Well as I've been stuck at home for a few days due to the snow, I've had a chance to do what I've been meaning to do for ages - smarten up all my infantry polearm units for a photoshoot.
But first.... cannons!
Here's my little artillery park as it currently stands.
The two on the left are Perry Miniatures, the one on the right is Foundry (so actually also sculpted by the Perrys way back in 1984 apparently). The Perry guns are very fragile and fiddly to assemble and paint, but worth it. The Foundry one is blockier, simpler in design and less fragile (though you do need to provide your own axle for some reason). They go well together. I've also got a larger Foundry gun and a organ gun from Old Glory which will be painted up eventually.
Here's all the artillery crew I currently have, 13 in total, so enough for 4 guns if need be. The first 8 are from the light gun sets, the next 3 are for the bombard set, and the last 2 are converted from the labourers set.
And manning the guns....
Ok, now on to my infantry.
These are not all new, in fact they include some of the very first ones I painted when I started this project 2.5 years ago. Some of the older ones here were starting to luck a bit scruffy compared to the fresher ones, so over the past few days I went through them all one by one, adding a wash here, a repair there, and giving them all another coat of matt varnish so they blend in well with the newer ones.
These units I have already posted back when they smaller, on page 2 of this thread. Now they are bigger, have been re-arranged and have got new flags.
There are 5 units of halberdiers / polearm troops, which currently form the bulk of this project. Current unit sizes are a 3x8, two 3x9s, a 3x10 and a 4x10. The smaller ones will probably catch up with the bigger ones over time.
This last unit is the only one all in livery jackets. When this project started as a Game of Thrones thing, they were supposed to be House Tully troops. I wish I had kept them in 'neutral' colours now, but it doesn't matter. You see I've got lots of extra flags, so each unit can be 're-aligned' for every game, but this one will always be in red and blue. I am thinking some time in the future when the collection is much bigger I will do flags and commanders to make it work for the War of Burgundian Succession, and these could become French infantry with the addition of white crosses.
Ok, here's all 5 units together plus the pike unit I showed back on page 8.
Some more angles....
A forest of halberds.
From behind.
Polearm melee!
Pike vs halberd.
The front ranks of these units are full of the more interesting models, both plastics and metals, including the more heavily armoured men-at-arms. The rear ranks with shouldered weapons are mostly plastics, and it's some of these that are the oldest paintjobs in the collection. Here's a few of my favourites.
I also put a few of the metal 'Swiss' sculpts in there, mostly with headswaps to make them more generic (swapping the hats and feathers for helmets). These are all wearing coats, and are generally in brighter colours compared to the plastics which mostly wear jacks and brigandines.
And that's it for now, hope you like the pics. The next post (give me a few more weeks) will be detailing all the commanders and explaining the flags and heraldry I use (some of which you can see here obviously).
25 January 2014, 08:31:28 PM
