"By fire and sword minis" Topic

Are there any mini ranges that cover the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth wars? Particularly the period called the deluge? I know that the guys that are doing the rules are doing minis to go with it, but I dont speak polish, and there is no US retailer yet, just a distributer. I more or less want to jump into this, but am worried that minis are going to be very hard to get. I have no idea what postage to the US from Poland is going to be, but it cant be good.

Also, if anybody has read this far, are there any books on this conflict in English? I am afraid it is going to be even harder to find information the the thirty years war is.

Any help is reatly appreciated.

owen

Old Glory and The Assault Group has suitable 28mm miniatures covering Polish type troops. If you want to have Swedes for the Deluge, they are harder to find. Check other discussions for 1660s Swedes:

TMP link

FRP games has the Fire and Sword range. There stock levels on their website are usually accurate. I think there are some other retailers in the us that might also stock them but don't remember what ones exactly.

link

teboj17, thank you very much that is exactly what I was looking for. They are indeed a bit more expensive than i had hoped, but at least I wont have to pay international shipping. Now just have to gett the money together.

Travellra thank you, though I should have stated I was looking for 15mm. Just cant afford to do that much cavalry in 28mm.

I already have daniels blog bookmarked. Now I just need to find somebody else in the USA hopefully on the west coast that is interested in this.I wnat to collect the Poles, but how this normaly works is nobody else is interested so i collect at least two forces. Oh well it will keep me out of trouble for the next six months or so.

owen

Old glory 15's sold by 19th Century Miniatures has a great range of Eastern Ren. figs. I've purchased most of the Polish and Cossack codes and can't praise them enough.

FRP games shipping though can be a little high which is the only gripe I have with them but it should cost less overall then ordering from Poland. Also you might want to check out Northstar games in the UK as they stock this line also, though shipping would be a factor.

Legio Heroica also does an excellant range of Poles, and Turks if I recall correctly. IMHO, they are the best 15mm Eastern Renaissance figures out there.

I shall check all of those out. I plan on getting at least some of the ones from Poland, if nothing else those guys deserve some support. I really like what they are doing. But I usualy like to mix a few things together. A bit of size difeerence doesnt really bother me on the table anyway.

Thanks all.

owen

I have large armies of Poles, Cossacks, Tatars and Ottomans, mostly built with Old Glory 15s, which are my favorite figures for the period. I have a few Essex mounted in my Tatar and Ottoman armies and lots of Grumpy Cossack infantry (so to speak) along with Old Glory 15 Cossack cavalry. By Fire and Sword has some nice figures, although they are a little taller than the others, and their Cossack wagons are tremendous, as is their new artillery, but no one comes close to matching their Eastern Europe terrain pieces. Absolutely superb! I don't speak Polish but have had no problem communicating with them in English. And by the way, the reason I don't have Muscovites is because Old Glory 15 mentioned a year ago that they were considering building a range. I like their figures so much I decided to wait.

The Swedes wore "western" clothing, so careful selection from TYW and ECW ranges should work. As far as written information in English- it is spotty. There are the usual Ospreys, some books on the seige of Vienna (later period, but can give an idea of how the Poles operated) and the excellent 1990s translation of "The Triology" by Sienkiewicz
(historical fiction a la "The 3 Musketeers"). Also the 3 Polish films of those books in DVD with English subtitles.
The authors of the new rules promise extensive background information in their book.

Great Hall Games also carries a selection of the Fire and Sword miniatures:

greathallminis.com

Fire and Sword Miniatures are very nice and form the majority of my Cossacks and Muscovites with a few units of Poles. Also try another Polish firm QR Miniatures available from store.assaultpublishing.com in Poland. In the UK I have had good service from these chaps including a phone call to confirm an order.

Again very nice figures, slightly smaller than By Fire and Sword.

Tally Ho!

As I understand it, the plan is for the English rules for Fire and Sword to be out by Salute of this year. The Polish rulebook is rather big and has a lot of information in it. The English language book is going to also be quite big, with lots of information about the armies involved.

The figures are very nice and come complete for the game, with flags, metal pikes and bases. The minis have great box art with pictures of the painted miniatures, so you can start painting without reaching for your Osprey.

The ottomans are on my project list near the top!!

And the other thing, Bohdan, is that the bases are the same size as required for FOG(R) in 15mm. The joy of this is that when the Eng Lang version of the rules arrive I will have plenty of forces all ready to go!

Tally Ho!

I have some of the Fire and Sword figures, and like corona I've had no trouble dealing with the company in Poland direct. The films of 'the trilogy' are great fun, especially 'Potop'('The Deluge'), all made by Jerzy Hoffman who also made the recent epic 'Battle of Warsaw 1920'.

As for written sources, the best book in English imho is Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars 1558-1721 (2000). Covers a lot else besides the Polish-Swedish wars on the 17th Century, and it is a a serious scholarly book that none the less pays attention to battles (and has some pretty good maps of certain actions in the text). It isn't going to give you detailed orbats, it's not that kind of book, but it is very sound. It is also in paperback.

As noted by others, I had no problem ordering direct. Was a couple of years ago, but shipping was quite reasonable (better than from the UK).

The discounts are fairly small at lower levels, but they do have a discount program for their customers. They keep track of all of your orders and you progress up the discount levels as the order values accumulate. Top is 20 percent which isn't bad.

And the figures are very nice.

The Legio Heroica range is very nice but is made for the siege of Vienna, military fashin changed a fair bit between 1655 and 1683 and the range also lacks figures for the most common troops in use during the Deluge.

Old Glory 15s make a usefull range of Polish & Western figures that can used for both sides of the Deluge. While no one makes proper 1650's Swedes and Germans you get far with carefull choices from OG 15's range for the TYW and ECW.
Viking Forge sells some figures from Matchlocks ECW range and these are very usefull as Swedes or German mercenaries.

Frost is one of few books to cover the period but not a particularly good book as the author has an pretty strong bias and more than a few times his "facts" turn out to be unsupported by the period sources.

Ouch, $50 USD for a used paperback. Way better than the $140 USD for a new copy.
Robert I. Frost, The Northern Wars 1558-1721 (2000). A couple of other things by him seem to roughly cover the same period, but are equaly expensive.

This may turn into an expesive effort.