6mm Crusades

[Osmoses]

Recently began a 6mm Crusades project. This is another 'conversion' from 15mm. I had Crusades in 15mm but there was no way I was ever going to be able to paint enough figures to do all the sides I wanted, and these days I prefer the mass effect of 6mm anyway. The big loss is the detail on the shields and flags, but I'm thinking having a lot more figures will make up for it.

Anyway, first thing was to do a bunch of Seljuks to do battles between Seljuk city-states, then add the First Crusaders later.

First set of figures, all Baccus.







The bases are 50mm frontage. 40mm deep for the horse archers and 30mm for the heavier cavalry. I went for 50mm as I think it looks a bit better than 40mm, and I thought I might end up using a grid-based game and that would likely use 10cm squares.

[Osmoses]

Rules for me came down to Ironbow, Deus Vult, Shattered Lances or maybe a conversion of the board game Infidel. In an ideal world some blend of all of them would exist, but currently I'm leaning towards Shattered Lances. It's a fairly tricky set of rules to get the hang of, but once you do it's probably easier to pick up again after a break than Deus Vult or Ironbow. Shattered Lances is currently very hard to get hold of, however.

First few games between Seljuk-style forces went well. The real test will come when it's Seljuks v Franks.

[batu]

Very cool looking! Have you looked for 3d printed 6mm miniatures? Or are you committed to Baccus?

[Osmoses]

I've not seen any 3D print figures. I'm going to be doing the period from the First Crusade through to Hattin, so no 3rd Crusade. I am going to be using some of the Lazy Forger 3D buildings and I could really do with some 'Arab' civilian types to populate some town bases, but I've not found any (other than the GHQ modern ones).

[Atheling]

Very evocative.... 

[bigredbat]

Looking great! You do get a sense of mass with 6mm.

[Inkpaduta]

That looks very impressive. Really look of a major battle.

[wkeyser]

I played Shattered lances by Brendan Moyle 2005, years ago and was really impressed how it represented the difference between the Muslim armies and Christian armies.  I would love to do these in 10mm. 

Brendan obviously did a lot of research into the period and warfare. Some very cleaver mechanics that capture the flavor of the period.

[Osmoses]

Yes, I'm liking them so far. The writing style takes some getting used to, more like board game rules, but I actually prefer rules that are written like that, there's less ambiguity.

I thought long and hard about 10mm. I'd done Crusades in 15mm and you lose a lot of detail with flags and shields going down to 6mm, 10mm would have been a decent compromise. In the end I stuck with 6mm as I don't really want to be getting terrain in another scale, and 10mm would have added a lot more painting time. But I can see where it would work well for the period.

[Osmoses]

The first crusaders to be painted are, appropriately enough, First Crusaders. Command stands with (conjectural) banners for Baldwin, Godfrey, Bohemond and Tancred.

[Zingara]

Looking good. Look forward to seeing a report of them in action :-)

[Maniac]

That's very impressive work.  Infantry in 6mm is no easy thing to get looking nice.

The bases with the horse arches running in a circle nicely capture the feel.

[Inkpaduta]

I paint 6mm. I am always amazed at how much better people paint them than I do.
How does one do that level of detail? These are just beautiful figures.

[Osmoses]

The bases with the horse arches running in a circle nicely capture the feel.

Thanks. You can get a bit more space on the bases with 6mm, so it's easier to do that sort of thing. Though I think I would've preferred it if they hadn't made a 'shooting backwards' figure and then not have to work out how to accommodate them..

[LouieN]

A really great setup and army.  Well done