Hitting the Books

Today I got down to the nitty gritty of serious research. Well, actally it is more accurate to say that today my oder from OMM came in.

I got Pete Condray's Edition's Brokaw booklets on WSS and Swedish and Russian armies of the GNW, the Wargamers introduction to Marlborough and the Osprey on Poltava.

The EB booklets are serious Old School wargaming. Tiny print, line drawings, saddle stapled, and information dense. Orders of battle, uniforms, colours (flags) and more. Well worth the price of admission. One very nice feature of the Wargame's Introduction is the formation diagrams. These are done top down showing arrangement of miniatures on bases. Very nice for seeing how the armies were actually organized, and could serve as the basis for gaming counters. (If I can obtain permision to do so, I may paint some and post them for others to use)

The Osprey is one of the nicer ones. It has some very nice illustrations and is writen in a very readable style. A pity that the vollumes on Peter the Great and Charles XII are out of print. Time for some used book searching.

After a brief skim it appears that even sticking close to histry I shall e able to have some variety in my figures. Swedes mostly in blue and yellow and Russians mostly in green, but plenty of units that diverged from this. Also Cossacks, Ottomans, and Bashi Bazooks (the last perhaps a bit anachronistic, but certainly characteristic of the locals).

Now if I can just find 15mm Russian Bombardier and Streltsi figures. I knw the latter had pretty much been disbanded, but as a ceremonial uard they would look the business. The Bombardiers wold just make an interesting addition to my artillery. Like all wargamers I have a fondnes for things that go "Boom!"

Sample figures have been ordered, I hope to have the first few painted early in the next week.