Finally completed a unit.

 So the last "unit" I did was back on the 12th of June, since then I've only done a few odd figures, brigadiers, and Vietnam stuff, not any proper units. 


I started this back in February 2020, when I did the men at arms part of the unit.


Since then I've very slowly added the archer and gendarme part of the Ordinance Lance. 


I was inspired by Stuart at https://stuartsworkbench.blogspot.com/, I feel he is THE guy when it comes to details on this period in miniature. 

But he is doing Smaller scale actions with the rules he uses, I can't go into as much details as I hope to do full-sized battles, So my Company of Lance is a bit more abstracted. I also decided to have my archers as light lancers and not actual archers, it might be a bit wrong for 1510 battles, but seems that sometime between 1510 and 1525 the archers had become lancers. So I went for that. 

This represents a company of Lances, so 100 actual gendarmes, but with the added men at arms and archers, somewhere between 300 and 400 actual combatants.

The Gendarmes are in the center, 4 of them.

Flanked by 4 Men at arms, One of them a standard-bearer, that I did quite a lot of greenstuff work on.

The men at arms are again flanked by the archers, one of which is carrying a standard.

I have 4 other men at arms ready, so I need 4 more archers and 4 more Gendarme to finish another company of lances.  I need like 100+ in the end, and at this rate, I'll be done sometime after the sun expands into a red giant. 

The Gendarmes are Steel fist and so are the archers, while the men at arms are perry plastics that I've Italian wared up.

Italian Wars Men at Arms.

So I've done some more work on my Italian wars project. 

They are Perry 1450-1500 men at arms, that I've Italian-war-uped. The biggest part is the standard-bearer, I stole the idea from Stuart Mulligan and you can see his far better version here.

https://stuartsworkbench.blogspot.com/2017/09/french-cavalry-part-1.html 

So I green-stuffed the skirt and hat for him. I also decapitated some damaged foundry gendarmes and used to of the heads. These have a dual purpose. The flag is removable and the unit can be used as men at arms by themself, they can be Italian condottiere or Spanish men at arms. Or I can use some of them in my Ordinance Lace formations. My plan is for the Lance formations to consist of 4 Gendarmes, flanked by 4 men at arms and those again flanked by 4 archers. 

Getting these done was a pain in the ass, I got the flu at the start of the week, and wasn't really in shape to paint much, but I  did manage to finish the last 4(the first 4 I did months ago) Not that happy with a couple of the horses the colour I used was strange, with stuff in it. 

But worse it got when I attempted to do the basing. After doing the first layer of brown on all the bases, I got up, but being rather sick I was in my robe and the robe attached itself to 2 of the bases. One survived the fall, the other base lost both horses and one of the riders lost its head. So I had to glue that on again, and it stopped me from finishing the base yesterday. Today I see that one of the horses I glued yesterday is on crocked, so I had to remove it, and now glue it with superglue. Then as I finish the basing, another base falls to the floor. This time one of the lances fall out. So I have to glue that one on again too. And almost lost the lance in the attempt.  But they're done now. And I've put them in a safe place before they spontaneously combust. 

Landsknecht

So my output this year has been way too low, for the first months I did almost nothing on the blog.
But with my Italian War project, I have now gotten 5 posts out of that project so far.

I am kinda annoyed that I haven't done anything on my GNW project since January.


Anyway here is the first 18 Landsknecht. I hope the unit will grow and grow until it reaches 96 strong.

 I wanted some action in my unit, so first two ranks have levelled pikes/halberds. 

 To protect the pikes the bases are long, but only 4.5mm wide, giving a nice compact look.

I have the figures for the next 18, these have the pikes at an angle. 

Le big boom boom.

Or translated from caveman french;  big cannon.

A standard foundry cannon with crew, this cannon is probably ubiquitous in all Italian war projects in 28mm.

Nothing much to say, I might have overdone the purple, but I wanted to try out my new purple triad.
By far the best cannon carriage I've managed to do.

Next up is mosty likely the last 6 Landsknecht pikes, to complete the front bases for the pike block.
Followed by some men at arms.

More light greenstuff work.

I wanted some French infantry, so I ordered the French/Tudor dollies designed by Stuart Mulligan and sold by Steel Fist.

The dollies need the same arms as my Italian conversion, so either warlord landsknecht or perry mercenaries with greenstuff.

I also tried to do a hat. 

 And so the end result, 12 figure unit of French Arqebusers.

 They are quite easy to paint, few straps or lots of detail. 

My reactivated Italian Wars project now has 3 finished unit.

Some light greenstuff work.

I was moving into the undiscovered country, as I'm not a huge fan of TAG and TAG has more or less monopoly on the Italian wars(except for Landsknecht and gendarmes) You need to go to TAG to get Italians, French and Spanish. I might have to get the TAG Spanish. but I'll try and keep to others for most other things. So I wanted some Italian infantry, so how do I do that?

Well, First you need a box of Perry Mercenaries, then a box of warlord missle Landsknecht, and then some green stuff.

