Gasgans join the Hittites

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Battling Rob’s Siamese at 160 points made me realise that I needed a few more units for my Hittite army.

Not wanting to just get more of the same, I determined to get a couple of units of Khurasan Miniatures’ Gasgans to join them: the Gasgans were highlanders living in the mountains of Northwestern Anatolia at the time of the Hittite kingdom and empire who were both enemies of, and drafted into, the Hittite army.

The deciding factor was the snake priestess pictured on the right: a suitable Hero for my Hittites and available as part of the Gasgan chariot package!

Snake priestess aside, I now have a unit of Gasgan infantry and a unit of Gasgan chariots.

The infantry are nice sculpts. They are a little smaller than the Red Copper prints and the metal of the spears that some of them are carrying is quite thin, so bends very easily if accidentally bashed. They paint up very easily: only four colours of Contrast Paints (flesh, bone, wood, black) with bronze and a colour for the kilt edges to finish.

The chariots are okay sculpts: in that there was quite a lot of roughly finished areas on the chariot body sides.

As a positive, however, the main strut out from the body ends in the head of a snake, making them (if nothing else) very distinctive!

So a distinctive addition to the Hittites, making them all ready for the planned re-match with the Thais!

Last of the Red Copper Hittites

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As the Hittites were due to make their debut on the battlefield this weekend just gone, last week was spent frantically painting the last of them.

First up was a final chariot base:

I’ve tried to make all the heavy, three-man chariots a different colour and, actually, the grey one on the right came out quite well.

Next up are the slingers: two units of light infantry. These are amazing sculpts: both realistic and dynamic in equal measure. I just love the poses: look at the chap squatting on his haunches looking for possible targets, and all the different varieties of figures actually discharging their slings. Fantastic.

I’ve also sneaked a single ally-Syrian archer onto the left-hand picture, above. A bit of variety and a lesson in always making sure you order enough figures!

Keeping to a Syrian theme, here are three ally-Syrian light chariots. These are once again fantastic sculpts that are really full of life and movement. I decided to paint them in a way that contrasted with the brightly coloured Hittite chariots, so these use all the same colour bay/brown horses and a combination of dark browns and yellows for the chariot bodies.

So that’s the Red Copper Hittites done, although I am going to add some Gashkan (Anatolian mountain men) allies with figures bought from Khurasan.

Hittite Chariots and Chariot Runners

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The Hittites are coming along nicely now with the addition of another bases of chariots and two bases of light infantry chariot runners.

As with all the Hittites so far, these are 15mm Red Copper miniatures 3D printed by Baueda in Italy. Yes, the lead time is slightly extended, but I have found the Baueda prints very high quality and as there’s a set postage fee of €12.50 however much you order and wherever it’s going to, buying in volume makes the whole process very cost-effective indeed. Recommended as a source of the Red Copper range.

First up are another two heavy three-man chariots. It looks like the chariot on the left is only manned by two crew, but that’s because there’s a chap taking a breather sitting on the back of the chariot, presumably regularly asking “are we there yet?” to his two comrades!

I can’t emphasise how nice these models look in real life. They’re a pleasure to paint too, with the relief so clear that getting the ‘plank’ effect on the chariot bodies is easy (you just have to stay within the lines!) and the horse-armour just about paints itself (dry-brushed bronze over a Snakebite Leather base if you’re interested).

Then I’ve finished a couple of bases of light infantry chariot runners. In To The Strongest, these are light infantry with javelins, but I quite like the light axemen look of the Red Copper figures:

Again, very easy to paint and highly recommended.

Now onto the rest of the light infantry, the ally-Syrian light chariots, and more chariots…

More Hittites

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Here are the next few units for my 15mm Hittite army using Red Copper Miniatures, once again ordered from Baueda in Italy as there seems to be a distinct shortage of UK 3D printers doing the Red Copper range and I have always found Baueda very reliable and fairly priced.

First up is another unit of Spearmen, meaning that I now have all the regular infantry I need.

Hittite Spearmen from Red Copper Miniatures

And then we have two sets of Hittite chariots, meaning that I only have one set of Hittite chariots to go, although there are three bases worth of lighter Syrian chariots needed as well.

The second chariot in from the left is a command chariot.

Lovely figures all, and easy to paint up and base. Highly recommended.

So now a little wait until the next batch arrive for painting!

More Hittites

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A couple more units for my 15mm Hittite army using Red Copper miniatures printed by Baueda.

