Yes indeed. One of the banes of wargames magazines has always been godawful recycled history articles.
If I wanted to know about the story of the Danish Navy in the Schleswig-Holstein War, or some similarly obscure and narrow historical topic, I'd buy a flipping book on it.
What I don't want clogging up my wargames magazines, are 12 page articles where some idiot has gone off, read a couple of books, and then written a short, dumbed down history of 'topic X' pretending he's some kind of expert. Bloody awful.
The old WI used to suffer from this a lot. Less so, now it's mostly FOW... So that's something.
Anyway... Back on topic...
Well 15th Panzer’s wonderful posts this week have shamed me into action.
Seeing 60 WOTR horsemen en masse is spectacular. I decided the least I could do was finally complete the two boxes of Mounted Men at Arms I bought at Salute, to give me a paltry 24 (although I do also have 15 or so of the metal mounted WOTR figures painted).
You can see the previous 18 plastic figures in the thread somewhere above.
Number 19 has been done for some time, but he’s a ‘special’ for the front cover of a forthcoming edition of Wargames Soldiers & Strategy, so I have to keep him under wraps for a while…
Meanwhile, here are numbers 20 – 24. Or the final five, as we Battlestar addicts like to say.
The first of these is a standard build from the box. Having complusively, chopped and fiddled with most of the others so far, I thought I ought to make up at least one model as the Perrys intended.
Here he is, a very parfait gothic knight in his German armour, lance erect (ooer) on his armoured charger.
Next up, an Italian mercenary knight. He wears a barbute from the Mercenaries box. Apart from that he’s a straight build. I’ve shaved the studs off his horse trappings though, and reinforced them with some liquid Green Stuff to make them stand a little prouder. Frankly I’m sick of painting those studs, so I’ve pretty much got rid of them for these last few models…
Next, a lord urging his troops to greater efforts. He wears an armet with finial from the WOTR command sprue. Everything else is from the Mounted MAA set. I’ve added feathers to the horse’s head wearing the chamfron. First time I’ve used these – they look quite nice I think. The horse wears the full Italian style barding.
Next, something a bit more creative. This knight uses the armet with visor raised from the WOTR command sprue, and the sword arm from the same source. The horse wears just the front peytrals from the Italian barding, and on its hind quarters, I’ve dispensed with the moulded-on trappings altogether and used strip plasticard to make up some more flamboyant harness. Studs have been added with liquid Green Stuff, and a bit of filling proved necessary, as you can see.
Finally, number 24. Similar remodelling on the hind quarters and I’ve reinforced the studs on the front horse trappings, as the mouldings are in very shallow relief. The rider is a straight build from the MAA set, and a right haughty bastard. I can say no more.
I aim to get all these finished and painted over the autumn, along with various other stuff I need to get done. And that will be my Mounted Men At Arms done. Finally
Then this thread can end