What initially started out as a one time purchase (yeah, we all know how *that* works), grew over time into the start of a new collection. I will say in my defense that all of these were bought at discount prices, so there's that.
Anyway, this project concerns the characters written by Alexandre Dumas and is, at present, based around the fabulous King & Country "Pike and Musket" range of figures, though occasional additions from other sources are likely to appear. For me, one of the main appeals of the K&C range is that the sculpting, while good, does not so much strive for intricate realistic detail as generally seen on high end 54mm models, but instead for infusing character to faces and details, much in the way that a well sculpted 28mm figure tends to have more character and soul than a realistically proportioned model of the same size.
Did I mention they are big? Nominally 60mm, they are in reality closer to 65mm, often not much shy of the 70mm top of hat mark. All in a nice hefty metal too. The paintjobs are good. They are only a three-shade painting style, but it works very well and they look great when viewed at the proper distance and pretty good when viewed up close.
It is also my intention to explore the possibility of using these figures for fun- and action packed skirmish gaming using the "...And all for one" rules you can download for free from the Eureka Miniatures site, which were introduced to me by Vikotnik and are an easy, quick to learn ruleset that allows for fastpaced minigames.
So far, I'm looking at 4 different factions from the K&C range: The King's Musketeers, The Cardinal and his Red Guard, The Witchfinder General and his lackeys, and The Duke of Buckingham and his bodyguards. The latter two should allow me to get double use out of some of the English figures. And of course some Noble and civilian characters. The Kronprinz TYW Spanish range looks appealing for a 5th faction but I'm worried the size will not be a good match. We'll see about that later.
Here are the figures I collected so far for the musketeers faction:
The titular characters:
Athos:
Porthos:
Aramis:
And the country boy, d'Artagnan:
And a generic musketeer because you need your redshirts for the game:
The musketeers need their king of course, so I also have a King Louis (actually it's a proxy using the ECW King Charles figure, but it works):
On the other side we have the Cardinal Richelieu and his Red Guard. The Red Guard are to the Cardinal what the Musketeers are to the King. Despite their political allegiance, they are all soldiers of France. Their numbers count both honourable men as ruthless rogues and killers. This is how far I got, with one more red guard model on the way:
The Cardinal Richelieu (great figure):
The count of Rochefort (my pictures don't do justice to the nice shading on him, he's one of the best figures I own):
Red Guard with musket:
Red Guard with sword (dueling, he's part of a set with the musketeer from earlier):
I've printed out a picture of some ruins on the work printer on an A3 sheet and another one of some grass to use as a backdrop for taking pictures. Works reasonably well.
Afternoon duel, under the watchful eyes of the King and Cardinal:
...turning into a sunset duel because these things take time:
Later updates in this project will show some paintjobs from yours truly as well.
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April 02, 2023, 05:16:58 AM
January 08, 2009, 08:49:28 PM