First up is the first of the command bases: a unit of 3-man chariots with attached General:

Next is the first unti of line spearmen: quite a chore to paint with all their different robe and shield colours:

Very nice figures: very easy to paint and enough variety to make the units look good.

Now to paint the same again for the next batch!

First of the Hittites

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I mentioned in a previous post that I was so happy with the 3D printed Red Copper New Kingdom Egyptians that I had printed by Baueda to fill in the gaps of my newly-rebased NKE army that I decided to do what I’ve been wanting to do for some time and get a 15mm Hittite army for them to fight.

I duly ordered the figures, again getting Red Copper 3D sculpts printed by Baueda (under a week to print the figures, only four days in the post from Italy) and went to work, starting with a base of Hittite chariotry and a base of the Royal Guard.

The chariots are, again, fantastic sculpts. The chariot bodies come with very clearly defined panels, making it very easy to get the striped effect you can see above. These were painted all over in a dark colour, then highlighted in a lighter version of the same colour, standard acrylics.

The crew are as easy to paint as the NKE infantry were, and are, as you can hopefully see, full of character. The three charioteers actually fit into the chariot body without being too crowded: snug but not rush-hour tube, and have plenty of variants to make the base look unique.

The horses are the most fun to paint. Again, clear relief and detail to show you exactly where to put the paint. I used Contrast Snakebite Leather highlighted with Bronze for the armoured coats, and a combination of the same colours I’d used on the chariot body for the tack.

The Royal Guard came out really well too. I decided to make them uniform to suggest they were regulars, intending to dress the Spearman units, when I come to do them, in different coloured robes and without the same uniformity in shield colours.

There are plenty of poses, they are easy to paint, and ther was only a minimal amount of 3D flash on them.

Both the chariots and the Guard are highly recommended.

Red Copper Miniatures: New Kingdom Egyptians

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One of the things about re-basing an army is that you almost always end up needing some more figures…and that was the case with my 15mm New Kingdom Egyptians, now based for To The Strongest but short one commander and one unit of Billmen.

I’m also a fan of 3D printed figures: I like the fact that they don’t weigh as much as metal, are often slightly cheaper, and can give a level of animation you don’t often get with traditionally cast models.

One of the manufacturers that I have long wanted to try are Red Copper Miniatures, who specialise in biblical period figures with ranges of Hittites, Sea Peoples, Ancient Hebrews and, of course, New Kingdom Egyptians.

The only drawback is that as I don’t yet have a 3D printer of my own, and Red Copper just provide the STL files not finished models, I needed to find someone to print the models for me. A bit of time spent on the Internet showed me several companies in the UK that would print them, many via Etsy, but they all seemed very expensive for what you get. Step forward our old friends Baueda, based in Italy, but with a flat charge of €12.50 for p&p, who will 3D print all the Red Copper biblical range no problem at all.

I put in a test order, and a couple of weeks later a nice little box arrived with enough models to complete my Egyptians.

So, what did I think?

Well let’s get what I don’t like out of the way first: the figures have no bases. Which is a pain when you’re trying to stick them on to lolly sticks to paint them. I had to revert to putting them onto individual little pieces of card (old business cards cut into six squares!) before I could undercoat them.

Second thing: because the models are resin, and mounted on little pieces of card, you have to be careful when undercoating that the force of the spray doesn’t blow the figures all over the place.

Right…next…no: that’s it. Those are the only two things I didn’t like about the Red Copper 3D Egyptians: the slight annoyance of no bases.

So what did I like?

Everything else!

These figures are superb, truly superb. Look at what I managed to produce even with my rudimentary painting skills.

These were undercoated in GW Grey Seer, then painted in white Contrast paint. The white was then highlighted with acrylic white, and then the rest of the figure painted with Contrast paints or, for the bronze, a standard acrylic metallic.

The animation and detail are excellent: and the only reason they don’t look even better is that I’ve based them (following how I’ve based the rest of the Egyptians) as two identical lines rather than a unit of mixed poses.

Pharaoh’s chariot is just as good. The only negative is the way the wheels attach to the body of the chariot: I’m not sure I did it right, but it seems you just glue the end of the axle on the main body to the end of the axle on the wheel i.e. two very small surface areas rather than some kind of pin-and-hole device.

Overall, these are an excellent addition to my New Kingdom Egyptians…and I’ve been so inspired by the Red Copper scultps that I’ve ordered a Hittite army to fight them!

Highly, highly recommended!

Re-Basing the Egyptians

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I’ve been thinking about re-basing my New Kingdom Egyptians for some time.

