A Page Devoted to Ben Grundy's Peter Pig Photo Collection

Cossacks

Ben has let us use these pictures. Thanks Ben. Most of the stuff is Peter Pig. Including the buildings.

The Pictures show Ben's PBI Cossack army.

I thought you might like to see the photos of my Cossacks. I’m not much good with a camera, so apologies for the quality of some of the pictures. Feel free to use whatever you like on your website, etc. – but you might like to crop or edit any of the images you use.

I hope this gives some idea of what can be achieved with your superb head packs. The mounted figures and the dismounted one with carbines are all straight out of the pack. I used the head packs to make all the heavy weapons teams, gun crews, foot command figures, SMG troops, and the standing sniper. I mostly used Soviets in greatcoats as the basis for the conversions, but had to use figures in tunics for the mortars and gun crews. These latter looked better than I had expected, so I mixed in a few others in tunics for variety (e.g. with the dismounted tchanka HMG teams.)

The whole job was time-consuming, and required some care to avoid gluing my stubby little fingers together but not too difficult on the whole. The only tricky figures to convert were the two crewmen with the binoculars and the (previously helmeted) officer with his left arm raised. I think I only wasted two badly cut-up figures out of the lot though. The only thing I couldn’t convert was casualty figures: the head swaps just don’t work, so I’ve had to use standard Soviet bodies instead. Not ideal, but nor is it a glaring problem during a game. (Count this as a vote for you to make some dead Cossacks at some point in your busy creative schedule.) The mounted bases for the light mortar teams each include a mule from your British 14^th Army range. I’m pretty sure the only non-Pig models are the three limbers/carts, which are by Battlefront. The rather lovely basing materials are from Antenociti’s Workshop.

The uniform colours are a departure from the norm for PBI forces. I doubt if they are truly historical for WW2, although I believe Cossacks wore quite colourful coats in the 19^th and possibly early 20^th centuries. I felt they were not entirely out of place for such an ‘irregular’ type of force, and they also help with identification on the table. I always colour-code my PBI units by painting the back edge of each base. This identified the unit to which each group belongs: this helps to avoid squabbles over which officer is to motivate which bases, and it is invaluable in assisting new players to pick up the game. I even colour-code all my PBI ‘dead’ bases in a similar fashion, and this has helped to speed up the process of break tests, and so on. The colours are repeated on the force list which goes with each ‘army’: I’ve included the Cossack force list on this disc as an example. Additionally, I have a system of clipping one or more corners of the bases of ‘special’ groups (e.g. LMG’s) for rapid recognition, and always put command groups on round bases.

We play PBI at the West London Legion club from time to time, but not every month, so anything that helps speed things up is a big bonus. My colour-code system means I can hand each player a box of figures, complete with force list, dead markers, pinned counters, AFV damage markers, etc. and they can get on with the game as quickly as possible. Needless to say, this would be impossible with any other trader’s figures as Peter Pig is the only one producing all those lovely markers and counters.

I find this Cossack force work nicely on a number of levels;

·        It introduces a new aspect of the rules (i.e. mounted troops) to experienced players who want to try something a little different.

·        It provides a challenge for players to fight a force which has mobility but no vehicles and armour.

·        It can offer a novice player a simple, easy to use force if you strip out all the mounted figures and use it as a cut-down army on foot. They should fight this against a PBI force which has had all its armour removed, then they get a pretty fair game without having to bother with the armour rules until they’re used to the basics.

·        It offers a number of opponents. The Cossacks are normally considered to be a Soviet force, fighting against Germans, Italians, or Romanians on the Eastern front. However, they could also be one of the few Cossack units that fought for the Germans against the Soviet Red Army.

Regards,

ben

Lose 2 points from the usual roll to determine which player starts the recce.

Cavalry rules: see page 60.

Tchanka pays foot group AP costs to move. It does not need to set up and has a 360˚ arc. It may be dismounted and set up for the usual AP costs (otherwise, it saves as a mounted target.)

Assaults cost 3ap only, instead of the usual 5ap.