Finished Germen mercenarys in Danish service

Short brake from the Scaninan War project wirh some pictures of the finished 15th century German Mercenarys in Danish service for my Kalmar Union War project.

Basing are done so here comes a bunch of pictures of them and their supporting crossbowmen.

I also started the work on another 36 of them...

I got around to make me a tray to be able to move them around without break to manny pikes...

Minis for the Scanian War

A short post about the minis I will use for our Scanian War 1675-1679 Project. I have looked around the webb and there are several minis that may work as Swedes during this period, but sins I wanted to hold down the cost I decided to retrive my first Wargames Factory minis ever...

In the pats I have not been a huge fan of the Wargames Factory minis as they always seem to look a bit odd to me, but I still decided to give their WSS range a chanse for this project.

I have now got my self a box of 36 Infantry miniatures and a Box of 12 Cavalry miniatures, this will be enought for me to build at least a 400 point Swedish force for our project.

I must admit that they have added a lots of stuff to the sprues so there should be plenty of options to convert some of the minis.

Plain marching mini from the box, as I want my unit to have the Karpus hat I had to cut down a grenadier hat to fit the bill, I hope it will turne out ok when painted.

One more marching mini there I just cut away the musket and promoted him to and NCO

At the moment there are only two thing that bother me about the WF minis, the first thing are that they get long necks, so I have started to cut of the throat parts from the heads to get a better look. The other thing are that the hordes seems a bit smal and not so dynamic, short legs, but as the Swedish horsed during this era was quite small I suppouse it will work anyway.

More builds to come...

His Majesty´s freeshooters of Denmark a.k.a. Snapphanar

Starting up our new Scanian War Project I and Søren decided to go for some Low intense warfar in the nothern part of Scania i.e. Guerilla warfare by the Danish Freeshooter or as they was called in Sweden Snapphanar.

The main reasons was to be able to start it all up as small skirmish games using the exellent Muskets and Tomahawks rules. Love them but as usual I always try to find the Swedish angle;)

Rules of choice:)

A short Snapphane background
A snapphane was a member of a 17th-century pro-Danish guerrilla organization that fought against the occupying Swedes in the Second Northern and Scanian Wars, primarily in the former eastern Danish provinces that had been Danish for the last 500 years, which in the course of these wars became southern Sweden.

The term snapphane, which was used as a derogative term by the Swedes to describe the pro-Danish rebels, was originally a word for gangs of bandits that lived in the woods. When Scanian exiled peasants were organized by the Danish king into bands that fought the Swedes with guerrilla methods, they were called Snapphane too.

Due to the movement's support of the Danish invasion during the Scanian War, Swedish authorities fought the snapphanes brutally, and if one was captured, he was usually executed and the corpse was impaled and shown where the locals could see it and be intimidated to obedience. Another common method was execution by having them broken on the wheel. The Snapphanes were initially rather successful, but as the war turned against Denmark the Snapphane war became more devastating.

The Snapphanes were defeated mostly by a Swedish campaign of compelling Scanian peasants swear allegiance to the Swedish king, effectively driving a wedge between Snapphane and most of the population. Instructed by the Danish king to kill loyalists the Snapphane bands turned on the local population undermining support for the Danish king.

A ruthless Swedification policy was reportedly so effective that when a Danish invasion army landed in 1709, in the wake of the Battle of Poltava, the local population was raised in a militia to fight against them. The last suspected snapphane, Nils Tuasen‚ was executed in 1700 for slaying a Swedish soldier in 1677. He had allegedly spent 22 years in exile in Denmark but ultimately returned, upon which he was arrested and put to death.

Next up, what minis will I use...

Scanian War 1675-1679

Yes indeed one more project are starting up:) This time I have convinced my Danish friend Søren that it was a very good ideea to run a Scanian War project. I hope to manage to lure Jonas and maybe some other club member in to the project to...

King of Sweden, Charles XI, during the battle of Lund in 1676.

