Perry plastic mounted HYW knights up for pre-order (bit of a review, P.4)

[jaytee]

They certainly look nice and fill a gap. Now you can have massed French cavalry suicide charges for less money..

[Griefbringer]

Now you can have massed French cavalry suicide charges for less money..

Not to mention massed English cavalry suicide charges (e.g. Bauge 1421).

[Captain Harlock]

Mine arrived today and have thoroughly enjoyed assembling some of them! These are 4 straight builds from the box, albeit with a shield from a Fireforge box added onto one of them - they will be being used for a Song of Ice and Fire project so ignore the slight anachronism.

With afew modifications like adding some horns on helms or crests, they would be just right for asoiaf

[Antonio J Carrasco]

Uff! Luckily for me, Agincourt era is not my poison, otherwise I would be throwing out of the window my New Years Purpose of not buying more miniatures until I finish what I have in my painting table!

[Griefbringer]

I received my first box today. On a quick glance the parts look excellent, though a closer examination needs to wait a day or two.

[Captain Blood]

Okay... Thought I’d chip in with my initial experiences using a few parts from this excellent new set…

I don’t do HYW (and I’m not about to start another new period!) so I’m mainly going to be using these for my Game of Thrones armies. But also to kit-bash with the Wars of the Roses plastics to create some interesting new variations by mixing in some of the earlier style armour and weapons. There are lots of useful components in this new set for that - although the fact that the HYW heads come fixed onto the bodies is somewhat limiting, and requires knifework to achieve headswaps.
I do appreciate the bascinet with mail aventail characteristic of this period would have been more difficult to portray using separate heads. But I still think it would have been better. All the other medieval Perry plastic sets (apart from the HYW knights frames) have separate heads using shallow ball and socket joints, which makes for endless and glorious customisation possibilities.

Is mashing up these kits from either end of the C15th strictly kosher though?
Well… Given that this new set has a notional end date of 1429 - and the WOTR sets a notional start date of 1450, whilst I appreciate that armour styles evolved quite a lot in sophistication between, say, Agincourt in 1415 and Bosworth 70 years later, there’s certainly going to be a crossover period in the middle of that timespan, where one would have seen earlier and later armour styles used at the same time and quite possibly intermixed. So I don’t have any qualms about mashing up parts drawn from the two periods.



The practical considerations are actually slightly more challenging than the philosophical ones though.

In addition to the ‘fixed head’ issue mentioned above, it’s also true to say that (in common with the HYW foot knights / infantry sets), Alan’s HYW plastics are noticeably bigger than Michael’s WOTR plastics. Taller, arms longer, torsos a bit heftier, and so on. This isn’t hugely noticeable TBH, but it does show up a little bit when you kit-bash them together.

It’s even more noticeable with the mounted figures because this set uses Michael’s original plastic horse frame from the WOTR sets (except for a couple of extra heads now included on the main frame). So you now have taller figures sitting on (relatively) smaller horses. And they look a little oversized to my eye, although I’m sure to many people it would be barely noticeable.

But if you look at my first two hybrid figure builds here, you’ll notice that the rider based on the HYW body sits a fair bit taller in the saddle than the rider based on a WOTR light cavalry body.



One could never accuse the Perrys of being stingy with components. Their kits are stuffed full of parts and generous to a fault compared with all the other plastic manufacturers. Incredible value for money. But I do dearly wish they'd made another horse frame. I do appreciate that there is an astonishing number of variations possible from just the six horse halves and four heads on the original WOTR horse frame, but I have made an awful lot of them now, and would have loved some alternatives. Plus I am sick and tired of painting those fecking studs on the tack! Something different would have been nice 
 
Other points I’ve noticed…

As Simon points out in his review on his Harness and Array blog, the new horse armour parts are very nicely done and extremely useful in providing additional variety, but (perhaps predictably) for such fiddly parts, they're slightly tricky to fit snugly in place, and how well they fit seems to depend to some extent on the positioning of the horse’s front legs.
I bent the front chainmail sections slightly to get a better fit, but I’m still going to have to use a little Green Stuff to fill the slight gap.

The weapons, arms and accessories included in the kit are all absolutely lovely, of course, although looking again at the monster falchion I have given one of these two riders, for a Perry piece, it does look slightly uncharacteristically outsized. (If that was solid steel, would anyone actually be able to lift a sword that huge, and wield it one handed? Still, it looks good though, so I’m turning a blind eye… )



Looking forward to knocking together a few more...

[Ogrob]

Nice builds there Captain. I've been playing around with some of the same components, in fact that very same Light Cavalry body features in the unit posted last weekend in my GoT log. Not had the nerve to slice of any aventailed (is that a word?) heads yet though, but I'm sure it will happen soon. I'm not even half way though the first of three boxes.

[Charlie_]

Interesting.

I think I'll have to try some of the armoured arms on the light cavalry bodies like you have shown - new lance poses for WOTR light cav will be very welcome. The actual arm armour style on the example you've shown really really isn't that different to the later era 'gothic' style, or general low-grade munitions armour....The one big difference is the gauntlets - these earlier gauntlets are very much of the Agincourt period. I was thinking though, by slicing / filing them down and a little bit of green stuff, they could be easily turned into leather gloves!