Their old bases (dating back to 2001) are made of cardboard and are just starting to curl up slightly at the edges, and whilst the Vis Bellica element system will work with To The Strongest (anything works with TTS!) it isn’t absolutely ideal.

Once that decision had been made, it was time to get the figures off their old bases. This is always the most nerve-wracking part of the job: will the figures’ paint be affected by the re-basing process? how many figures will I break as I take them off the old bases etc.

I use the tried and tested “soak them overnight in water” method, placing the figures in the packaging you get with terrain tufts: ideal trays about half a centimetre deep.

I was abit worried about the chariots: the old glue points of two wheels, two horses, and the yoke across the horses’ backs complicating matetrs a bit. In the end, however, although a few chariot wheels did fall off, they were easily glued back on, and any damage to the back-cloths draped over the horses was also easy to fix once I had correctly matched the colours needed.

I decided to go with the official Big Red Bat bases for TTS, which arrived very quickly after I had ordered them. The chariots would, as they were light, go two to a base, giving me eight individual or four “massed lights” chariot bases. The close order infantry would go 24 to a base: neatly matching two Vis Bellica elements. The lights would neatly fit on a TTS light base: seven figures for the akirmishing archers and nine figures for the javelin-armed chariot runners.

Once the figures were glued in place, I covered each base with GW Armageddon Dunes, left it to dry for a couple of hours, then dry brushed with whatever the GW bone colour is called these days, finally neatening all the edges with GW Tallaren sand.

The fifteen standard bases, four light bases and eight command bases used up three pots of Armageddon Dunes with the only issue being that each pot dried to a slightly different colour. Not sure why that was, but it was probably down to the different ages of pot: I was digging deep into my new pot depository!

Once all the paint was dry, I dressed the bases with as many different coloured tufts as I could find, placing them all in random positions.

In all I re-based nineteen chariots, 200 infantry and one lion…taking two days to do so. Well worth it, particularly as I discovered that I really needed another command chariot and another infantry unit to ensure I had everything I’d need for a 150 point army: any excuse to buy more figures!

So the Egyptians are now ready to rock, and will deploy in four divisions: Amun, Re, Ptah and Set. Can’t wait to get them back on the table.

TTS AAR: Timurids vs Sassanid Persians

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This June sees the inaugral 15mm To The Strongest competition, “To The Smallest” at Firestorm Games in Cardiff. The competition will be played on a large 10mm grid: the idea being to give it a significantly different feel to a standard 28mm game played on a 12x8 grid.

Always best to have a practice at a new format, so Si, Steve, John, Bevan and I gathered together to give it a go. Our first game was to be Steve and I playing the Timurids versus the others playing the Sassanid Persians.

The Timurids ahd four commands, three cavalry and one infantry, which, for some reason, ended up on the far right of our line. I’m not sure why: any cunning plan that we had for what to do with them has since escaped me!

The centre of the Sassanid line comprised multiple units of cataphracts, so as the game began I sent the Timurid lance-armed heavy cavalry right at them: the idea being to fire our bows on the approach to disorder and then charge in to polish them off.

Unbelievably, this worked really well, and one unit of lancers punched straight through the Sassnanid line, cataphracts flying everywhere, and ended up in a great position to threaten the enemy camps.

Meanwhile on the left, two units of Timurid heavies and two units of Timurid lights faced off against an almost identical configuration of Sassanid horse, the only (but key) difference being that my units were in a single, tightly-bunched command rather than slightly spread out.

This meant that when things went wrong - my veteran heavies going unexpectedly disordered - I had the troops available to protect them as they withdrew to rally, with the protectors, another heavy cavalry unit, actually smashing the enemy cavalry from the field. With my veterans rallied and on their was back into the fight, the left wing was now looking good.

The key unit in the pictures above is the Timurid cavalry with the blue flag bottom left in the image on the left and almost exactly in the centre of the image on the right: they smashed the Sassanid Savaran cavalry off the table before they could charge the rear of my veterans, reversing what looked like it was going to be a reverse!

On the right, the infantry there had yet to achieve much of anything, although they were keeping a couple of enemy cavalry units occupied and therefore away from the action in the centre.

Meanwhile, the Timurids were pouring through the Sassanid centre.

And had totally polished off the Sassanids on the left:

Back to the centre, and my veteran heavies moved into the enemy camp, reducing the Sassanids to just one medal remaining. They weren’t totally beaten, however, and a nasty moment ensured when my CinC’s unit (i.e. veteran heavies with Brilliant General and Army Standard - worth seven coins) was almost smashed from the table, fortunately making a vital save just at the right time.

