Status update on my By Fire & Sword project

It's been quiet about this on the blog for a while so I thought I would share what's going on behind the scenes.

First of all I'm just about to complete my last company of Pancerni cavalry which I've been painting in between writing on my bachelor degree for school this week. Pictures of the complete Polish Crown cavalry regiment will be posted tomorrow - I just love how it all looks together.

Second thing - expansion of my army. Since I now have legal Dragoon and Cavalry regiments I need a 3rd cavalry based regiment. As I want to add more flavor to my army I decided to order two boxes of the "Volunteers". These guys are a tad better than the nobility militia, mainly because they are not burdened by the "we are here to be seen, not to fight" special rule. That's not to say that the volunteers aren't unruly, they have their own rules regarding disobedience and being prone to plundering enemy supply wagons and camps. Still they should  provide my army with another fast moving decent cavalry force that I can send away on reconnaissance before battles without being worried about losing valuable assets such as the cossack style cavalry/Pancerni cavalry.

I also ordered some Polish light artillery (to form a light artillery battery) and Polish infantry from Legio Heroica since Wargamer who makes the BF&S miniatures won't be releasing the Piechota Lanowa/Wybraniecka for some time. I wanted some divisional support that had its own Polish character and look as opposed to going with the other option - the German mercenary infantry. Though I may buy a box of the German mercenary infantry as well in the future, I like the old style infantry with their armored pikemen.

Third - player base. At this time I've managed to get 4 guys in the Flames of War gang here in Lund interested enough to buy stuff.  I hope I can whip them to paint up one regiment each fast so that I can playtest my entire army against a legal Swedish army while we can all further learn the rules in more detail.

So fans of Renaissance warfare, don't think that this project died off just because it's been quiet about it for the last couple of weeks. If anything it has been growing slowly in the shadows. I think all of us currently involved are so interested in the game and the period itself that it will be a really well received and well liked game once we start to play this on a regular basis down the road. Everyone is very enthusiastic about how they are going to use their models to represent their own preferred forces (Swedes, Danes, Brandenburger infantry etc).