GNW Swedes complete!

I just finished the last couple of regiments for my 1/72 GNW Swedish army for Maurice. Here are two regiments of foot (Strelets) with 3 artillery batteries (Zvezda):

My good friend Mark Wall found the flags on a blog by a fella named Wayne Turner  (http://www.khanage.net.nz/page1.php). Thank you Wayne, these are fantastic!

And the centerpiece, the commander in chief Charles XII himself, carried on a litter due to a foot injury. What a great model, Strelets again:

Some Swedes for the Great Northern War

I finished two more units of Swedes for the GNW- Maurice project. These are Strelets, we have one unit of heavy horse in cuirass, and a unit of foot including a base of pike. Strelets are less refined than Zvezda, but they are very interesting to paint. Every pose is unique and well-animated, the detail while coarse, is also quite deep or raised, which makes them quite fun to paint.

First Swedes and Cossacks

Over the past couple of weeks I finished a box of Zvezda 1/72 Cossacks for my Swedish GNW army, includes irregular mounted:

Foot (cool drummers) and artillery (on a cart)

Plus a box of Swedish infantry (enough for two units of foot) and some Russian dragoons painted as Swedish horse:

They are all based on 40mm squares, which makes things easy and accommodates anywhere from 4 to 6 foot figs comfortably on a base.

I am now back to Napoleonic Spanish for an interlude, then perhaps some more Swedes if they show up...

Sudanese and a new project: The Great Northern War

I finished a combined bow and spear unit of Old Glory Sudanese for the El Cid project- I am close to finishing the Almoravids and just need to finish off a few units of Christians.

And on a trip to Banff last week I stopped in at the Compustore in Red Deer where Will was having a big 1/72 sale. So I bought his entire Zvezda Great Northern War range to start a new project for Maurice. I'm starting with Swedes, here are the first batch of figs which I think came out very nicely. Mark wants to use 40mm frontages, which in my opinion will work better with 6 figs per base, double ranked. I based these first few figs 4 and 6 to a 40mm square- what do you think? Remember that a unit will be made of 4 bases (either 16 or 24 figs)?