A moment later, a Sassanid light unit was either KO’d or forced to evade off the table and the game was ours for a 13-3 victory.

So a decent victory for the Timurids…although it has to be said that the cards were running for us throughout the game.

As for the 15mm/10cm squares experience: not much change for me, as I usually play on a 15cm grid on a much bigger area than a standard competition table, but the others found it a significant change to what they are used to. Roll on the To The Smallest competition!

TTS AAR: Venetians Abroad versus Catalan Company (Roll Call Game Four)

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My final game at Roll Call this year was against Dene’s Catalan Company: an army consisting of Almughavar javelinmen supported by cavalry, allied light horse and Greek archers.

The Catalans had outscouted my Venetians and came forward rapidly in a ragged line.

As both sides had their horse on the same side of the field, the first clash came on my right, where my Knights clashed with Dene’s. Both sides lost a unit but the advantage in positioning was slightly in my favour.

In the centre, more of my Knights punched through the horse in front of them, with the decision now being how to take on the enemy’s central command of formed infantry happily ensconced on a couple of hills.

Back on the right hand side of the field, my Knights finished clearing the enemy cavalry away, leaving them clear to advance but a long way from the rest of the action.

Unfortunately, however, things weren’t going so well on the other side of the table. My infantry had definitely come off worse in the initial clash, not helped by the fact that my Halbardiers just couldn’t get the cards they needed to activate let alone fight…although they did stand heroically solid when attacked on the flank (top middle in the second picture, below).

My camp was now exposed, however, with Dene quite happy to take one half whilst threatening the other: things were critical as that represented an awful lot of Victory Medals.

We were just about to start another turn - a turn in which Dene had a good chance of taking the game, despite the success of my Knights on the right - when time was called: all the manouevring early in the game had used up the clock!

A very narrow escape for the Venetians: a losing draw 7:9.

What was worse (for Dene) was that not finishing off my Venetians meant that I pipped him at the post for the third place position, with him finishing fourth only a few points behind me!

All in all, a great day’s gaming: well done to Tim for organising, and to all the other players in competing in the usual TTS good humour and sportsmanship.

As for my Venetians, they will now continue their journey Abroad with a trip to historic Ewelme and the “England and St George” competition there.

Last of the Venetians?

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As I’m now using the Venetians Abroad list rather than the Later Italian Condotteri (Venice) list for my latest To The Strongest army, I found myself in need of some extra Spearman units.

Regular visitors will know that I have gradually added these in over the last couple of months, with only the one to go: the raw, militia Lancieri dredged from the depths of the dankest, darkest canal!

I wanted something different for these boys: I like to be able to identify my units without markers (yes, I know I usually have Meeples everywhere! - but that’s to help you, not me) so decided to really make the militia stand out.

Here’s a regular Lancieri unit:

Very serious looking chaps.

And here are the militia:

No flag, no armour, only the back rank are properly equipped - the rest have had to grab whatever’s left in the armoury - and, best of all, the man in charge is not the usual officer but a chef:

This is a cracking figure that I sourced from Kingdom Games: Drunk Cook DnD Dungeons and Dragons Miniature - Epic Miniatures 28mm. I am loving the chicken!

So now my Venetians are complete, although I realise that this phrase is utterly meaningless to a true wargamer!

Painting Epic Scots

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Friend John kindly gave me a couple of those Warlord Epic Scots Covenantor free sprues that came with Wargames Illustrated a few months ago, so it was time to get them painted and onto the table.

First up was a large unit of Commanded Shot. I decided to give them a natty pair of red trousers: not very dour but I fancied a change from Hodden Grey. The command figures came from Eureka: a bit taller than the Epic’s, but then you want some big men in charge!

As before, the epic slugs painted up very easily and were actually quite fun to do. In fact, it took me so little time to finish this lot that I went straight into painting a second batch, this time with more traditionally coloured trews!

The flags, by the way, come from Maverick Models. They are a simple Cross of St Andrew custom printed for me by Steve, the proprietor. The cloth effect makes them very simple to use (much easier than paper flags) and they end up looking very good indeed.

With two large units of Commanded Shot completed in record time, I could spare the effort to use some of the single figures on the sprues to produce three bases of Attached Shot: something to give my artillery a little better chance of survival on the battlefield.

These were obviously just like painting standard 15mm figures…they are nicely posed and I particularly like the chap priming his pan (front left on the right hand base).

