sure the driver is not identifiable by blacking out them and the plates.

So, onto achievements. Below you'll find a group picture of my official tally. It might be slightly of the mark, but I'm still very happy with the achievement, safe in the knowledge that it still worked out to go to Poland. It's been a wild ride to partake in the challenge and try to have something to show every week until I got derailed, but the end result is definitely worth it.

I also realize that I forgot to mention my charity contribution. I have made monthly contributions to Oxfam to help them with their work to fight world hunger. With that being said I think we have covered it all and I will leave you with a picture of my semi-completed stuff and a solemn promise that they'll have flowers added so they're finished imminently. There's a unit of Swedish National cavalry, a unit of National infantry with a regimental gun, and a new command stand featuring field marshal Douglas, a Scotsman in Swedish service. I hope to be back for more in the future. Until next time, thanks for reading.

From KristoferD: Baptism of Fire (66 points)

Hello again dear enjoyers of painting challenges and curiosities in miniature,

This is a special week because when you're reading this my Swedish force have most likely experienced their baptism of fire. I have managed to complete the last parts of a legal Swedish Field Task Force for By Fire and Sword. First up, the final officer stand.

The Swedish officers of the Deluge were a mix of noblemen and professionals. Many of them were both. The higher ranks would have had extensive experience from the Thirty Years War, including the king himself, Charles X Gustavus

The Swedish population of the 17th century was quite small compared to other regional powers. During the period of the Swedish Empire the constant wars became quite impopular among the nobility who were expected to send their sons to serve as officers. While some gained great success and riches, a lot of them undoubtedly lost their lives in foreign wars far from home. Thus put a strain on the not too numerous noble families back home. I believe this served to build an opinion on the homefront to further a more cautious foreign policy. After the humiliating defeat in the Great Northern War the doves of the "Caps" party, Mössorna, must have had a lot of good arguments against costly wars. Their hawkish opposition, the "Hats" or Hattarna seem to have had less influence given that the era is referred to as the Age of Liberty in Swedish history. Despite a few wars it was a mostly peaceful period with progress in civil rights and parliamentary reform. The Age of Liberty ended with a coup d'état led by the king Gustav III who was quite the character, in the literal sense, but we're over a century after the Deluge now so I'm getting off topic. Perhaps I'll cover the 18th century in the next challenge? We shall see.

Back to the heyday of the Swedish Empire. The final piece that was missing from my little collection is some dragoons.

17th century dragoons were mounted infantry. They were thus often equipped and organised as infantry, though these models are in fact wearing riding boots like the cavalry of their contemporaries. This is however historically correct to my understanding as the military fashion changed towards the latter part of the period.

Dragoons could and would be used in rough ground with the advantage of becoming less vulnerable to enemy cavalry. This is something I tried to incorporate in my basing to make them stand out a little extra on the table. However, I limited myself to some shrubs as I believe a lot of the campaigns in the Deluge were fought over open country.

Sorry about the lack of focus on the last picture. It's a challenge to not hold the camera too close to the miniatures. In any case, thanks for reading and following along. I hope to bring great news of victory next week.

As for the points:
12 * 4 = 48 points for the 15mm cavalry
9 * 2 = 18 points for the 15mm infantry
Coming to a total of 66 points. 

Kristofer, your 17th Century project keeps on flabbergasting me with it's steadfast quality and your inventiveness regarding sabot-bases. What a great idea to place the mounted- and dismounted figures on the same base but changing the front rank to show what formation they are in! Awesome stuff indeed!

 Cheers Sander  

 

From KristoferD: Veteran Artillery (20 points)

Hello fellow challengers and good people of the Internet!

I've had a bit of a busy week with family and work commitments keeping me from the brushes. Among other things I had to dig through a lot of boxes looking for documents from a long time ago. It'll work out well in the end, but it is annoying in the meantime. But enough complaining, I did manage to get quite far along with what will now be next week's shiny new unit, and I did push myself to finish a small unit of light artillery.

