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| Swedish Life Guards at the charge 1676 |
Barry Hilton - My interest in the Scanian War 1675-79 probably began when I was 11 but I didn't know it! My Father bought me
Military Uniforms of the World by Preben Kannik for my birthday and I still have the book.
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| Kannik - after 42 years it all makes sense! |
Plates which meant nothing to me but that I must have looked at hundreds of times over the intervening 40 years illustrated uniforms from something unknown called the Scanian War. I liked the uniforms but thought them a little odd compared to what I was really interested in which was anything after 1800. Since then, my interest in the 17th century has grown and it is now where I spend a lot of my wargaming time (well not literally IN the 17th century but reading about it!).
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| A 30 minute figure. Not my best work but it does the job. |
Further little pieces of bait have been laid over the years, namely articles in
Miniatures Wargames and elsewhere about the Battle of Lund. More recently my interaction with a group of Stockholm based wargamers (active on this blog!) has brought The Scanian War firmly into the crosshairs. Daluappror Michael and Soren the Dane have conjured Scanian War scenarios for Donnybrook and for their gaming of Lund using Warfare Miniatures. Inspired, and having witnessed their gaming first hand I embarked upon building two forces to represent Danes and Swedes.
I had already decided that the project was a diversion and so I could not afford to paint every mini to a very high standard. I wanted to do a relatively small number of largish units and opted for the 'gunk' method of shading. That meant painting well chosen flat colours over a white undercoat and using the Army Painter creosote method to provide the depth.
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| Amazing what you can do with baking soda. |
This approach has allowed me to finish fairly large quantities of troops in a relatively short time and with the careful application of a good matt varnish the results as you can see are not displeasing.
In concert with the new forces I have as Blog followers will now know, been developing a new set of Horse & Musket rules. The combination of new armies - new rules is a useful vehicle to transport this series of posts along. Together with some modelling tips on winter bases I will show how units of both Foot and Horse can be constructed for use with the new rules.
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| As yet incomplete unit of Danish infantry |
This first post is the doorway to probably a quite long series which may take a few unexpected twists on the way.
Several new ingredients will appear in the mix including some lovely Scanian Wars flags designed by Peter Smith. I hope to also include some of the work of Michael Leck and Soren Christiansen as we go. Both have created some wonderful units for the Scanian War era and Michael has written some interesting material on the Snaphanar (His Majesties Freeshooters of Denmark).