Short re-cap of the Scanian War

The Scanian War (Danish: Skånske krig, Swedish: Skånska kriget, German: Schonischer Krieg) was a part of the Northern Wars involving the union of Denmark-Norway, Brandenburg and Sweden. It was fought mainly on Scanian soil, in the former Danish provinces along the border with Sweden and in Northern Germany. While the latter battles are regarded a theater of the Scanian war in English, Danish and Swedish historiography, they are seen as a separate war in German historiography, called the Swedish-Brandenburgian War (German: Schwedisch-Brandenburgischer Krieg).

The war was prompted by the Swedish involvement in the Franco-Dutch War. Sweden had allied with France against several European countries. The United Provinces, under attack by France, sought support from Denmark-Norway. After some hesitation, King Christian V started the invasion of the Scania (Skåneland) in 1675, while the Swedish were occupied with a war against Brandenburg. The invasion of Scania was combined with a simultaneous Norwegian front called the Gyldenløve War, forcing the defending Swedes to fight a two-front war in addition to their entanglements in the Holy Roman Empire.

The Danish objective was to retrieve the Scanian lands that had been ceded to Sweden in the Treaty of Roskilde 1658, after the Northern Wars. Although the Danish offensive was initially a great success, Swedish counter-offensives led by the 19-year-old King Charles XI of Sweden nullified much of the gain.

It was a war with no definite victor; the Swedish navy lost at sea, the Danish army was defeated in Scania by the Swedes, who in turn were defeated in Northern Germany by the Brandenburgers. The war and the hostilities ended when Denmark's ally the United Provinces settled with Sweden's ally France and the Swedish king Charles XI married Danish princess Ulrike Eleonora, sister of Christian V. Peace was made on behalf of France with the treaties of Fontainebleau and Lund (Sweden and Denmark) and Saint Germain (Sweden and Brandenburg), restoring most of the lost territories to Sweden.

Some of the battles:

• Battle of Halmstad on August 17, 1676 
• Battle of Lund on December 4, 1676 
• Battle of Landskrona on July 14, 1677
• Battle of Uddevalla on August 28, 1677

BUT our project will not focusing on the bigger battles...

All Scandinavian readers already know what I talk about, you that don´t will get more info about it in the next blogpost.

A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict AAR #10

It all started with a big boooom and the Barn was on fire as well as the Red´s new moonshine stil !
The Explosion allerted all White and Red forces in the area and all hell broke out...

This was the background to our club game of "A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict" some weeks ago, I run it on a 120x360cm table using more or less all minis we have painted so far. We was 7 or 8 players and as the umpire I realy didn´t have the time to take pictures so this will not be a full AAR, but at least you get some of the pictures of how the game progressed.

The sharpeyed of you may notice that before the game started I moved the Filling statioin a bit...

Red reinforcements arrive, the Moonshine Still guards just look at the blazing fire...they was prety drunk after making some molotovs...

Gruvettan also joins up to get the Whites that apperantly set the stil on fire...

White troops arrive in force, lead bu several armourd cars and trucks

The Red regulards confiscated some trucks to get a swift movement to secure the bridges...

The Gruvettan militia moving thorwards the closest bridge to setlle the score with tha approaching white forces...

One of the bridges are secured...

On the other side of the bridge they encounter some stiff opposition by a smal group of SMG armed finnish soldiers.

Swedish regulars from Stosstruppe KNÖS with armoured support.

More White reinforcements...

Halfway throught the game...

Each force had a flanking force that arriwed from the opposit side, here are the Propaganda truck from Huddinge Freikorps...

They meet hard recistance from the red´s that seek cover in the damaged barn...

The red deployed their AT-Gun on a hill to be able to cover both bridges...

The red flanking force appears from a unexpected direction...

Some of the red´s made a dashing advance in the end of the game to try to claim victory for seizing the filling station... we just called it a draw...

I hope you all will have a realy nice weekend !!!

Germen mercenarys in Danish service #8

The last 8 minis for the charging front rank and the full units of German mercenarys in Danish service for my ongoing Kalmar Union War project. Just some bases left to finish up tonight. Sorry for the some what blury pictures.

I suppouse one unit makes no army...and the Danes spent alot of money on mercenarys...so I guess I have to make me one more of them:)

Germen mercenarys in Danish service #7

8 more minis painted now there are only 8 left for the charging frontrank and a full unit :)