My Agincourt French Infantry kit arrived yesterday from Perry Miniatures. I won't go on about how great it is, suffice to say it is indeed great!
I'm most interested in it for kitbashing purposes for my WOTR-era project. So the following pics are what I've attempted so far at combining the two kits.
I am trying to keep the 'out of date' armour from this kit at a minimum, and combining it with the WOTR era armour when possible so it's not so noticeable. I'm most interested in this kit for the spear arms, as it gives us some great new options for standing-at-ease poses, and spears can of course be easily converted into bills and other polearms, or banner poles.
I was worried at first that the bodies would be noticeably bigger than the WOTR ones, as I found with the Agicourt english kit, but I don't think it's really much of a problem at all. Judge for yourselves.
The one unfortunate thing is that swapping heads between the kits isn't easy, as the Agincourt ones mostly have mails aventails. It would be great to put some sallets onto the Agincourt bodies, but for most of them that would require some green stuff sculpting which I'm not very experienced with.
Anyway, here's what I've come up with so far!
For these three, I wanted to use the new bodies for some infantry with polearms to blend in with my WOTR billmen and such. The two on the left use the pike arms from the Mercenaries kit. One is converted into a bill, and the other uses one of the great axe heads from this new kit. The chap on the right is a straight build from the new kit except converting this spear into a bill. By using as many kettle hats and as few bascinets as possible, hopefully they will mix in nicely.
The one on the far left is a WOTR build using one of the new heads. The ones with neck plates (gorgets?) like this can be made to sit on the WOTR bodies very nicely by just building up a 'neck' with plastic shavings. The other two are WOTR builds using pairs of the new spear arms, one with a WOTR polearm blade. If you've ever tried to build loads of WOTR Perry billmen, you may have quickly tired of the same two bill poses like I have. This gives us some more options.
Another two using the new arms. On the axeman I actually shortened the axe haft quite a bit. One of those axes is REALLY LONG, more like a halberd missing the extra spikes! The arms on the chap on the right didn't fit perfectly onto the WOTR body, and needed some surgery to work. I don't think these two poses work quite so naturally, but they will do.
On the left is one of the new knights with arms from the WOTR foot knights. The two spearman I am REALLY happy with, they just use new arms on WOTR bodies. I'm planning to replace their plastic spears with longer metal pikes, and use them as standard bearers.
On the left, two of the new arms on a WOTR body. In the middle, the new crossbow arms on a WOTR body. I haven't really got on that well with the WOTR crossbow arms, these ones are quite a bit nicer I think. The bows are more slender, though overall bigger. The crossbow bolt quivers are much better than the oversized WOTR ones. The axeman on the right is one of my favorites, he is simply a WOTR body with a pair of axe arms from the new knights sprue. Simple but effective!
Anyway, hope you like it all. The kits do mix very nicely, though at times minor surgery is needed to make it work. It's worth buying one of these boxes just for parts to spice up your WOTR collection.
07 June 2014, 08:23:39 AM