Christmas BIG battle Venice vs HRE

[Erik]

New year, new wargaming project (surprise!)
In December I visited Venice with my family and was totally sold. It is, in my humble opinion, the most atmospheric medieval/renaissance city ever. Especially with a nice combination of season and covid leaving the city almost to ourselves.

Coming home I was nowhere near finished with Venice. First up: watching Indiana Jones, The Last Crusade, second playing a lot of Age of Empires with the Italian civilization. Sadly not enough, so I reasoned I needed a new Venetian miniature army.  Luckily Assault Group was happy to help me with a really good army deal (and some lovely miniatures).  I threw in an extra pike unit giving me a total of 72 pike men, 48 arquebuses, 24 elmeti , 12 stradiots, 12 mounted crossbowmen and a little extra. It’s not enough for a complete army but combined with my already quite large renaissance miniature collection it should be plenty to make an army that has a clear Venetian image. Especially with some very nice flags I bought from Pete´s Flags

I will use this tread to track my painting progress and hopefully through in an AAR or two.

First up a picture of the package from Assault Group. 4,5 kg. of lead. That’s a personal record. All packed in blister boxes . Cant remenber when I last held so many of them.





I started work on a group of 24 pikemen and will hopefully have some pictures ready by the end of the week. Stay tuned!

Erik

[Atheling]

Fab stuff. I'm doing Spanish for Cerignola 1503 and Spanish and Italians for Ravenna 1512

It will be great to see your results Erik.

[magyar]

Wow, that's a lot of lead  Interesting project, looking forward to continuation! 

[commissarmoody]

If you want to read about some more Venetian action.
There is the book, "Ventian War of 1487 or the war of Rovereto" by Florian Messner and Hagen Seehase. It's in German and English.
And the Christian Cameron Book series Tom Swan and also his Chivalry series. They do spend a lot of time in Venice, Italy, Greece and the al the places in-between.

[JollyBob]

While I am very jealous of the amount of lead and your commitment to a project, maybe you should be careful posting your address on a public forum...? 

[Erik]

Commissarmoody
Thank you for your recommendation. I will try to get hold of those right away.

JollyBob
I envy your eyesight  . I thought you count read that. Oh well, friendly minded people will always be welcome for a cup of coffee.


Cheers

[fred]

That is a true pile of lead

Regarding the address, its super easy to zoom in on an iPad!

[Vanth]

That is a true pile of lead

Regarding the address, its super easy to zoom in on an iPad!

On a PC screen you don't even need to zoom...

[commissarmoody]

Commissarmoody
Thank you for your recommendation. I will try to get hold of those right away.

Happy to help,
Cheers!

[Erik]

First pikeblock finished and based. Assault group sell their infantry unit in groups of 24 and cavalry in groups of 12. I paint my army in these groups to ease the process and planning (and avoid having to paint 72 pikemen in one go). Depending on what ruleset I use, they can always be grouped in larger units.

I had initially decided, that my Venetians would have a very uniformed look with all red and white clothes. After having painted the first 12, I got bored and started experimenting with other color combination. The end result is a unit that is more yellow and red, than red and white. I will see if I have more success with the next unit, though yellow does feature a lot in the Venetian flags.
 
Speaking of flag. Pete’s flags are beautiful and very high quality. I often find that when I bend the flags or bush then together around the flagpole, they crack and loose color. Not Pete’s flag. They are very sturdy.







Next up is a unit of 12 elmeti. Does anyone have an opinion on their uniform or lack of that. Are they individual knight bringing their own individual gear to the fight or are they primarily clothed by their employer?

Cheers
Erik

[MaleGriffin]

WOW!

[Dr. Zombie]

They look great. I like it that they are not to uniform looking.

Soon we will have to take a break from Cold War gaming and give these guys some time on the gaming table.

[Erik]

I have finished the next unit for my Venetian army.  As mentioned earlier the first unit of 12 elmeti. I ended giving them different clothing but using somewhat same pattern for the colors. The end result is at unit that is individual but still has an overall uniformed look (in my opinion). I gave them two flags for a various reasons. First of all it looks great with more flags in a unit. Second of all I want to have the possibility to split the unit in smaller units and still have a flag in each unit. Third it gives me an opportunity to use some of the other great looking Italian flags from Pete’s flags. And lastly quite a few of the lances where broken when I got them, so there where not enough for a full lance armed unit. 











I will move on to another unit of pike, this time trying to keep them all red and white. Pike and elmeti make up the larger part of my army, so I will concentrate my effort there to begin with.
Till next time


Erik

[nickdives]

Very nice painting, just been sorting my chaps out for a demonstration game next weekend at Bournmouth. Some were a bit mixed up but seeing yours I have a few knights sorted out, the main Venitian flag is ok, just a couple of the others had me flumuxed!

[Baron von Wreckedoften]

I do like this project and am very impressed with your painting.  I am considering an Italian army for Field of Glory: Renaissance (FoG:R) which I want to be able to use as Venetian and/or Milanese, possibly also morphing into Genoese at some point.  Any advice with on-line sources for clothing etc?