OF RUSSIAN (or “eastern”) HOUSES
or of the minor shaking of details when living with a Russian...
...You set up a nice "Russian" battlefield, proudly getting out your stock of houses, patiently collected over the years from everywhere you could. After all, a big table needs a lot, even if less "east" than usually if, say in Austria. Then she comes down to the game room and starts commenting. And you know she has been everywhere there, over the last 30 years, she know a lot and has a great attention to details. She was a tour guide for 30+ years. And then things get complicated;) as you get this kind of comment:
"Russian log cabins mostly have 3 windows façade. Hard put you ‘d be to find some with one or two only. "
"Entrances, traditionally, are almost never from the main facades, always from the side. "
“None of those houses are for living. Only maybe half shed from very poor 19th century. " deception, that was about my proudly showing my game buildings;)
And I have been to a number of reconstituted villages, to a number of ancient wooden houses here and there and seen pictures in museums and I know she is right. And of course modern adaptations, you can see, are most often far off from what one needs for 1812 and even 1941. She searches YANDEX the Russian stuff, rather than Google and finds examples..
Actually I stuck them all, then painted most in a darkish wooden base colour , then fisnished in various tones. If any part had to be canvas or similar it gets a white paint base. NO blacks undercoat to make all ugly coal mining stained.
The quest for civilians and drivers to accompany the carts/ army trains/ rear camps. Best if multi period (17th-napo) and all sides. The red one on the left is an Irregular miniatures Irish rebel, this hat only end of 18th to napo period.
These wagons will do camps behind armies, to loot, to show line of communication exits; might be used for convoys attacks...put in villages.
Mostly here part non descript, the rest for the Russian rear area trains. Some civilians, russian types, taken from cossack artillerist from Old glory , and rennaissance chaps.Figures with broken muskets can be converted to wounded, civilians, cart drivers etc. .
As many non descript handlers as possible plus a few period /army specific ones.
In the end one has to do units of smaller guys and of others.It does not matter much on the table. Again, it can be offset by thicker bases. Too many shooting musketeers. Difficult to make rear ranks. Manufacturers, at the ready, figures can be in front, or rear and are mostly missing for flexibility. Can't get the figs very close as the historical spacing of musketeers was decent to avoid fire from the neighbour match on your powder.
Too short boys
Historical infantry flags are 1.8 to up to 4 meters high! people who like big flags can do them for this period and be right (for a change). But then manufacturers for some reasons mostly put small flag poles, or soft pre broken ones or both! So some of these chaps had a surgical op, cut drill and stiff metal pole.
Need carts drivers?
From Campaign Games miniatures came Austrian Jägers command and Brunswick too (looking roughly the same/ Korsehut wearing lads). Landwehr in 18mm and engineers can be done from the same stock of pics. I needed the officers to have variants for the Landwehr, so the numerous horn blowers lost rifles, horns and extra pay becoming modest rear area guys. Here engineers and train for Austrians. Broken muskets sometimes do too.
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