Finished the main groups of Russian Cossacks. They are from three manufacturers, Fighting 15's, Essex and Totentanz.
The Fighting 15's cossacks are originally by Oddzial Osmy. The lances are from Ancient and Modern Army Supplies (Donnington New Era - Equipment EQ09 50mm wire with 'leaf' shaped tip). The figures are sold as 15mm and stand okay next to the AB figures (not on the same bases). They are nice figures and needed hardly any prepping which is always a bonus. The two poses come in the same pack (2 of each), but I decided to split them into two Polks of Ural Cossacks. I "Ummed" and "Arred" for ages over the basing. Ideally they should be in 5 Sotnyas which meant I was looking at 5 bases of 4. But, this doesn't look good when double rowed. But then it would annoy me if they were not in the classic 5 Sotnya group per Polk. Eventually I decided to go for 5 bases of 4. I prepped the bases (varnished them, put the magnets on them) and then totally forgot and based them on 8 sets of 3 like most of my cavalry !
The Essex cossacks were painted first about 30 years ago. I originally painted them as a bunch of random irregular cossacks. But the arrival of Totentanz cossacks changed that and they were repainted to look like fairly generic Don cossacks. The reason for this can be found in the next set of comments.
A few years ago I decided to get some Totentanz 17th/18th century cossacks to supplement my little Irregular Essex group. The figures looked really great on the website. when they arrived they did not disappoint. The detail and clarity was fantastic, I was soon encasing my finger tips in superglue getting the riders onto the horses, sticking MAS lances into their delicately sculpted hands, not to disimilar to those of Michelangelo's David. I got the old paints out and started happily slapping the colours on. They are really amazing to paint, but progress started slowing by the day. I was used to lining up a load of figures and doing 32 jackets all green. I was now losing track of my triads and really having to think of new colour combinations I had not used before. I then also realised that these figures were not really quite 15mm. In fact they were not really 18mm, they are almost closer to 20mm. There was no way they were going to fit on my 3 horse stand (36mmx30mm). Some of the figure bases were longer than 30mm !! I didnt know what to do. I had a about half painted and no plan for how to base them. So I made a decision, I packed them all into a box and stuck them in a draw and let the problem fester of a few years. Then a couple of months ago I decided to finish the cossacks. The only way was to stick them onto my 40mmx40mm bases. This way they could represent pretty irregular cavalry. This meant the Essex cossacks had to be made to look more like regular cossacks. But that was not quite the end of the story. The second group who are quite Kalmyk looking were 4 figures short. No problem I thought, I will order some more. But alas the website no longer takes orders ! In the end I bought some Eureka Seven Year Wars Kalmyks. A couple of them couldnt compete against the sheer size of the Totentanz figures, but by placing some thick card under their bases I managed to boost them and create an illusion of similar height, Tom Cruise probably uses similar thick card trick in Top Gun Maverick.