You are right they do seem to be noticeably taller and make the horses look somewhat smaller. Though perhaps the WOTR head you've put on the gambesoned body hasn't helped - should you perhaps have cut more of the neck off?

I definitely want to use those new horse heads on my late-era project - I don't think they look too different to the WOTR chamfrons, and actually quite similar to some early 16th century Gendarme horse armour I've seen. I think they'd be quite at home throughout the whole 15th century. Probably same goes for the mail bard and the little horse chest-plate bit.

As for the falchion - I don't think it looks oversized. The blades were pretty wide...... BUT they weren't massively heavy weapons, the blades were THIN, more razor-sharp slicers than heavy cleavers. So perhaps the blade being wider than a normal sword but thinner, and about the same length, means they don't really have much more mass?

[Captain Blood]

You are right they do seem to be noticeably taller and make the horses look somewhat smaller. Though perhaps the WOTR head you've put on the gambesoned body hasn't helped - should you perhaps have cut more of the neck off?

You're probably right Charlie, although I'm fairly confident I've put the head about where it ought to be anatomically speaking, but it may be a mm or two too high. That said, the HYW bodies are irrefutably taller and bulkier. From the bottom of the foot to the top of the shoulder joint, they are a good 3mm - 4mm taller at the shoulder.



The other thing you'll notice, is that because the mail aventail on the HYW torso comes down to the shoulder at quite an angle, the arms have to sit down off the shoulder. You can't visually cheat it by raising them a little higher than the shoulder joint itself - which would help.



And (also because of the angle the drop of the aventail is modelled at) if, when slicing off the bascinet-wearing HYW head, you cut off too much of the mail aventail, you are left with a wide, flat-topped expanse of shoulders!
I wanted to put a simple, open sallet head on this fellow. But the various heads I offered up all looked proportionately way too small - like a pin head. Which is why I went with one of the larger, visored sallets... 

So, all in all, the slight difference in height and stature together with the integral head/aventail issue, does mean that these are not the most straightforward prospect for kitbashing together with the WOTR sets. But still worth trying a few out for a bit of added variety

[Griefbringer]

My less ambitious plan is to try mixing spare arms/weapons from the cavalry kit with the foot MAA bodies, since those bodies tend to be a bit spartan in the selection of arms (does not help that I am not very fond of the lances/spears, and the two-handed warhammer in the English sprue is prone to breaking). Previously I have used a few arms from the French infantry set to give variety.

Having eye-balled the cavalry sprue, there is quite a number of arms, but some of them look like they have been specifically designed for men astride galloping horses, with long loose arms billowing in the wind - those might look a bit odd on a man walking steadily forward. Furthermore, some arms look like they would look best on certain bodies, so I should also think which bodies I want to use for cavalry - it does not help that few of the bodies have left arm moulded on that would look best with the matching right arm. If I go looting the cavalry sprues too liberally I may run into troubles later on when actually assembling them as cavalry.

The separate bodies all seem very nice, and I really want to try combining many of them with infantry lower bodies to provide some variety.

Also, having found the separate visors a bit fiddly, I do appreciate the figures with moulded on visors.

[painterman]

Some (simpler) conversions for the start of my figures - fiddling around with the chamfrons, to create a little variety.



Bit more on this on my blog. https://harness-and-array.blogspot.com
Cheers, Simon.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Simon, I really like those chamfron conversions. 
I will try that too.

[Captain Blood]

Splendid Simon. What a neat idea
Many people, including me, will now be pinching that

[Griefbringer]

Yesterday, I happened to place the new cavalry sprue next to a French (dismounted) men-at-arms sprue and noticed an interesting detail: at least four of the MAA bodies on the cavalry sprue are derived from the dismounted versions with some minor additions (two had left arm sculpted on, one had a slightly different bevor). This might be of interest for those who want to build mounted and dismounted versions of the same figure e.g. for skirmish gaming. However, as far as I can tell most of the mounted legs did not match straight up, so there might be a need for some converting (extending the arming coat, adjusting the belt).

Also the two "light horsemen" on the cavalry sprue looked like they have close equivalents on the French infantry sprue (the bodies with gambesons and plate leg greaves), which would allow for a few more mounted and dismounted variants. I also realised that I might need to do a bit of cutting and glueing to get a wider variety of heads for planned unit of mounted sergeants in gambeson...

As for the English (dismounted) knights sprue, as far as I could tell there was just one body that was directly used as a basis for a cavalryman upper body, and this is the same upper body that was also reused in the French dismounted MAA sprue, though with a longer arming coat (I do not really mind this recycling, since it is a great figure). However, some of the other upper bodies look like it could be possible to convert them a bit for closer resemblance to a mounted version - or just cutting them at the waist and replacing the upper body with one from the cavalry sprue.

Mind me, I am not planning on doing any of this at the moment, since I do not have any particular need for mounted and dismounted versions of the same figure, but I presume somebody else might appreciate the idea e.g. for individual commanders or for small skirmish bands.

[Captain Blood]

Useful insights, thank you.

You win the ‘super detailed observation of Perry plastic kits’ prize - you have out-nerded even me on that one