The result will look like this:

About half the figures just got warlord Landsknecht, the other half got the perry arms, but the perry arms are to plain. So they get some green stuff to puffy them up, get some slashes into them etc. Some just got puffy shoulders, others got full-length puffy arms. A couple of them also got slashed knees.  The heads are a mix of metal perry "Italian heads" and warlord Landsknecht heads.
I tried to stay away from the bearded Landsknecht heads as bearded Italians just seem wrong.

My plan is to use olicanalad home made rules, Hell brake loose.( check out his blog, I know of no other better place to get some italian war inspiration http://olicanalad.blogspot.com/search/label/Italian%20Wars )  So that means the most standard way to represent missile troops is to have them in "skirmish" formation, that means 3 figures on 45x45mm bases.

So small 12 figure units, this is nice given the size of the big pike blocks that in theory might go past 100 figures.

 And here is the end result. 

Not perfect, but given I haven't played with green stuff before, I'm calling this a complete success. 

This is basicly what I wanted to make, and except that the sculpted arms could be better, it ended up for better than I expected. As I was fully prepared this would fail spectacularly. 

None of this is my ide, I've stolen this from various people, but most of all Stuart Mulligan, who has a fantastic blog. https://stuartsworkbench.blogspot.com/ 

I have also bought the dollies he made out of steel fist figures, which are now sold from steel fist. 

So soonish I hope to have some French infantry too.

Gendarmes/reactivation of old project.

I had put my Italian wars project more or less in the ground. Did not expect to restart it but here I am.
I did buy some Eurkeka Gendarmes I think two years ago or a year ago? And they had just been in their box, or so I thought as I noticed I was missing 2 of them when I was starting to put the unit together, apparently I had primed two of them over a year ago. So I found them and got my full 8 figure unit done. Because of the detailes, I decided to paint just 1 and 1 of them. So it took a looong time to finish.

They are a lot of work, but I like the metal work, a recipe I got of facebook.

I need to pay attention to my geography, as I accidentally made first a Scottish one, then a greek one.

The flag is just a quick homemade one, to be replaced later.

One problem is that the Eureka figures are tiny, next to the perry and steel fist stuff. So I doubt I'll use more Eureka except maybe doing the Archers for them.

Looking back and looking forwards

So this is the obligatory what I did and what I plan on doing.

In my personal life,  I got my first car(cargo van)  still don't have a license to drive. I  got married and I lost my grandmother. She died just a few weeks after the wedding,  Looks like she held on until I  got married.  It was not a sad death, She was 96 years old and she died in her home of 60 years. She had a massive heart attack a couple of years back,  at her age she could not get any surgery. But she lived another two years,  eating what she wanted and drinking her delay cream.  She died in her home happy with her gossip magazines and tv. I near had any other nanny than her, she lived 5 minutes from where I grew up. So not a sad death, a natural death after a long good life. But it's strange not having her around and missing her.


The Wedding was perfect,  we were told by a fellow student of Anita that June 4th was going
to have wonderful weather,  as her husband's birthday is on June 4th and he always had nice weather on his birthday. And she was right. It was probably one of just 4 good summer days this summer.

Wedding on the terrace of the inlaws summer home.

Anitas best friend is her maid of honour  and my dad is my best man.

The day  was perfect with good food and good people, After the wedding dad in law drove us with  his  boat to a resort  where we stayed in  the honeymoon suite 

So we also had a new litter, Freke and Naisha went on  a date. And we got a litter, We kept one we named Huldra.

Huldra!

Hobby  wise, I    have been quite productive. I managed   to paint some 230 figurs for my GNW/WSS project, I still have quite a  few unpainted  laying around, but loost steam. I have also painted some 105 SYW figures, again  a  few laying  around waiting to be painted. Add some Russian and Prussian Napoleionics and a few 30YW I'm not far from painting  450  figures this year.

After an intensive first 8  months the steam started to go empty. The last few months I've painted sevral things not having finished  them, I have painted  12 French Legere, that was supposed to become a 30 figure unit,  I painted 6  troopers and 9 horses for some Chasseur a Chaval,  also not finished.

So I don't have much to show, But I have this.

Had some random  British light infantry I painted up and ordered a movement base from warbases.

I did however, have a late year project. The theme of this year's Christmas gifts was homemade.
Antia made some wonderful embroidery with the names of our nephew on and we put them in some frames. It took a long time to make, She also embroidered some Christmas oven mitts for her and mine parents.

So  I decided to make Anita's gift too.

And  Here it  is:

I made a little diorama of Anita and all of our ten dogs. The miniatures are Copplestone, with some wood glue and white flock, some random ebay  trees, A picture found online and glued  to a background. I tried to paint the dogs as the look, with their markings.  Some of our dogs are quite similar, painting it so that Denali, Beriniga and Fjellbris  look different is quite hard, Beringia at least got white spot on her neck. Some of the models got a slightly curly tail,  So I  gave those tails to our dogs I know got a little curl on them. Orca while black has that curly tail and his shoulder is very  white, so it's easy differentiate him from the other black dogs, luckily our dogs are color coded. So I simply gave  their harness  their color. From bak to front. Orca and Stjerne, Gaia and Såga, Huldra and Naisha,  Freke and  Denali and finaly  up  front Fjellbris and  Berninga.