The Swedish army of the 17th century had a lot of artillery. Gunners were trained to fire in various ways to leverage the power of their weapons. Flat trajectories over open ground could cause havoc by bouncing cannon balls among the densely packed ranks of foot and horse that many armies of the time operated in. Dispersing the formations led to increased vulnerability against cavalry creating a nasty version of rock-paper-scissors. At the same time, the Polish-Lithuanian cavalry was well trained and knew how to maneuver in open formation, only forming dense ranks at the last moment of a charge, diminishing the power of gunnery and musketry. By Fire and Sword being a Polish game, this tactic is of course represented in the game for added historical flavour. They are however missing a special rule for artillery shooting against targets in woods. Some 17th century gunners were trained to fire at the trees instead of the men. The idea was that tree trunks would explode in lethal splinters much like cannon balls hitting a wooden ship. Nasty stuff, no doubt. Perhaps I'll play around with some ideas of house rules for this.

Part of why I enjoy gaming the 17th century is the transitional side of things. It's clear that a lot of very intelligent people (as well as some less so) threw everything they had at trying to figure out how to fit field artillery and muskets into warfare. The eponymous pike of the wargamer's "Pike and Shot" era started the 17th century as a necessity of western arms and was largely gone by the end of the century. At the same time, this was a pre-industrial era, and while efforts were made to standardise production, the level of manufacturing technology still resulted in a plethora of different calibres and designs of guns. Wargamer has taken this to heart, and the artillery unit packs come with different casts for the guns in another nice nod to historical conditions.

Finally I leave you with an action shot of my new unit taking aim at a distant unit of Cossack infantry, just to throw all the carefully aligned history out the window. Or maybe not, given how often soldiers switched sides during this period of history. But this specific unit of my collection will be Swedish. At least for now.

And the points tally:
2 x 3 x 2 points = 12 points for the infantry sized gun crews
2 x 4 points = 8 points for the two guns
Resulting in a total of 20 points this week.

Kristofer we are all very familiar with "real life"getting in the way of what really matters: painting miniatures! That said you have managed to turn out some really excellent gun crews indeed! Setting guns and crews up in the way you did, with great and realistic poses and in a scenic basing that ties them in with the rest of the army, really enhances the overall look. Awesome work!

Cheers Sander 

From KristoferD: Armoured Mercenary Reiters (72 points)

It's Saturday and that means another post on the 17th century political mess that is depicted in By Fire and Sword. Has it been a month already? It sure doesn't feel like it.

This week I completed a medium unit of Armoured Mercenary Reiters from the Swedish upgrade set. That's 18 tiny horsemen.

Initially, I wanted to leave the helmets blackened as I imagine that would have been common in the armies of the day. But my middle-aged vision had too hard a time to make out the difference of these armoured guys compared to the hat wearing regular reiters across a table, so I drybrushed som Army Painter Plate Mail Metal unto the helmets. I still left the chest plates rather dark though.

I once again used different colours on the sleeves to indicate the mercenary character of the unit. Also, I tend to stay away from actual black and white with these and use Vallejo Model Colour German Grey and Deck Tan respectively instead.

We're on to the home stretch as regards to cavalry for this project now. All that's left are the national units, made up of actual Swedes (and Finns). But I think I'll take a little break from pure cavalry units next week to add in some stuff I need for a game at the end of the month. That's right, if everything goes to plan I should have a completed playable task force before February. But don't worry about me dropping out, I still want to paint up some options, likely going over my target if I can keep this level of progress up. And then there's also the expansion on the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648 coming out soon demanding that I paint up at least a few Cossacks to add to my first By Fire and Sword army.

The points summary is easy this time:
18 x 4 = 72 points for 18 15mm mounted miniatures.

Thanks for looking! 

 

Time indeed goes fast and you have been steadily working on your forces indeed. The ever growing results of your hard labour are incredible, these too are very well painted and very much in key with your other  forces. Top points for consistency in quality of painting and overall look! Can't wait to see more of your work Kristoffer 

From KristoferD: Skirmish level completed (74 points)

Hello again fellow enjoyers of tiny painted things!

On this the 27th day of the challenge I'm happy to announce that I've completed the first milestone of my challenge target. That is to complete a playable force of Swedes for By Fire and Sword. With a fresh unit of reiters and two commanders (one shamelessly stolen from the upgrade set) I can now field enough miniatures for a skirmish level game.

First we have the Lieutenant Colonel (who gets promoted to colonel when the force scales up to task force level).