Finally, although not Scots, or Epic 15mm scale, I also had a chance to paint up another Spear unit for my 28mm Venetians. These are Perry plastics and, as usual, a slight pain to build compensated for by the variety and realism of the poses that can be generated, and the ease with which they paint up.

Timurid Camps

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The Ancients rules that I use, To The Strongest, require an army to have at least one camp of some sort: something that gives you extra victory medals, and gives your opponent somethingt o aim for.

Up until now, I’ve used generic trays with some kind of marker in them to indicate it’s a camp: a single hut or the like…but nothing very fancy.

Recently, however, I’ve been admiring the beautiful camps that people have been using in the TTS competitions I’ve been attending, so I thought it was perhaps time to up my game a bit.

Here, then, are the first of my specific (as opposed to generic) camps: three bases for my 15mm Timurid army.

The two yurts are from Baueda, with the pile of skulls in the middle something I bought from Etsy. They are each mounted on a 10cmx10cm base from Warbases.

I’m now going to buy a whole load more 10x10 bases from Warbases and repeat the process for some of my other Ancients armies.

Here’s the middle camp with a Timurid command figure.

A bit of Miscellaneous Painting

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Always good to add some character units to your rank and file, so when I saw that the 3D printed March to Hell range of Celts included war dogs and a handler, I knew I had to get one to act as one of the many "Heros” accompanying my Ancient Brits.

A nice little piece that paints up very easily indeed. The hounds were a single coat of Contrast Basilicum Grey over undercoat; the handler was painted as a normal Celt: dark blue tunic with light blue stripes.

Next are a couple of extras for my Venetians.

My Spearmen don’t seem to be achieving much, so here’s a unit of Alabadiers or Billmen who, hopefully, will fare a bit better.

The Alabardiers are made from the heads and bodies of spare normal infantry combined with the arms and weapons of spare knights, which is why they all look a bit top heavy!

It also got a bit crowded on the base…which is why, in the back rank, one of them is smashing the back end of his axe into the face of another! I should perhaps have dropped a figure from each line or at least spaced them out properly.

Finally, a unit of light crossbowmen and an infantryman carrying a flag that I can use either as an army standard or to mark where a dismounted general is or the like.

Venetian Casualty Markers

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Next stage for the Venetians was to fill in all the peripheral bits and pieces needed to actually play the game, including casualty markers and heroes.

I wanted some nice casualty markers, but didn’t want to go to all the trouble of building and painting actual figures. My Romans have a set of markers, kindly donated by friend Peter, which consist of a Roman shield mounted on a single-figure base, so I decided to mimic that for the Venetians.

Regular visitors will know that I am ujsing Perry plastics, whose various sprues include pavises: the stand-alone shields used by crossbowmen for shelter whilst they reload. These looked ideal, so I cut enough off the sprues and sprayed them with a white undercoat.

Next I bought some pavise-shaped transfers specifically designed for the Perry pavises from Little Big Man Studios (an excellent company, by the way: highly recommended) which were really, really easy to mount. Finally, a quick scoot round the edges with some brown Contrast paint and each pavise-marker was now ready.

The bases are 2p coins with a light coating of basing material and then flock and the finished pavises glued on top.

Experts amongst you will have spotted that the pavise transfers are actually in Burgundian colours (all that was available) but actually the red and yellow works very well with the colour scheme I’ve adopted for the Venetians, so I’m very happy with these: I just hope I don’t have to use them very much!

The heroes are just standard cavalrymen but using some of the fancy heads that the Perry’s kindly provide. These really are lovely figures and, again, highly recommended for those seeking to build some kind of late medieval army.

Venetians Almost Up To Strength

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Regular visitors will know that I am currently building a 28mm Later Italian Condotteri (Venetian) army to use of this year’s To The Strongest competition circuit.

An incomplete army, with borrowed figures to fill the gaps, took to the battlefield at the Welsh Open last month, but with the World Championships fast approaching, it was time to get cracking on the rest.

First up were the Lanzieri provisionati or spearmen. I decided to use the same figures as for the pikemen, but just use less of them. Not sure if that is correct, but the alternative was to perform reductive surgery on the pikes to make them shorter. which seemed like an awful lot of hard work and fragile joints!

Then I needed to paint up the final unit of Later Knights. Again I went for the un-surcoated look as this unit wouldn’t have an officer attached to it and could be used to represent lanza spezzate “broken lance” mercenaries.

