Early Napoleonic Russians on Holiday and The Great Game

By which I mean I am on holiday again, not my Napoleonic Russians heading off to their summer dachas, or worse still invading the Raj via the North West Frontier, but you knew what I meant…..

So, I’ve brought some figures to paint this trip, in the shape of a couple of regiments of Russian infantry, totaling six battalions of 32 minis each, plus two half batteries of artillery. They’re all Casting Room Miniatures (CRM) in greatcoats so painting them ought not to be a big chore (famous last words no doubt). I’ve brought some ‘speed paints’ with me to do the greatcoats, gaiters and shakos and the rest will be done in acrylic. Not sure still how speedy they are in practice, and the figures still don’t paint themselves!

In the past week I’ve decided rather unhelpfully to re-organise my Russian line infantry into regiments of three battalions, each of 32 figures. Having spent the last three years getting the miniatures together for this project whenever CRM had a sale, restructuring the army is a bit silly but it should work out. So rather than the original organisation of two battalions of 24 per regiment we now have three of 32. Eight miniatures from each battalion are grenadiers while the rest are musketeers so other than there being an extra battalion for each regiment not much has changed. My two jager regiments will now need expanding slightly and my lone grenadier regiment will need another battalion. 

Having decided to add yet another Russian army to my collection (already I have Russians for the SYW, FRW and Crimean War) with the main objective of gaming the Russo-Swedish War of 1808-1809 I've decided it'd be nice to be able to use these Russians to fight the French between 1805 and 1808.  A dastardly Russian trick however was to change uniform regulations between the end of the campaign in Poland and the start of the war against Sweden. I shall however adopt a flexible approach, by which I mean I will do what I like as I like the early jäger uniforms and busk it with the shoulder straps and collars on the grenadiers and musketeers.

Katherine’s birthday party this evening so I doubt I’ll make any progress with the Russian hoards today.