Technically the stand comes with another banner bearer on foot, but I swapped him out for the military advisor who was a stretch goal from the second edition Kickstarter. He most have spent most of his career fighting in the Northern Wars given that his piece of paper seems to be a map of snow. As a matter of fact, it looks a lot like my neighbourhood this week.

We then have another unit of Reiters which I've painted largely like the first unit.

Looking at the pictures I might have gone a little bit overboard on the highlighting on the hats. Maybe I'll go over that again later if it turns out to bother me, but probably not given that it is not as apparent when looking at them on the table instead of through a screen.

The Reiters and the Lieutenant Colonel complete the Skirmish set from Wargamer as mentioned. I first misunderstood the entry in the Armies I book as needing at least two commanders for a Swedish skirmish force. But the excellent Army Creator made me do a double take and realise that the second one is optional. Given that BFaS is an alternating activation game, having an additional commander (who constitutes an additional activation) is a very strong option. I also suspect that the glass cannon that is the Swedish in BFaS really need this. So I pushed ahead with the expansion box and added a major (or possibly another lieutenant colonel depending on how many points your willing to pay at task force level) to the weekly quota.

I also took the liberty of swapping the flags around so that the senior commander gets the biggest flag. It's only right given that he already has the biggest hat in the army to go with it.

Finally, let's do a group shot of the Skirmish force because I simply can't resist showing them off together.

And a tally for the minion. Thank you for your efforts Sander!

(12 + 3 + 3) * 4 = 72 points for the mounted 15mm miniatures
1 * 2 = 2 points for the single infantry man with the snowy map

Resulting in a total of 74 points.

Also, thank you for all the nice comments on my previous posts! They make me very happy. 

 

Crikey, another whopping entry of gorgeously painted 17th Century Die-Hards. I love how the sabbot bases make these figures multi-usable for different systems, if need arises, and give a very nice scenic feeling to them as well. 

Cheers Sander 

From KristoferD: Dragooned Musketeers and a Distraction (68 points)

I hope 2026 is already turning out great for all of you! I've had a hectic few days since the last update but still managed to put something together thanks to a few days off from work. I even managed to squeeze in a game yesterday, but more about that later. First I present to you a medium unit of dragooned musketeers for By Fire and Sword by Wargamer Poland.

What's a dragooned musketeer, you say? Well, according to the By Fire and Sword Armies (I) book Sweden struggled to provide enough dragoons to the cavalry dominated fighting in Poland during the Deluge (or Charles X Gustavus's Polish war as it's called in Sweden). One solution was to provide horses to musketeers drawn from regiments of foot so they could keep up with the cavalry. Essentially dragoons in all but name. Given the fact that Sweden never really was a strong cavalry nation one can imagine the poor beasts they would have used as mounts. I assume any decent horses captured were sent to the actual cavalry, but that is admittedly idle speculation.

In any case, dragooned musketeers are potentially a very useful unit in By Fire and Sword. They have the aptly named special rule Proxy Dragoons that lets them move like cavalry during their first activation in a game. They also have rules for Salvo and Countermarch, the latter of which essentially allows them to fire by intro-/extroduction i.e. 17th century drill for moving forward or backwards while firing. This makes them a nice, flexible unit that can put out a lot of fire power, but one that you definitely don't want to have caught unprepared in the open by cavalry.

I painted most of the men in red coats (Army Painter Pure Red mixed with a little black) and blue trousers (AP Wolf Grey). It felt a bit weird to paint Swedes in red coats, but that was actually regulation for several regiments back then. It's only during the reforms by Charles XI that we get the bluecoat Swedish army that would remain well into the 19th century. Red coats and blue trousers will work for both the Älvsborg and Jönköping regiments during the Deluge. I have not researched when, where, or even whether they partook in the Polish campaigns though. Also, the banner is fictional. It looks like the chaps at Wargamer took the crossed bolts of the coat of arms of Dalarna and put it on a red field. I'm not bothered at all, given that a lot of the records from this era most certainly did not have us 21st century wargamers in mind. A certain level of artistic license is simply necessary. I guess it's technically possible that records pertaining to the dress and colours of the army of this era was lost when the Royal Palace in Stockholm burnt down in 1697, but it's very unlikely even those would have satisfied the modern button counter in any case.

