DISMOUNTED COSSACKS: RUSSO TURKISH WAR ERA

Two units of Outpost Wargame Service Russo Turkish War Dismounted Cossacks Join the Force.

Having completed the cavalry, in this post, dear reader, we report on the first step in the next stage of the Russian Army project of the Russo Turkish War: the infantry.  To get going, I decided to do dismounted cossacks--being cavalry walking, they present a nice transition between cavalry and infantry. In Chocolate Box Wars (CBW) game terms, these units will stand in for the militia/conscript level troops of the Russian Army. Yes, dear reader, the CBW project may have stalled, but it is still among my intended things to get done--and in any case, these could also be used in my VnB 19th Century variant as well (in much the same role).  But enough of that. In this post, as usual, you may clix pix for BIG PIX.

 

Unlike the mounted Don Cossacks, I decided to go with a blue cap rather than the all white  furashka.  I made this choice for several reasons: the headgear on these figures clearly has more structure than that of the mounted Copplestone Don Cossacks--in other words, this seems to actually be an early modern visored cap as opposed to a furashka, and as such, painting it all white would have made it look huge; the second reason was that (eventually) my Russian Guard infantry will be in white furashkas--this way I avoid players having to keep straight that this unit in white caps is Guard and that unit in white caps is dismounted cossacks (ie militia). The third reason is that the example paint job on the Outpost website shows this color headgear (and there are examples of colored visored headgear among the sources and re-enactors).  Enough of that. Here is a study of how I rendered these...

Once again, I went with the white as opposed to black strapping.  And speaking of strapping, I had originally thought that these would be fairly quick and simple figures to knock out. However, the strapping wound up being deceptively complicated to render. For the red piping, I first painted it white and then went over it in red in order to get it to stand out.  Having a small figure count allows one the luxury of doing a detail like this twice--whether doing it in a single step of red over blue would have rendered the same effect is something I just don't want to think about at this point.

 

It wasn't until I started taking pictures that I noticed that there isn't a repeat pose/figure in the unit.  This nicely adds to the impression of these as irregulars.  That plus the headgear is reminiscent of the blue feldmutz of the Napoleonic Prussian Landwehr, another signifier of status for gamers familiar with napoleonics (which is the case with many in my group).

 

The dismounted cossacks deployed for inspection at "gaming distance."

 

Next up and on the painting table, two independent rifle battalions...

 

Excelsior!