Crimea River of Tartar Sauce

Off the painting desk ride a dozen Fireforge Games Mongols. I'm going to use them as Lithuanian or Crimean Tatars, they might not be totally historically accurate, but they are OK for representing these types of bow-armed raiders. They are in three groups of four, for my reduced figure count The Pikeman's Lament units, but they can be mixed as seen fit.

Painting Tally, March 2026

Despite spending a lot of time studying, I still managed to cram out a bunch of figures in March, effectively completing the infantry element of my 17th century Cossack army among others.

At the end of the month I took a more leisurely pace and constructed some 1/2000 warships.

28mm
Completed

1x town house
16x Foundry Cossack infantry
6x Foundry Cossack foot command
1x Wargamer Baska to go with the Cossacks
5x Wargamer plastic Spaniards
12x Fireforge Mongols (as Crimean Tatars)

Painted

2x Warbases carts

8x Warbases draught animals

1/72

Completed

8x WSS Danish Cavalry

16x GNW Swedish Infantry

Primed

4x Knights

16x GNW Russian Infantry

Other small scale

Completed

4x toy sailing ships

4x 1/2000 Iron Dukes

Painted

1x 1/2000 MN Charles Martel

3x 1/2000 Orlando / Infanta Maria Teresa-class ACR

4x 1/2000 Äran-class coastal defence ships

1x 1/2000 SMS Sankt Georg

1x 1/2000 Vladimir Monomah

Assembled

1x 1/2000 SMS Habsburg

2x 1/2000 torpedo boats

In total this means a PU of 1183, a rather respectable output.

Purchases: I bought the aforementioned Warbases carts, animals, some 60x30 pill bases, and then some paints and tufts. Not much really. 

For April I plan to purchase some more Bloody Miniatures figs and perhaps the WW2 naval rules by Sam Mustafa.

Would you Duke it out with someone made of Iron?

(For the title I apologize to fans of the real Iron Duke.)

I painted these back in October 2025 but then just shelved the project, and only got to base them this weekend. They are 1/2000 scale scratchbuilt ships of the WW1 vintage Iron Duke class superdreadnoughts.

Construction, as per usual, was done with various thicknesses of balsa wood, plasticard, bamboo kebab sticks and toothpicks, and steel wire for the masts.

I don't know how long the revival of the project will last, but I aim to complete a few more hulls and play some games.

Toy Boat Conversions

I was in a mind to run age of sail era naval games, perhaps a mini-campaign involving pirates. One way or another (either on the Naval Wargaming or Super Cheap Wargaming FB group, I forgot which) I found this big load of Risk replacement toy ships just suitable for the task.

The package arrived from Amazon US in a good time and I started sorting the contents out. The ships have two tiers of gunports, so are suitable for third and fourth rates, but what I needed for specific scenarios were first/second rates, frigates, indiamen, and ships laid up in ordinary. 

Thus I took out my rotary tool, some glue and plasticard and started on some conversions. 

For the 1st rate ship, I put a 2mm plasticard spacer at the bottom and smoothed the gaps out with some epoxy resin. At this scale I did not care much about the lowest tier of gunports, I just painted on a third bright brown stripe.

The frigate had the bottom of the hull sanded up to the top of the second tier of gunports. I also added a spritsail to the mizzen.

For the indiaman I filled the bottom gunports and sanded the hull to shape.

The vessel in ordinary retained the original hull, but the masts were chopped off and replaced with a toothpick.

Each ship besides the last one received a plastic hairbrush bristle to place ensigns on.

Further down the line I'm thinking of adding clear plasticard bases, but for now they are good 'as is'. I'll paint some third rates in brighter colours next.

All Your Polish Cavalry Are Belong To Us

Here's all the (so far) planned and painted Polish cavalry for my 17th century big skirmish games.

A Town House for 'Dark Nights in Trashburgh'

After having the bare cardboard sitting on my windowsill for months, in the end I completed a scratchbuilt 28mm town house piece for my 'Dark Nights in Trashburgh' 17th century urban skirmish project. It is mostly made from cardboard, balsa wood, plasticard and texture paste for the walls.

The War of the League of Aspico, Episode 2 - King of Rome, Pope of the Hill

After their Nibeunese allies got beaten at the Battle of Piadda, there was pressure on Papal general Lodovico da Montelupo, to force decisive action. With peace looming, the League of Aspico needed a victory to bring to the bargaining table.

Opportunity presented itself when, encouraged by their Fransican allies' easy victory, the Republic of Fradice launched an attak on the Lomagna, without any clear strategic intention other than the good old 'pillage what you can, burn what you can't' method.

The two armies met at Monte Piombo on the common border. Montelupo was wise enough to send a scouting force of two gendarme units and occupy the ruling height. Otherwise, the deployment of the two armies mirrored each other: both had three gendarme, two pike block and one arquebusier unit.

Alfred Von Richthausen's Rote Reitter

As promised in my last post, I checked my new phone camera and it does a-okay. So I took the opportunity of fair weather today, and reinforced with camera flash, took photos of my freshly completed Warlord Cuirassiers.

Although I'm Hungarian and it's sort of against traditions, I like the concept of heavy cavalry in all of its forms. After attending a presentation on the subject before Christmas, I promptly got this box on my wish list. The Mrs and Santa coordinating their efforts, the dozen reiters were under the tree by the right time.

When I started painting the figures I had no clear concept in mind other than having one half with swords and one with pistols done. In good 'Cossacks: Back to War' tradition (where by default one faction is red and one is blue) my Imperialist infantry has a red/orange theme, so I chose to go with that. The rest is history.

Painting Tally, February 2026

The previous month started well and I could make good progress on my painting projects. 

I did not have any clear goals, and most likely will not continue to have, other than paint what is on hand and start planning a house renovation.

Here's all what I did to date:

28mm

Completed

8x Foundry Hajduks

10x Warlord Firelocks as Sikler/Wallachian Green Rifles

12x Warlord ECW/TYW Cuirassiers

Primed

1x scratchbuilt town house with walled garden

Assembled

12x Fireforge Mongols (Crimean Tatar proxies for my Cossacks)

1/72

Painted (requires varnish and basing)

8x Strelets WSS cavalry

16x Strelets GNW Swedish Infantry

6mm

Completed

36x Napoleonic French GAC

36x Austrian Cuirassiers

192x Austrian Line Inf in helmet

This results in a monthly PU of 1220, continuing the theme of a more productive month following a less productive one.

Purchases

I bought a few plastic figures from Wargamer.pl, the aforementioned Mongols, and the famed Risk replacement plastic ship lot from Amazon. This latest item is due to arrive from far away Texas, USA towards the end of March.

As an anniversary gift from my wife I received the Strelets box of 'Court and Army of Peter I', more than a hundred figures of 1/72 goodness included.

I also have a new phone now and hopefully I'll be able to take better pictures, which should increase my blogging activity.