Russian Cossacks

A few more units of cavalry done for my late russians. 3 regiments of cossacks. I still need to paint the Guard cossacks to join these guys.

I always paint my napoleonics with impecable uniforms, but when it comes to irregular/militia units, I take this as an oportunity to relax a bit, and give them a somewhat shabby look.

These guys, for instance, have a mix of regulation uniforms and some plain clothes colors. All units are dressed in the blue regulation, which started with the Don Cossacks, but later became the standard for all cossack regiments.

2nd Regiment of Lanciers de la Garde - The Dutch Red Lancers

Here is another famous unit of cavalry in the french army, the Red Lancers. These are painted from the Zvezda Polish Uhlans kit, just as the Polish Lancers I showed here on the blog a few days ago.

I chose to paint the trumpeter on the gorgeous white and red parade uniform, rather than the sky blue campaign outfit, which to me doesn't look nearly as interesting.

1st Regiment of Lanciers de La Garde - Polish Lancers

Here are my polish lancers, painted from the Zvezda Polish Uhlans kit. I always dread painting uhlans and hussars, for the amount of detail in those fellows translate into slow progress over a number of painful weeks. 

But once I'm finally finished, the result certainly feels rewarding, and I'm really happy with these guys, gorgeous uniforms, which many collectors repute among the most beautiful of the entire period! (my personal preference still goes for french Carabiniers a Cheval and Grenadiers a Cheval, though). 

The attentive eye will notice that one of the bases has only 2 horsemen, rather than my usual 3. I set aside the officer on the box to do Prince Poniatowski himself, in a proper command base, and so I painted a regular trooper as officer of the unit. 

The Prince is a project for later this year, when I'll be working on a number of new command bases for several nations of the period. And then I'll need a polish corps for him to command (oh, boy, it never ends, does it?)

A few more houses for central Europe Campaigns

Here are a few more buildings I recently added to my collection. First 2 are those inexpensive Armourfast 1/72 farmhouses. I quite liked them, might even add another 2 to my ranks.

 

Some Chasseurs to give a sense of the size of the buildings:

I also purchased a couple Ukranian houses, from Pegasus Hobbies. These come prepainted to a very good standard, the only thing I might add is a touch up on he window glasses.

 I'll be getting another one of the small house, and with that I'll have enough to represent a small village.

Myy plans for improving my collection of napoleonic terrain for this year also includes acquiring a good number of spanish houses, for my Peninsula battles. A long overdue terrain project!