Converting Old Glory pikemen - now PAINTED, plus something else

[Charlie_]

So for a long time I've considered getting some Old Glory pikemen to mix into my Perry pike units. What put me off was the fact that there are no good pictures available of them (the pics on the Old Glory site are a joke), and they only come in packs of 30.

But in the end I thought what the hell, let's take a gamble, if they are not use-able I'll put them back on ebay.

I got one pack of the Italian Wars Swiss 'heavy' pikemen and one of the WOTR 'flemish' pikemen.
The Swiss seem designed for the very early Italian Wars, i.e. Fornovo 1495, and would work just fine for anything in the last few decades of the 15th century, which is what I want. They are all in heavy armour / half-harness, and some wear coats over the top with slashed openings on the sleeves. The heads are mostly really good, a lot of them in visored sallets, some with bevors, and a few beards.
The WOTR ones are a bit odd, some of them seem rather dated for the 15th century and would fit in fine as Scots at Bannockburn in 1314.... though some do wear visored sallets which definitely puts them in the 15th century. They are all wearing padded jacks. Some of the faces are quite ugly.

So how do they scale with Perry Miniatures 1450-1500 range, which I hope to mix them in with? They are definitely shorter. Then I realised.... replace their legs! Not only will it give them a bit more height, but the original legs are very stunted and out of proportion, and in weird poses.

So that's what I did.

First the Swiss ones......



And the Flemish...... The conversion on the right has had a head swap as well.



I had to search hard to find which of the plastic Perry legs would work - I only found a few that did. The metal legs on one of the Swiss is actually from a Wargames Foundry Swiss pikeman. The joins were messy, but a little bit of green stuff to fill the gaps did the trick. I also had to hack off their sword scabbards in the process, which left some unsightly bare metal, but replacing them with plastic Perry swords (and some from Steel Fist) covered it up, and the addition of some carefully placed bucklers helped too.

What do you think?

(I also now have lots of spares I won't be likely using, if anyone wants to try their hand at this themselves contact me!)

[OSHIROmodels]

I think they work well 

It'll be interesting to see them painted.

[painterman]

Fantastic conversions - I'd never have thought of it!
I'm going to try out those Swiss, as they pike upright pose is very useful and I need a lot of them, so useful alternatives to Perrys.
Assume you can easily swop heads too (for Perry swiss)?
Simon.

[Charlie_]

Simon,
I have lots of spares if you want them. Though I've used the ones I like the look of the most, perhaps the best ones? I will still have lots left over though.

The Old Glory Swiss are all in identical poses - it looks like they all were sculpted on the same dolly or two, all with their right leg forward and pikes at the same angle. Personally I wouldn't want a whole unit of clones like that, so I'm just using a few to scatter around.
There are LOTS of variants of the same pose, mostly in armour, some with coats over the top, various different heads (mostly sallets) looking in different directions. There were only a few duplicates in the 30 I got. I don't know if they are a random assortment or not. Some have beards, I hot 2 or 3 with beards and Swiss soft hats with feathers. They would take head swaps fine I'm sure, but the lower jaw is quite close to the raised left arm so removing them might not be entirely clean. I chose the ones with heads I liked, so didn't swap any.
They are the 'heavy pikemen' set, PIS-002 https://www.oldgloryuk.com/swiss/17/39/78/73
PIS-001 seems to be all unarmoured pikemen, I didn't get them.

The upright pike pose from the Swiss is indeed very useful, as the Perry range is I feel incomplete in this area, they really should have released just a couple more packs of metal pikemen in use-able poses with a good variety of armour!

The plastic legs I found worked were from the armoured body in the Bills & Bows / Mercenaries sets, and one of the ones from the Foot Knights set. Probably only ones with the right leg forward will work.

I am also going to use several of them as standard bearers, a good pose for not getting in the way of all the pikes and polearms around the flag.

The Flemish are WOR-108. https://www.oldgloryuk.com/wars-of-the-roses/3/51/89/88
They are a bit more of a mixed bag, with more diverse poses. Not all are entirely use-able for 1450-1500. The two in my pics are probably the most useful, I got three of each in my set. One in particular is very much a blank canvas - easy to remove and replace the legs and the head comes off cleanly, I think I'll use all three of this one. I was particularly hopeful for this set being use-able so as to get some padded jacks into the pike blocks.

The plastic legs I used are some of the standing ones for the bills & bows / mercenaries boxes.

[painterman]

Thanks Charlie!
PM sent

[HappyChappy439]

These are looking great, can't wait to see how they look painted! Will be interesting to see how they blend in to larger blocks.

Thanks for showing pictures of the unconverted ones too, it's surprisingly difficult to get images of the Old Glory range!

[Captain Blood]

Those are very clever and ambitious conversions Charlie. Most Old Glory figures are pretty terrible, although there are a few gems in amongst some of the ranges. So harvesting for body parts like this makes good sense. Be interested to see them painted up.

[Atheling]

Nice work Charlie.... you have improved them enormously!! 

[Charlie_]

Ok, here they are painted up! Awaiting to join their units as part of a big re-basing/re-organising process.

These two are the 'Flemish' ones from the WOTR range, the one on the left has a Perry head, both have Perry sword/axe and buckler.



These are the armoured Swiss from the Italian Wars range. All have kept the original heads, but have new legs and swords. The glaive is Perry, the poleaxe is Front Rank.



I'm pretty pleased with how they've turned out!!!



And now something else.... still in my quest for more pike/polearm models. These all originally were unarmoured, wearing just shirts/doublets. They have had padded jacks sculpted over the top (not by me - they were a commission job). I've got ten of these in total, these are the ones I just finished painting this evening. Scattered throughout my existing infantry units, they will add more variety and a better balance of armour/clothing styles.
The two on the left are Perry, the one on the right is Foundry. They have all had head swaps.

[Atheling]

They've come out really well Charlie!! 

[HappyChappy439]

Agreed, they've come out great, nicely done!

Though, you can really see the quality gap between the Perry and Old Glory head sculpts, huh? The visored sallet in the first one has a bit of a no-neck problem in the sculpt!

[Charlie_]

Agreed, they've come out great, nicely done!

Though, you can really see the quality gap between the Perry and Old Glory head sculpts, huh? The visored sallet in the first one has a bit of a no-neck problem in the sculpt!

Yes, that one in particular does have a weird deformed lower face. But he's going to be in the middle of 50 Pikemen, so it should go unnoticed!

[Hu Rhu]

Wonderful conversions and some great painting too.   

[Breazer]

These are some great conversions Charlie. Love em! Cant wait to see how the entire unit will look!

[Condottiere]

Nice legs!

Wish I'd thought of that...

What do you use the amputated torsos for?

Would there be a niche market for separately cast legs?

It's just like creating true scale Space Marines, but without the expense!

Could the stunted legs be possibly due to the figures being advertised as 25mm - eyes or head? - and the sculptor forgot during the design stage? If so, Old Glory's goof isn't that uncommon across manufacturers. Old Glory does get plenty of flack, especially from GW enthusiasts, others referring to the figures as fish weights, but the painted ones in WAB: Vlad the Impaler looked okay. I had considered purchasing a pack of Italian infantry, but only 5 variants in a pack of 30 and those pics look atrocious, even by AD 2000 standards!