So that's what I've done 2016, now looking forward.


I  do plan on continuing my WSS/GNW project, as well  as my  SYW.
While I'm  tempted  to do more Napoleoincs  I think   I'll only have the attention span to do  a few figures at a  time. I also want to   try yet again to do ACW,  but we'll  see.

I'm also concidering doing more Ancients and Italian wars.

But first up is a new project(new year new project)

This will be early 100 years war. This is something I've wanted to do  for some time. Mostly because of  the figures from Claymore. The style is just so  cool, a mix of leather, gambison, mail and plate. I do find the full plate kinda boring...

Now there are sevral complications. First Claymore so  far only have only have a  few packs.
They have french foot knights, crowbowmen and pavisers. Naturaly not enough  to do a proper force. So  I much go hunting. I have orderd some Front  Rank mounted MAA,  they seem  to  be about the same period. I also orderd some  Kingmaker knights. Now the kingmakers are probably a little to late for the first 20  years of the war. so my  early 100 year war project will be slightly generic stretching  from 1337  to about  1390. So some units will be post 1360(like kingmaker)  While FR and Claymore will be more very  early part. But I'm mostly staying away  from  the later Perry ranges ect.

Another problem is the style. Claymore is very animated  and very detailed. Not that many  other figures mix well.  Black tree desgins make figures that look quite good and they are for the right period of the war, but they look stiffer, less  natural  in poses. And from  the picutres they look slighter in style.

My first unit  will  be a big unit  of knights and infantry. I'll  have 2 ranks of knights in front so 24 knights and to ranks of infantry. So a big unit of 48 figures. So I'll repurpose the pavisers, by giving  them none paviser shields and giving them a few other weapons then spears, they'll become infantry.

So  that is the plan.

I hope to  have something more intresting to show soon.

Belated Marry Christmas and a  Happy New Year.

Half a Pike Block and life stuff

 So no updates for well over a month now. This is becasue I got hit with the flu that knocked me out for 2 weeks and it ended up as bronchitis so I'm on some nice antibiotics!

It was quite inconvient with wedding coming up. I finnaly managed to drag my self to the mall to get my, shirt, tie, socks and belt to finish the new fancy suit I bought!

So in 5 days the wedding is on, I'm still on antibiotics and coughing like a MoFo. But it does look like we will get nice weather which is nice as it's a outdoor wedding.

I did paint some artizan landsknecht a few years back. And they where a tiny 18 figure. Now with the help of 18 pro gloria it's no a sligtly less tiny 36 figure pike block. I now do have enough pro gloria to finish the 72 figure pike block!

 With 36 figure it does look somewhat blocky!

It's not often I get to use purple and especaly tourqoise

No two is exacly the same!

See I told you

 As I said in the comments, non ancients but not a new project, I did 4 of these almost a year ago, finnaly finshed the unit. It should not take that long to paint 8 cavarly. Hopefully when I get ontop of bills I place some largeish orders to expand this project.

The flag is removable, based on Olicanalads system. So these can be any french or non french unit of Gendarmes.

More Lances

 This time only Gendarmes, another two done.


I'm not sure about the blue and gold one, I mean he looks awesome, but not sure if you could get that much gold everywere. But a dandy he is.

 This picture anoyes me, I though I got them all in focus. But ofouse goldie dandy didn't want to get into focus.

So this unit is half done.

Landsknecht part 2.

 So I basicly finshed my landsknecht, I got 2 more from the order, might paint them up tomorrow or something. But I kinda hate having a half finished base, so might wait untill I order more.

So this is 18 landsknecht from artizan. When I get the money(not untill well after new year)  I'll order 6 packs of these and 1 of halbraders, For a total of 72 figures. I'll also order 2 units from TAG, one foot and one mounted arqebusers. And one unit of gendarmes.






So this is it so far. Hand painted(traced)  flag.
A 72 strong unit will be 4 bases wide and 3 deep.

I like them so far, But I think my next unit(that will be made with foundry) with be advancing.
I get marching instead of advancing, but just standing like this, From all the pictures of pike blocks they are always moving or advancing over the battlefield. By just standing there they loose that old feel.

First Landsknecht

 So Waited for theise for a very long time(well 22 days) This happend after I watched olicana's blog about the italian wars, the pure wargame porn. I needed to do that!

I orderd 20 landsknecht from artizan, And I'll order a big order from foundry that will give me some 120 landsknecht and 18 gendarmes.

I'll also add arebusers, mounted and foot, mounted and foot crossbowmen ect. Probebly from TAG.


I've tried a totaly new style of painting theise figurers, I could say a bleak  imitation of olicanas style. I only use 2 layers, with big contrasts, This is not a style I will use on any other project, this is italian war only style. They don't look half as good as olicanas but they look good.

 They are fun to paint, but takes a long time, even with just 2 layers vs 3-5. the complex "uniforms" means it takes a while.

 Besides imitating a italian war god, I like this style for 2 other reasons. 1 in a pike block of 60-120 figures, you need bright colors with big contrasts to be seen. 1 saves time, again a unit of 60 pluss figures.


My units are mostly brightly colord, greens, reds, blues, yellows.