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Author Topic: Charlie's 15th century - Some long-overdue Burgundians! (Feb 28)  (Read 152704 times)

Offline Charlie_

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Time for an update I think.

After some time of mostly painting cavalry, I've given them a break and have been back on the infantry. I have been multi-tasking, adding lots more crossbows and handguns, expanding the polearm units I showed on an earlier page, getting to work on my first pike block, and adding more artillery.... I haven't got any of these things to show you finished with this post, but rather just a select few miniatures I am rather pleased with, including lots of conversions.

First off, some of my favourites of the recent crossbowmen and handgunners. The one on the far left has a metal Foundry head, the one in the middle has had a leg-swap, and the second from right is converted from a metal pikeman.



Some more. Three of these are converted from the Perry 'Italian crossbowmen' set (which I painted back on page 3) but with head swaps to 'Germanify' them - very effective and simply conversions. The one in mail has a Foundry head, the other two are from other Perry metals. Also the one on the far left has the body from the Italian command set with plastic arms and head. The one in the middle is from Conquest Miniatures - he looks a little short compared to the others, but it's just his pose really (the Conquest WOTR scultpts are good scale matches with Perrys).



Here's another two Italians with new German heads, again from Foundry sculpts.



Here's a few of my favourite men-at-arms. The one on the far left is from Steel Fist, actually from one of the 16th century sets.



And talking of Steel Fist... these three use bodies from the armoured Swiss that Oliver sculpted for Simon (painterman), who has them for sale on his blog (link). These mix them with plastic Perry parts. The one the left is SF body with Perry arms and head.... The middle one is SF body and halberd, Perry arms and head... And the one on the right is all SF except the Perry head. I have others which I have assembled as Swiss pikemen, but they won't be painted for some time yet.





And moving on... I guess I should show you my English mercenaries, the Company Of The Rose. Now this project started as a Game of Thrones one, and I painted up lots of archers, but when I decided to switch to historical and set it in Germany, I suddenly had lots of longbowmen which I wasn't sure what to do with. So I've put most of them together as one group of mercenary English archers.

The core of the group is two 20-strong units of mixed bows and men-at-arms.









There are a few Crusader and Steel Fist sculpts in the units... Here's a close-up of three of the Crusader longbowmen. Very nice sculpts I think, and they fit in great with the Perry plastics (though note I have replaced the bow hands with plastic Perry ones).



And here's the captain of the company, the engigmatic Englishman Sir John Doe, veteran of the Hundred Years War. Well, he fought in France in the 1450s before the English were sent packing, but then stayed behind and started working for the French. These days he is finding employment in Germany where mercenaries are always welcome! He claims to be a knight, but who knows who he really is?



And a group shot of the company, with some additional generic longbow units.



That's it for now!
« Last Edit: November 10, 2017, 02:57:45 PM by Charlie_ »

Offline Wellington Bonaparte

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Cracking stuff, excellent conversions and as always your brush work is superb  :)
Stand Fast - Strike Sure -  Carry On - Bydand

Offline Captain Blood

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Tasty  :-*

Now just to touch in all those metal studs on the brigandines...  ;)

Offline rivers3162

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Always great to see more stuff from you.  The conversions are very nice and your massed units look superb!

Offline commissarmoody

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are the Foundry sculpts heads from other Foundry mins? Or do they make separate heads now?
"Peace" is that brief, glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading.

- Anonymous

Offline DintheDin

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Great paintjob! En masse they look very realistic! I like your color palette!
Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. – Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Offline Charlie_

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Now just to touch in all those metal studs on the brigandines..

I'll do it the same time I paint all their eyes and fingernails!

are the Foundry sculpts heads from other Foundry mins? Or do they make separate heads now?

Oh no, they are hacked off the old Foundry WOTR range, sculpted also by the Perry brothers way back in the late 80s. These two to sets, to be specific....
https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/late-medieval-archers-crossbowmen-and-handgunners/products/med116-crossbowmen-advancing
https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/late-medieval-archers-crossbowmen-and-handgunners/products/med122-archers-preparing-to-shoot

Offline commissarmoody

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 lol ha! that's what I figured.

Offline Tonhel

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Very nice units!

