Great Northern War Swedish High Command.....and a Sunday Walk

 I worked on these three Ebor Mounted Senior Commanders over he last couple of days and mounted them (no pun intended) on a round mdf base - which is actually a drink coaster - I bought a pack of six from a local craft retailer for about $8.

Not much more to say really - I do not think the figure with the telescope is impressive enough to represent King Charles XII of Sweden, so I will have to source a figure for him. Reiver make one but I am not overly fussed on their sculpting style, so I might try and find another generic senior commander for the WSS period that I can re purpose.

I took a view looking down as I am particularly happy with how the base came out 

Now then, where are those pesky Russkies at...?

They are over their, My Lord General!

Cant see 'em.......

To the left of the trees....

Look, just breasting the hill...

Oh for Gods sake, give someone else the telescope, you blind old duffer!

Today, my wife and I took a trip over to the Hunua Ranges again to re-acquaint ourselves with a walk we first did a couple of years ago. This was an 8km loop track taking in another of the Auckland water supply lakes and the Cossey Dam.

Now, I know most wargamers love some maps to set the scene and provide some insight - so here they are!

This shows the location of the walk in relation to the city of Auckland and our home to the SE at Pukekohe (Hill) ... I don't know where the "hill" has suddenly come from, must be a Google thing!

A map showing the layout of the Hunua Ranges Regional Park - our walk last week took us to the Wairoa Reservoir and dam in the bottom right of the left hand rectangle above.

And this is the walk we did today - 80% of it uphill, which made it more of a challenge than a pleasure - we probably won't return for another couple of years!

These very permanent looking entrance stations have sprung up all over the N Island in the last couple of years - they are an attempt to stop a disease called Kauri Die Back that is killing off many of the iconic Kauri trees. You have to scrub the soles of your shoes then stand on a device that sprays disinfectant onto them (and sometimes your ankles and shins too!)

A great view of the Hunua Falls reflected in the stream it feeds

A smaller water fall a few minutes into the walk

View of the wild terrain through which we walked for a couple of hours

Looking at the Cossey reservoir from the dam, at about the halfway point

View back down to the dam after we slogged up another few hundred feet - I think the highest elevation was above 400m - over 1300 feet.

A view of the city of Auckland a way off in the distance - maybe 40-50km. In the centre left, the Auckland Sky Tower (tallest in the Southern Hemisphere) is just discernable - if you are looking on a full sized PC screen!

Final view of the Hunua Falls - amazingly, its not unknown for young men to jump off the top of the falls into the pool below - needless to say, there have been deaths and its now illegal!

I am off back to the painting desk to continue work on the second GNW regiment - the Viborg Regiment - why, because I liked the flag, thats why!

Great Northern War "Sodermanland" Swedish Infantry Regiment

 This is the first completed Swedish Infantry Regiment for my Great Northern War project to roll off the production line. Information on the Swedish Army seems relatively sparse on the internet, so for those interested, here is the best potted history I could find

Swedish name: Södermanlands regemente, I10 

The regiment was first established in 1627 as the Södermanland Regiment. The regiment was linked to the Allotment System in December 5th 1682.The regiment's history goes back to the "fänikor" that was raised in the province of Södermanland in the 16th century.

After the War of Liberty of King Gustav Vasa, a permanent "fänika" was raised in the province of Södermanland. This "fänika" was later divided into two "fänikor", a north and a south Södermanland "fänika". At the end of the 1500's there were three "fänikor" in Södermanland; the Rekarne-, the Gripsholm- and the Nyköping "fänika".

In the 1614, King Gustav II Adolf formed a "landsregemente" - a Grand Regiment, from the Södermanland "fänikor" and from "fänikor" in the provinces of Närke and Värmland. In 1627 the Grand Regiment was split up into two independent regiments, The Södermanland Regiment and the Närke-Värmland Regiment.

As a result of the Constitution adopted in 1634 the Army was reorganized. The Södermanland regiment was then referred to as the "4th Regiment". The regiment was allotted with 1200 "rotar".Hence, the Regiment had 1200 soldiers organized into 8 companies

So now you know - for some reason, there is not a lot of information about campaigns or battles the regiment fought in but it seems they were probably present at Posen in 1704,Fraustadt in 1706, Helsingborg in 1710, Gadebusch in 1712 and the siege of Tonningen in 1713.

This is the image of the flag I found on line via Google and have used for my version of the regiment

All 18 figures, 6 each on a 60mm x 60mm base.

