Of Movement Trays and Unruly Cossacks

I have finished the seven movement trays made of thin plasticard. You can see the results above. The small cavalry trays hold 5 units instead of 7 and the bigger ones 7 instead of 10. When I started making them I stated I suck at maths - you can see this in full effect. Usually one needs to make things loose and leave an extra space which I did - still not enough. At least the holes in the infantry tray are right - this holds 12 men in three ranks. Practical for a salvo formation such as this one made up of Russian Streltsi. The cavalry trays can also carry footmen, about 8-10 of them.

Now the second part of the post is made up around the Cossacks I gathered. Namely the Orion set which is really excellent (the sculpting strongly resembles metal figures) and I've finished them no trouble, photos are on their way. However, there seem to be a lack of these and also their cavalry counterpart - which is really sad as for my Poles I'd need loyalist cossacks and these figures would be excellent. The Zvezda box has 8 riders but those are poorly equipped. I may have to resort to sculpting - but then I would need horses. And given that I can barely sculpt humans, horses are a no go. I could buy the Zvezda set or their Russian cavalry which is featured above and sculpt the figures straight on the saddles - I could even use the weapons from the Russian box. 

The Orion Cossack infantry, as I said, is great, but there is a problem: while most of them are equipped with pistols too, the main weapon seems to be the sabre and all are lightly armored - six figures are even half naked. This combination makes them extremely vulnerable in my homemade rules. I should give all of them a special ability like Striking to balance this - their opponents being the winged hussars with their long lances (armored units with extra melee attack range, won't end well),  they'll either hide behind redoubts and shoot them (a.k.a. wagon fort) or try to swarm the enemy. Or, as is historically correct, I should just buy a dozen more boxes and field them massed against a single box of 16 Polish horse and 30-something footmen.

The Polish army will most likely consist of European and Scot mercenaries (Zvezda/Mars), also core Polish units: a unit of Husaria (Zvezda), native infanty (Mars), 'german' style cavalry (Revell) and loyalist Cossack units to support the heavy hussars (Orion/Zvezda).

At the moment the blogroll seems to be messed up, maybe it's the browser - I'll try it in opera and if it still doesn't work I'll figure something to fix it.