Friday 27 February 2009

Pike and Musket Organisation of Swedish battalions


Grimbsy Mariner, on his blog last week, threw me into a panic over the organisation of a Swedish battalion in the Great Northern War. In particular he had, like me, put his pikes in a block in the centre with grenadiers on the flanks. He had read that this was wrong, however, saying that: "Poltava, The Battle That Shook Europe" makes reference to pikes scattered through the battalion. However, Pat Condray in his booklet "Swedish & Russian Armies of the Great Northern War" (1990) is less clear. He talks about pikes being a third of the company strength and deployed either in the center of the battalion, the center of the company or across the width of the battalion."
After a lot of web trawling I cam across this which offers two alternative deployments:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion_(Sweden)

I will happily stick to my pikes in the centre approach as a result, as the alternative smaller pike blocks would only work if you were using 6mm or 10mm figures I reckon.

Monday 2 February 2009

More GNW Swedes painted

The story so far. I've actually got more painted than unpainted which must be unique for me!


I finished another ten figures over the last two days so my regiments now look like this (yellow are completed).

I intend to get another five of the Kalmar Regiment ready for painting so they can catch up a bit.

I need to buy a few more figures to complete them but still have enough to be going on with for a bit. Maybe I will pick them up if I go to Salute this year. Musketeer Miniatures keep promising Russians so lets hope they can actually deliver. I keep reading about people on the internet who, like me have started off the period with Swedes but are growing disillusioned by the lack of opposition. I would be very happy to start on some Russians this year, although what I really want to see are Danes.