The right hand base contains the three grenadier figures although in the Swedish army of this era, the grenadiers were not grouped together in a single flank company, but were distributed throughout the 8 companies of the regiment

The left hand base contains an officer and five musketeers

Three images of the left hand base

Note a couple of the musketeers are wearing the heavy elk skin leather gauntlets that were common in the Swedish army

Three images of the right hand base, which in addition to the grenadiers includes an officer/NCO with half pike as well as a drummer

Nick at Ebor only actually supplied two grenadier heads per regiment, which I thought was just an oversight but after subsequently opening the other five packs, found was obviously intentional. I added a plastic grenadier head to one of the figures but will probably stick with just a couple in the remaining regiments,

Well that's it for tonight and I have not even assembled a second regiment for painting yet, so there may be a bit of a gap between posts. I am currently half way through the three mounted high command figures, so they may turn up completed over the weekend.

Plastic Great Northern War Cavalry Completed

 So here are the four squadrons/bases of the charging Warlord cavalry. Each box of 12 contains 6 charging and 6 standing/walking horse poses, so two packs allowed me to do 4 bases of each, with three cavalry on a 60mm x 60mm base.

To be honest, I dont think these photos do them justice - they look better in real life at normal "wargaming" range viewing than they seem to here in close up. I am still weighing up whether to grab a couple more boxes of these or maybe get the cavalry brigade deal from Nick at Ebor. He does a fantastic deal where you pay £105 and get 60 cavalry, a saving of £40 - but I am not sure I am ready to invest so heavily in cavalry for a period I am likely to play only very occasionally....there is a smaller unit deal for I think 36 cav that I might go for.....

The first infantry regiment is also nearing completion so they should put in an appearance here in a few days....stay tuned!

For the Swedish cavalry, blue facings on blue coats seem to have been a popular combination - not the most exuberant or exciting nation, Sweden!

Ebor Great Northern War Infantry

 I have finished off one base (of three) in the first of six (or more....?) Swedish infantry units for the Great Northern War project. Regular readers will know this not what was intended but hey ho, its a hobby and supposed to be fun, right? To salve my conscience, I have also completed two more bases of the plastic GNW cavalry, and should have the whole unit wrapped up in a day or two, so I am still sort of sticking to the plan!

This unit represents the Sodermanland Regiment for no other reason than a) I found their colours online at no cost and b) it was one of the regiments I managed to find some uniform details for.

As an aside, I located about ten or twelve sets of regimental colours and downloaded and printed them all - so perhaps that indicates the eventual size of this project...?

The regiment seems to have been what we might call "standard" or "regulation" dress for the Swedish army of this period - blue coats faced yellow, with buff leather under jacket and belts. The cartridge box was black leather.

Very nice figures by Ebor and I am happy with how they have turned out - the first six of over one hundred who arrived in the depot recently.

Unlike the Russians or most WSS armies, the Swedes in this period had retained the pike. These are represent on the central, command base. 

For Beneath Lilly Banners, we are using units comprising 18 figures on 3 60mm x 60mm bases - a bit of a departure for me as I have never had more than three or four figures per base before

And now, because if I dont post these soon there wont be any point, and based on feedback from a few readers that they dont object to occasional forays into the New Zealand countryside, here is day two from our weekend away about three or four weeks back

First thing on the Sunday morning we headed off and did this short 6km walk along the bank of Lake Okareka. I have passed the Lake Okareka Loop Road on numerous occasions, including each time we visit Lake Tarawera for our annual wargaming week away, so it was nice to finally turn off the road and drive down to this quiet, picturesque spot

From Okareka, we returned to the main road, adjacent to the Blue and Green Lakes, and walked the 6 or 8km track around the circumference of the former

I think in the following video, you can actually see a colour difference between the two lakes - it was the latter one in the video that we circumnavigated

After a nice lunch in Rotorua, the third walk saw us north east of Rotorua, on the road leading to Whakatane and Tauranga. I am not sure if the walk was in the Rotoiti Forest or the Tarawera Forest but we negotiated about 10km of unsealed road to get to our destination, much to my wife's consternation. Her feelings were not helped by a large red sign with white writing on it at the start of the road, saying something like "Extreme Danger! Logging Trucks operating on this road at all times" Fortunately, being Sunday, we did not encounter any 

Above and below are examples of the road in and out to this very remote walk. Another vehicle had recently passed in the image below, hence the dust cloud - my car was absolutely filthy and we literally could not see anything out the back window till I cleaned it.