A dozen Russian artillery pieces, 8x 6 pounders and 4x10 pounder unicorns. The Russians had a lot of artillery so the heavy, horse and guard artillery still to come in future posts! The unicorn was the Russian alterantive to the howitzer, being something of a cross between a howitzer and a regular cannon, with longer muzzle, flatter trajectory and greater range. There was little practical difference in effect worth noting for the purpose of wargames rules by my reading though.
Russian line batteries had 12 pieces so at 1:1 scale this would be a single battery. In practice often only sections would be deployed, with other guns left in reserve.
More Russian line infantry, here we have the 19th Division from Borodino, with each unit representing a regiment, and minus the Jagers.
Same principle as the previous post of Russian Line Infantry, these are all Perry figures, and like them this division was chosen because they retained the earlier white flags which had more variety.
And a slightly closer up view of one of the units.
This lot also brings me to over 550 Russian infantry painted, and over 4000 Napoleonic infantry painted in total. :)
I'm resuming posting of my Russians on a weekly basis, as many more units have been painted since my last post in January. I've now painted a sizable force equal to the half the army at Borodino if fighting at at 1/50 ratio (Regimental scale), or the whole army at 1/100 ratio (Brigade scale).
I'll start by posting some humble skirmishing Jager, these are Perry metal models, useful in games where individual units are representing battalions or regiments rather than Brigades. They make six variants in a pack so this is 4 packs of them. On the larger bases to protect the muskets as usual for my skirmish bases.
Six units of Jager from Perry. These are the plastic Russian infantry kit, but I converted the standard bearer models using spare Austrian infantry arms from a Victrix kit, given Jagers didn't carry standards.
I also painted these in winter gear with the green leggings/black gaiters, just to make them more distinct from the line infantry in game, though tactical difference between Line and Jager was debateable...
Close up look at a regiment. As for the Line Infantry to avoid having to keep track of which bases go with which unit in storage, I chose to do each unit as 1st regiment of the Division with the yellow shoulder straps.
Much quicker to paint these than the line, with no white straps and leggings to paint! So with a black undercoat that just means painting the green and a few other colours and done.
A dozen Russian line units painted, from the Perry miniatures kits. Any Napoleonic army needs a good number of line. I actually got these 10 years ago for a birthday present from wargaming buddies - painted at last!
From left to right, theses are the line regiments of the 24th Division, 3rd Dvision, and 22nd Division. Each had two battalions but I have painted up just the first battalions for variety and because I usually play at regimental level for big games (and Russian battalions were often so under strength in 1813 onwards that many regiments were battalion sized).
I chose these divisions because they still had the 1797 era flags in 1812, where the white flag was coloured with theme of the regimental flag, rather than being uniform.
24th Division
3rd Dvision
22nd Division
Here's the first regiment of the 3rd Division, Chernigovskiy to show the scheme I went with for these Russian regiments.
Painting Choices
A couple of points on the paintjobs chosen. I painted all troops with the same red shoulder straps of the first regiment of the Division, and 1st battalion, 1st company pompons and sword knots. This was for practicality reasons - firstly these tiny details are not noticeable except in very close up photos. Plus if I did paint them then keeping track of which bases go with which units would quickly become a nightmare as units are removed during a game and piled up in the casualty pile in the heat of battle.
For similar reasons I didn't add the grenadier or light figures to the units, which should have red and yellow details, and black plumes for the grenadiers. Each unit should have 3 figures with black plumes and red pompons for Grenadiers, and yellow pompons for Lights, if you were painting these as a battalion.
For correct historical detail see the sheet you get in the Perry box below. Just wanting to be clear about this so I don't put anyone wrong on these details! Though, I understand that evidence from Russian archives suggests some additional complications to these conventions if you want to research it further.
Another interesting observation is that as I understand it, the 1812 Kiwer headgear is a mysterious thing that may not have existed, so I've chosen to go with the 1809 era Shako. This would have still been around in numbers even if the Kiwer was a thing I imagine.
For the Russian Green choice - I've gone with Vallejo Black-Green, highlighted with Deep Green.
The flags used are from ESR and enlarged. See here. As in the video below I also bought their rulebook and 1812 source/scenario book to peruse so will review that at some point in the future on this blog. Thanks!
Week 19 of backlog, and here we have four units of Russian Dragoons from the Perry plastic set. You need a lot of cavalry for Russian forces so I've added a bulk lot here, in addition to the previous two Mounted Jager regiments.
I chose to do these without banners, but might add them at a later stage by expanding the unit sizes.
Russian cavalry have some more unusual facing colours compared to France, which tended to go with reds/yellows/oranges/pinks which are complementary colours to the green, so creating the most contrast and visual effect. Russia seems to have just mechanically worked though the rainbow instead, which I was keen to represent. Thus here we have turqoise (greenish blue) for the Kurland Regiment. And another regiment above has a medium blue for the Tver Regiment.
Additionally I went with some more common facing colours that offer a stronger contrast with the green, like this pink for the St Petersburg and Moscow regiments, and the yellow above for the Smolensk and Kinburn regiments.
Week 15 of Backlog. Two units of Russian Mounted Jagers from Perry. Eight regiments of these were converted from Dragoons in December 1812 to provide more light cavalry.
Here is the Dorpat regiment with crimson/pink facings. For this I used Vallejo Game Colour Warlord Purple.
And with the orange facings, this is Sieversk Regiment. For the orange I used Vallejo Game Colour Dwarf Skin, which seemed a good match for the slightly pinky orange colour shown in the Perry guide.
A great kit from Perry, that lets you make Russian Dragoons or Mounted Jager, or Prussian Dragoons, and with kitbashes from other kits a whole range of other units. Plus you get enough bodies to make an entire extra unit if you purchase some extra horses from Perry.
