Drowning in funny hats now

This is, of course, not my regular output. In my younger days I could finish an entire box of figures in two or three days. Which is possible with 20-40 figures per box.

Now the Strelets set 'Court and Army of Peter the Great' has over 130 figures and a pair of cannon inside it. The PSR review says it contains 108 figures, and mine was stuffed quite full, which led me to believe that I've got a pair of extra sprues. No worries, though, I can tackle this.

Let's see what we have on the above photo. Some were shown at the S-B ImagiNation blog as an illustration, some were not. From left to right:

• three ladies of importance
• a 'talion of sixteen figures, the vast majority of these appear only in the 'Court and Army...' box, and I received extra sprues of these. With 48 of them, I can make three 16-figure units. 
• a group of Strelets foot officers for the rebel cause, one Varangian (Swedish) and four civilians.
• a scratchbuilt amusette gun
• four Zvezda Russian dragoon figures painted as officers 
• in the foreground, another bunch of Strelets officers, these are the loyalist ones.

I lack civilian figures, and even more so female civilians, so these were a welcome addition. Although not too well sculpted, they will no doubt find their place. I used very bright colors - basing  them was rather difficult.

The amusette's wheels are from ACW gun carriages, the shield is made of balsa. The axle is a Gripping Beast spear shaft. The gun itself is made from green stuff, pine wood and 2mm steel wire.

Hungarian 5 forint coins have a 20mm diameter, making them compatible with 20mm square bases. This way a 'base' for gaming purposes (i.e. where the rules are more abstract and bases should contain multiple models) is 4x4cm, the unit frontage is 16cm. Maurice also uses the number 4 a lot and now we all know who's behind this.

I went with single based figures for the Saxons and so these figures have the same. Sculpting-wise they can't compare to Zvezda, and they're not too easy to prep and paint either. The figure with the polearm is from another sprue, and the trumpeter in the second rank is from the 'Guard of Peter I' set (included in the big box). 

They wear WSS Bavarian uniforms by the way, something I could find very little about, but liked the colors. The other two units will be the same.

The rebel personalities, actually only one of them is a true military man. Although there are no turnbacks on his coat, the figure on the extreme left wears Swedish uniform colors and long cavalry boots. The other four are the Civita Maria city council the Count of Calvacasa had just met. The ones on the larger bases will be commanders and the other two messengers. I chose these latter two because one is reaching into his bag and the other carries some sort of papers. They should be representations of certain Russian personnages, but that's not very inventive after all. 

I have yet to find a role for this model and his drummer aide, he is painted in Bavarian colors and rides a stylish black horse. My horses are usually the brown color I have on hand, lately this has been a sort of dark chocolate brown bought at a hobby store.

And here are the evil ones, a cavalry officer painted in his true Russian dragoon colors, two Saxon officers (one has a breast plate but wears stockings), the Tsar Peter figure with a trusted bodyguard and lackey, and lastly a sort of civilian-looking dignitary with a small chest by his side, useful as a tax collector, another city official or somebody experienced and trusted enough to handle the wages of the military.

On a sidenote, the winter weather is not the best for natural light, but I thought the brightness/contrast settings on my latest pictures were not optimal. This time I used the camera flash and very little correction while editing the images.