German Uhlans, 1914

World War 1 may not be known for its cavalry, but armies retained extant cavalry forces throughout the war, cavalry played an important part in the opening weeks and months of warfare in Belgium and France, and of course played a larger role in battle through the war on the eastern front and the middle east.

These German Uhlan (Strelets, 20mm) are the next step in modelling forces for some possible cavalry actions using the Great War Spearhead rules. The foot figures are the HaT German Jager.. and very nice figures too.

The end is nigh ...

Well, the end of the year, anyway... and so it was a week of lighter games, the first a HotT with Jon, and the second the annual 'Snoopy's Christmas' games night hosted by Keith, in which we play games of Wings of War/Wings of Glory .. both evenings were enormous fun. 

The HotT game saw spiders vs pirates... the spiders were ever victorious

And then ....

Swirling dogfights ...

... and some balloon busting

German Hussars 1914

I bought boxes of Strelets 20mm WW1 cavalry a long time ago .. soon after they first came out. I had some grand plan to paint them up, but was stymied because I had no dismounted equivalents. I like to base WW1 cavalry with one mounted and one foot figure [er base. It's my own slight affectation, my way of visually representing the fact that they tended to fight dismounted (apart from those early months in 1915, and some significant work on the eastern front).The idea then struck me, just use some Jager as dismounted figures.. don't even try to create dismounted Hussars and Uhlans. Righto.. this next batch (after the Russian Cossacks, who will be suitable opponents), is a box of 12 German Hussars. 

Source: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/german-hussar.html

This is all progress, as I continue to think about the sorts of battles we might fight in 2026 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Great War Spearhead. One thing's for sure, they will feature cavalry, something we have not done to any degree in our games (apart from a refight of the Battle of Halen with Robert way back in 2008, when we had to proxy foot figures).