Silver Bayonet 1850

Not long after Christmas I was looking through eBay for a bargain and happened upon someone selling off their collection of Gothic Wars miniatures by Westwind Productions.  I have some of these minis already and couldn’t resist getting more.  That did leave me with a big pile of figures and nothing specific to do with them.  That was until The Carpathians supplement came out for Silver Bayonet.  I like the game but the setting was a bit meh for me as I have a more historical focus for my Napoleonics.  Then my brain put one and one together and I have my latest project – Silver Bayonet, ported to 1850 and set in Transylvania.

Historic context:  The year 1848 saw a number of revolutions and popular uprisings across Europe with revolutions or government overthrows occuring in France, Germany, Poland and Hungary amongst others.  Transylvania was a part of the Hapsburg Empire and when Hungary revolted in 1848 it became a hotly contested area which saw a number of massacres of civilians as the native Romanians fought the Hungarian minority who had taken over the country to remain in the Hapsburg Empire rather than be subsumed into the new Kingdom of Hungary.

The Hungarian army was defeated in 1849 and the Hapsburgs retook control but the simmering resentment lasted up to, and indeed contributed directly to, the start of WWI.

Now to the minis.  I got about 130 Gothic Horror minis from eBay.  I already had some others that would be suitable.  Here you can see one of the Westwind blisters as well as one of my existing collection – this one is the Doctors set for Call of Cthulhu by RAFM.

I’ve divided them up into sets of 15-20 models and have: Frankenstein and his servants and creatures, Dracula and his allies, Zendarian military, Transylvanian mob, various vampire hunters, werewolves and hunters.  To that I’m going to add some pulp minis and have the Tzar and his Siberian guards to make up one group and I’ll also have the ghouls from Heresy as another group.

I’ve decided to start on the Transylvanian mob.