Offline ChrisB76

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Wow, stunning work!
As I am just starting with historic games, very inspiring ;)

Offline Breazer

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    • Breaz Brushes
Re: Charlie's 15th century - The Company Of The Rose, and other stuff (10th Nov)
« Reply #100 on: November 13, 2017, 01:00:42 PM »
Awesome stuff Charlie... I'm amazed by the amount of models you churn out! I love the conversions and I'd love to see all your models set up once as one large force!

Offline Anselm van Helsing

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Re: Charlie's 15th century - The Company Of The Rose, and other stuff (10th Nov)
« Reply #101 on: November 14, 2017, 12:16:44 PM »
Awesome work. Those head swaps work splendidly.  :)

Offline tomrommel1

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Re: Charlie's 15th century - The Company Of The Rose, and other stuff (10th Nov)
« Reply #102 on: November 15, 2017, 07:24:50 AM »
great additions
In hoc signo vinces

Have a look at www.wargamesgazette.com

Offline Charlie_

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Re: Charlie's 15th century - My first pike block!!!!!!!! (31st Dec)
« Reply #103 on: December 31, 2017, 09:41:43 AM »
I've finally finished my first pike block, which I promised myself I'd have done by the end of the year.

A bit of rambling before the pics....

I've been quite particular with which sculpts I choose, as I'm very fussy when it comes to posing of units, and both polearms and pikes really need to be done right in my opinion. For my previous infantry polearm blocks, I chose to have the back ranks with weapons shouldered (using the Perry plastics, shouldered pikes converted to polearms) with various different 'weapons lowered' poses for the front ranks.

For my pikes I've done it a bit different, in that they are 99% metal. I used the various metal pike/halberdier sets in the Perry European Army ranges (https://www.perry-miniatures.com/index.php?cPath=23_64&osCsid=vv115stbrebbftlkivuhihemk2). Now these are not without their problems, as the casting quality isn't great... It's mostly notable on the hands, which in some cases are really ugly mishappen things. But once painted up and put in a unit, I don't think it's an issue!
The two sets with lowered weapons are definitely the best, and very useful. The least useful is the 'armoured advancing' one, as 4 out of the 6 sculpts are in very odd leaning forward poses which makes them quite tricky to use. That leaves the 'unarmoured advancing' one for the majority of the back ranks. Here's where head swaps come in. Almost all of these sculpts are very easy to do headswaps on, either with eachother, or using both Perry plastic heads and metal heads from Foundry sculpts. So though the back ranks are made up almost entirely of the same 6 sculpts, there are no 'doubles' (actually that's a lie, there is one double in this unit). I wish, wish, WISH the Perrys would release a few more polearm/pike sets in this range, in particular just a couple more of the useful 'advancing' poses in jacks, brigandines and mail. But I don't think I should hold my breath....

Another thing I've done different here is the front two ranks are done 6 to a base, three 60mmx40mm bases. This is to make it much easier to rank them up. All my other stuff units are based individually, and the back two ranks in this unit still are. This won't be a problem for using the unit in games (my rules have individual casualty removal) as by the time it's reduced to less than half strength it's unlikely to still be on the table....

Here's some pics of front rank pikemen, all with headswaps. The first two are plastic heads, the third is a head from a different metal.





And this one is a Steel Fist sculpt, with a plastic Perry head (actually the head itself is a conversion, swapping out the bevor for an unarmoured lower half).



There's also another conversion in the unit which uses Steel Fist arms on a plastic Perry body, and the standard bearer has a Steel Fist head.

Ok, here's the unit!











They are supposed to be 'generic' German or Flemish pikemen. The flag can easily be swapped out for others I have, so they can be 're-aligned' for each game as necessary.
The flag itself features the badge of one of my (fictional) German nobles.
I have a second pike block on my workbench, using much the same models but with a more Swiss flavour... But I haven't started painting yet, so that won't be finished for a long time.

Offline Charlie_

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Re: Charlie's 15th century - My first pike block!!!!!!!!! (31st Dec)
« Reply #104 on: December 31, 2017, 09:43:27 AM »
And some close-up shots.

Note the one in the blue hood - this sculpt can be head-swapped like the others, but requires a bit of green stuff to re-build the hood and a suitable head for it to work with.



I'm pretty pleased with my technique for painting yellow. This unit is much more colourful than my earlier polearm blocks, both because more of the models are in coats rather than brigandines and jacks, and I also seem to be using brighter reds and greens these days.






 

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