The Cossack Peasant horde was a common part of the the cossack army in the 1650 period. These troops were poorly trained and were generally not equipped with fire-arms. Instead they were equipped with swords and various farm implements.
For my army I have decided to have two cossack peasant hordes, each of about 28-30 figures on a 80mm x 200mm base. I feel that this number looks like a reasonable amount without going crazy. The total infantry for the army will be 96 regular cossacks, 48 mounted infantry and 56 cossack peasants. So roughly 25% of the army will be peasants.
This week I completed the first of the horde units. The figures are all from The Assault Group. I used a combination of their laborer figures and their half-pike figures, with a few figures from other packets. The main criteria for selection was that they did not have fire-arms.
For farm implements, I used a couple of the implements that came with the Assault Group figures, but mainly I used implements from Bicorne Miniatures. A photo of the implements is shown below and includes pitchforks, rakes, scythes, axes and hoes. They were very easy to attach to the TAG figures using a small drill and super glue.
Overall I was happy how the peasant horde turned out. It makes a good contrast with the rest of the fire-arm equipped cossacks. I tried to weather the farm implements by using rust powders on top of the natural steel paint. I am not sure how well this shows up in the photos.
I am also painting some Polish cavalry at the moment and they are getting very near completion. I have 40 Polish noble levy and 32 Polish cossacks on the paint bench. They should be finished within a week or two and I will post some photos when they are complete.