Peter Laing Great Northern War Armies

      While looking at the Man of Tin blog, on the September 5, 2016 post I came across some photographs of his Peter Laing Marlbough figures. Among them he had a very nice Peter Laing powder cart, A113.  With my current interest in trying to work my wagon collection into my games, this little beauty got my mind racing. I decided to postpone the Napoleonic Minifigs project and start work on one that I've wanted to do for a long time, a Peter Laing Great Northern War project.

     BORE WAR-NING!  One of my earliest Peter Laing collections was a very large War of Spanish Succession lot. Over the years, I've had several plans for these figures, but could never commit to any of them. Besides the usual WSS armies, there were imagi-nations and the Great Northern War. The GNW had much going for it. Both sides had colorful uniforms, the armies were smaller compared to Western Europe, and it seems to me that there weren't as many sieges and more battles. Also, there were other countries that can be built; Saxon, Poles, and Ottomans to name a few.
    In May of 2016 I have a posting of two  Peter Laing SYW armies I painted up for use with Hold the Line rules and scenarios. These figures I painted up simply: Austrians in white with their dragoons in green coats and red pants, the Prussians in blue coats with white pants and their dragoons in light blue coats and yellow pants. I did this with the intention that if I did decided to do a GNW project, it would be easy enough to repaint these figures. The Prussian infantry would only need their pants painted yellow and they would be Swedish infantry. The Austrian dragoons, with their green coats and red pants, would work for Russian cavalry. The Austrian infantry conversion to Russian would need more painting ,with their coats being painted green and pants red. The Prussian dragoons would only need their coats painted darker blue to become Swedish cavalry.  This actually worked out well and I quickly had the majority of a Russian army painted and based; the Swedish need a few more figures painted but even now I have 4 Swedish infantry and 1 Swedish cavalry units painted and based.

The Swedish army based. There is some detail paint needed.  Both armies will be based on the army charts in One Hour Wargames. Each army will have four infantry, two artillery, two cavalry units to choose from. Instead of "skirmishers", they will have grenadiers, which will have an extra base. However, I am planning Cossacks for the Russians, that might take the place the grenadiers.

The Russian Army.

It was a good time to compare the Scruby SYW figures to the Peter Laing WSS figures.  Ross Macfarlane was right that these must be Scruby's N gauge figures.

Scruby cavalry compared to Peter Laing.