Reinforcements have arrived

Thanks to speedy shipment from an eBay seller, two boxes of additional troops arrived in the mail today: 100 HaT Napoleonic Russian Militia, and 12 Orion Ukranian Cossacks.

The Russian Militia figures are nice. The details on a few of the muskets is non-existent, but the poses are all natural and very evocative of the period and people. Lots of long coats, long beards and fur hats. These figures represent a number of different Militia units, but with a little mixing I'll be able to (eventually) add four units of musket-armed militia in peaked caps, one unit of musket-armed militia with fur hats, one unit of pike-armed militia, and assorted officers and leaders. That ought to bulk out my Russian / Molotovnik forces quite nicely when I get around to painting them.

The Orion Ukranian Cossacks are just beautiful. There are twelve different riders in the set, all very cleanly sculpted, in realistic action poses. I can't wait to get painting these figures. The only downside is the presence of an odd elongated and under-detailed "musket case" (or something) along the side of a few of the horses. This was mentioned in the Plastic Soldier Review article on the set, and they're right...it's odd. But whatever. With sufficiently bright paint jobs focusing the eye on the riders, I'll probably never notice these strange objects again. I didn't notice, when I ordered them, that these figures are for the 17th century. In practice, that makes no difference for my purposes. Yes, there are a couple of figures in breastplates and/or chain mail in the set, but I'll just chalk the use of such armor up to tradition and the desire to look fierce, and use them as is.

While I'm very excited to receive these figures, I'm going to proceed as planned with the painting. I trimmed up the first unit of southern auxiliaries last night and want to get cracking on them before I move on to my new toys. And...oh yeah!...I need to turn my pile of notes about the first events of the campaign into actual blog postings soon...stay tuned, folks. We're about to get rolling with the campaign part of this project.