I mentioned above that I managed to play a game yesterday, and that is where my experience of musketeers was refreshed quite brutally. Obviously, my Swedish force is not ready for action yet so I brought my Poles and was reminded why one should never attempt to charge prepared infantry frontally. To be honest I also tried the flank of another unit, but they had pikes and managed to reform into a defensive formation with predictable result. However, I didn't have a commander for the Polish (my old one is on the wrong base for a CinC these days). So I painted up a new one. The commander is Khurasan Miniatures' Sobieski himself with a supporting standard bearer by the same manufacturer. I mounted them on Wargamer horses.

The flag is another fictional one by Wargamer. The musician is also by Wargamer as is the bloke waving his musket about, the partisan commander I believe.

I struggled to get a good angle on these, mostly due to the big flag dominating the field of view.

Tallying up the points for this week we're at:
27 + 1 = 28 15mm foot @2 pts = 56 pts
3 15mm mounted @4 pts = 12 pts
For a total of 68 points.

I'm almost halfways to a playable Swedish force at the smaller Skirmish level now. But plenty more to do as we're aiming for next level (known as task force in BFaS) and some swappable options. I hope you found something interesting in the update and look forward to bringing you more.

Wow Kristofer, these do look awesome! Not only is the paintjob fantastic, the basing is top notch too! I can't wait to see how your finished Swedish force will look like, hope to see more from you next week!

Cheers Sander 

From KristoferD: Mercenary Reiters (48 points)

Hello everyone! I've been an avid lurker of the AHPC blog for over a decade, and the time has finally come to sign up and contribute something of my own. Due to other commitments in my life I've kept my target relatively light. Ideally this means I can finish the Challenge in March and still feel good about the progress. Some friends and I are going to the By Fire and Sword tournament in Krakow on March 21, which just sounds too good to be true when you look at the challenge end date, right? I already have a Polish and a Cossack force for By Fire and Sword, but since we're going abroad for this occasion I figured it was time to paint up a Swedish force to go with my accent. I bought a skirmish starter set and spent the weeks leading up to the challenge cleaning, assembling and priming the lot. By Fire and Sword is produced by Wargamer in Poland and their range has a lot variety. The quality is overall good, but I will admit to having had to sculpt a few heads and hands to compensate for miscasts (none in these pictures) and some of the older parts of the range is showing its age. Nevertheless, they paint up nicely as we shall (hopefully) see.

This first batch of my challenge consists of twelve (12) mercenary reiters. The Swedish army of the 1600's was highly dependant on mercenaries (not to mention a significant amount of French subsidies to pay for them). I've tried to keep the colours rather simple. The era is known for a quite lax view on uniforms, as in use what you can get your hands on. I imagine the further into a campaign a unit got, the less uniform it would have looked. I used Wargamer's own art, actual contemporary art and Helion books as inspiration. The paints are a mix of Vallejo Game and Model Colour. I'd specifically like to mention cavalry brown which is my absolute favourite paint for painting brown horses. I've been told I'm a bit of an odd wargamer who actually enjoys painting cavalry. Seeing as By Fire and Sword is pretty much an 'equestrian sport' it makes me wonder why it took me so long to get in to it? I also begs the question why my first army was the infantry oriented Cossacks? It must be that wargamer butterfly syndrome I assume.

The unit leader is wearing a sash which I dutifully painted light blue, even though the Swedish army more likely used straw tied to their hats as a field sign during this era.

I hope you've enjoyed the Reiters. I'll end with a tally of the points as requested by the organisers, and hope to be back soon again with more.

12 x 15mm mounted @ 4 points = 48 points

_________________________________

First, welcome to the Challenge, Kristofer! I'm delighted to have you aboard with us this year.

I've played By Fire and Sword a few years ago and quite enjoyed it (I think Byron let me win...). I'm happy that the rules are thriving and that a tournament is on the books for spring.

As you say, for this period, the cavalry arm was the queen of the battlefield (especially in the later period) and your unit of mercenary reiters definitely look the business. I like the varied horse colours and irregular uniforms in this unit, very fitting for this kind of formation. I also admire your basing and groundwork. Very neat and tidy.

48 points it is! A great opening volley for your climb up the points ladder to your target. Well done, Kristofer! 

- Curt