A few days ago I finished a new battalion of Russian grenadiers wearing their green coat. These are the new Minden SYW Russian figures that Richard Ansell recently sculpted. A big thank you to Richard and to Griffin Moulds, the latter having turned the greens into production moulds in record time for me.

I think that these figures, the Russian grenadiers in coats, might be one of the most gorgeous units of Minden figures that I have ever painted. The fine details on the figure, the wonderful faces, the body proportions and last but not least, the colorful combination of red and green colors and gold-copper miters make for a beautiful wargame figure.

In the picture below, the flags were hand-painted using Kronoskaf images as a painting template. Note that the Russian army had organized standing grenadier regiments that carried their own regimental standards.

I wanted to pitch in and paint these grenadiers right away, but some recent „life events“ kept me away from the painting table. Notably, painting figures is very relaxing for me and helps me to deal with some of the life stresses related to the recent passing of my mother. But I digress and am not looking for sympathies…

I use 32-figure battalions in my Russian units and base them on four stands. This is done so that I can place the drummers at the end of the line, where they should be, and the NCO is also at the end of the battalion line, again, where he should be.

However, four bases creates an imbalance in the symmetrical look of the battalion, noting that the flags are offset from the center of the unit due to having an even number of stands rather than an odd number of stands. My „fix“ for this visual problem had been to add a stand of a battalion gun on the flank of the battalion. I use two Russian artillerymen and a Prussian 3-pounder for the actual gun (one of these days, in the future, I will add an actual Russian 3-pounder to the Minden figure range).

If you are interested in adding a Russian grenadier battalion to your wargame army, then you will need the following product codes for Minden Russian grenadiers wearing their green coats:

MR-007  Russian grenadier command (officer, ensign, drummer and NCO)

MR-008  Russian grenadiers, rank and file figures (8 figures)

It looks like I will need to either add a second standard bearer to the command pack or add a new product code for a pair of grenadier standard bearers.

I hope that you enjoy looking at these pictures (I apologize for some of them being a little fuzzy and dark) and that they convey the grandeur of the Russian grenadier uniforms.