David Bickley's Wargames Blog

The occasional ramblings of an average gamer, journeyman painter, indifferent modeller, games designer, sometime writer for Wargames Illustrated and host of games in GHQ.



Wednesday, 21 May 2025

Cossack Frippary

Having enjoyed a bit of a nostalgic diversion into painting two regiments of Dixon Miniatures ACW figures recently I looked around the infamous Lead Pimple for something different to work on. I was rather surprised to discover that while I have lots of figures cleaned up I have hardly any of those spray undercoated! A bit of Hobson's Choice then lead me to a Perry Miniatures Cossack cart! It's from their Napoleonic Russian range, but I figured carts don't change all that much over time, especially in rural backwaters, so it will do just fine for my Crimean War project as a table filler or as a game objective. Not a great deal more I can say about it really beyond my usual Perry gripes about vent runs and flash/molding issues ~


After a rather drawn out period of recovery over the last couple of days following the recent Partizan show I finally have the Wars of the Roses figures I purchased from  Dave Thomas cleaned up and placed in their units ready for spray undercoating. I'd hope to get that done over the coming days, so I'll keep you up to speed there as and when. First though it's time to prepare the tabletop battlefield here in GHQ for our next game.

16 comments:

  1. Some fine frippery there Mr. B.

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  2. Lovely little model and very nicely painted and based, should look good on the table, as you say I can't see the poorer folks changing much over the years in Russia so he should fit into the Crimea very nicely.

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    1. Many thanks for endorsing both my painting and modelling as well as my reasoning.

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  3. Very nice little horse and cart piece David!

    Christopher

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    1. Thank you Christopher, as ever much appreciated.

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  4. Lovely work there David and I agree about the casting issues:(! Years ago in Linz, Austria, we went to the local museum, which has a nice section on rural life. The photos there from just before the War, show life that seemed to have barely changed from a 100 years before. So carts, houses etc would work across a very broad time period, or that's how I view it.

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    1. Thanks SteveJ, your anecdote superbly reinforces my decision to use the early period cart in the mid century timeline.

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  5. Nicely done and ready for service. The cart makes its own vignette.

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    1. Many thanks. Annoyingly I noticed 2 Russians in the bits box which would have really lifted the base, but it was finished by then...

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  6. A great looking wagon, David.

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  7. Thanks Ray. Fitted with skis you could use one in your Retreat from Moscow games!

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  8. A nice bit of frippery old chap…

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Thanks for stopping by to say so Aly!

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  9. A very finely worked piece indeed! From what we see, they haven't changed much yet! so this is a perfect addition to the Crimean collection....

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    1. Thanks Paul, support always welcomed for my efforts.

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