This also made the knights very easy to paint: reins, horse, paint everything armoured in black then dry-brush with silvery-steel to get the armour effect. Lances in bright red and you’re done!

I’d already painted two units of foot knights (to use in case I need to dismount my cavalry in the face of, for example, elephants, camels, bad terrain, mucho missile fire etc) but needed three more to complete the set:

I loved painting these. Using Perry plastics enables you to build figures in some really unique, characterful poses, and they are even easier to paint than the mounted knights (no horse!). I also like the idea that such a puny looking unit (only four figures) can carve their way through a deep warband like the proverbial knife through barbarian butter!

So that is most of the army now done. Just need to do a few heroes, a spare unit of light crossbowmen in case I want to go earlier than handguns, and then an army standard and some Alabardieri (halberdiers) to bulk things out for bigger points totals.

All I have to do now is hope that the curse of the “first time on the tabletop” doesn’t apply at the World’s!

First of the Venetian Foot Knights

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As regualr visitors will know, I have been building a 28mm Later Italian Condotteri Venetian army to use on the To The Strongest competition circuit this year.

It’s a nice little army: five units of mounted Later Knights with Lances provide the punch, with light cavalry and foot units in support.

One problem I might encounter, however, is facing elephants. I know it isn’t exactly historically accurate for Venetians to expect to face elephants in combat (although I understand it’s hellish difficult to get them out of the canals once they’re in!) but this is competition gaming so a certain flexibility of approach is required.

Anyway, back to the problems facing of facing elephants. In TTS, cavalry of all types do very badly against elephants as the horses, unless they are familiar with pachyderms, won’t close with the beasts, giving an elephant base a huge advantage in any combat with them.

The solution is to dismount some or all of the Knights, who are somewhat slower but equally formidable on foot: their Lances change to 2-handed cutting weapons, giving a bonus in combat, and they gain extra bonuses when saving against missile fire.

Elephants? We poop on elephants!

As I like to be able to field the right figures rather than proxies or mark a mounted unit as dismounted, and its a good excuse to buy more figures, I decided I needed a foot equivalent for each of my five Later Knights bases. Here are the first two.

These are Perry Foot Knights: easy to build and even easier to paint: black with a silvery steel drybrush then add a bit of detail as required.

Three more bases to go!

Knights & Crossbowmen

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With the first tournament of the year (the Welsh Open) rapidly approaching, I have upped the speed at which I’m producing units for my new Later Italian Condotteri army.

First up are the last of the infantry that I need: a unit of Crossbowmen:

These are Perry platics taken from the Mercenary Infantry 1450-1500 box, and very nice they are too.

The Crossbowmen are pretty easy to build, and you have a nice variety in poses for both shooters and those reloading.

Next up are the first of the Later Knights, also Perry plastics:

The horses were fairly easy to put together: the only tricky bit was getting the surcoats to line up properly at both front and back.

The knights were a bit tougher: head and left arm were easy, but getting the lance-arm in the right place was a real pain as, presumably in the interests of pose flexibility, the lance and the arm come in two parts: the lance and the hand holding it, and the handless arm. Getting it all to fit together after wrestling with the horse surcoats and the rest of the rider was not fun!

They are, however, easy to paint: lots of good detail and relief. The panels on the horse surcoats come with some embellishments and studs along the seams which, as you can hopefully see, can be painted in a bronze/gold colour that really makes the figure pop. The rest of the model is mostly armour: black undercoat highlighted with steel.

All in all I love the look I’ve achieved with the Knights…almost enough to make up for the pain that was the lance arm!

More Condotta

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Here’s a few more figures off the Christmas-break production line: more later Venetian Condotta types for the 2024 To The Strongest competition season. Let’s just hope I can get them all finished before Wales at the end of the month or it will be back to my trusty Romans!

First up are a couple of units of schioppettiere light infantry handgunners.

And next some lancieri delle ordinanze pikemen:

All three units are Perry plastics in 28mm, and from the same box of Mercenary Infantry. As I paid only £18.50 for the box, and still have eight infantry to add to my next unit, that seems like very good value to me indeed.

Do I find having to build the miniatures a pain? Well, yes…but no more of a pain than prepping an all metal or plastic figure for painting and, as you will hopefully see in the pics above, you do get the chance to build figures with individual character: there are some weary looking individual in that pike block!

I still need to build more infantry and all the horse before the army is ready to hit the gaming table. I got a lot done over Christmas (32 infantry, 12 cavalry) but I can see it’s going to be tough to finish everything in time for my first tournament.