Great Seige of Malta

[Knight of St John]

   Over the past 16 years or so I have been suffering from an extreme obsession with any thing to do with the Great Seige of Malta. I have recently finnished painting my War of the Roses collection so will now be moving on to the Seige. This is the first one I have finnished.
    If Paul Hicks reads this could you please tell me if you are still working on this range. I think they are the best miniatures I have seen.
Michael.IMG

[Knight of St John]

Sorry photo did not show.

[Kommando_J]

Warlord bought up the whole range...they announced these Knights Hospitaller...back in Christmas 2014...

[Knight of St John]

Thank you.Does anyone know if those miniatures were still designed by Paul Hicks ?
Michael.

[Kommando_J]

They are, i'm pretty sure most were designed before warlord bought them as quite a few from the old site have yet to appear.

[sukhe_bator]

I usually find if I want to embark on a new period/scenario, if I look for the types of troops I'm likely to need and see if I can find the most obscure and see if its available or can be converted from something else, that'll tell me if the project is viable or not...
For instance the all important Maltese light cavalry, the local Maltese swimmers/rowers etc...

[Corso]

The maltese who particpated in the Great Siege were equipped with outdated armour, linen jacks that were very similar to what was worn a century earlier. Even helmets at the start of the siege were in short supply. What was in abundance were pole-arms. The glaive and bills would have been murderous weapons in the hands of men defending a rampart.

So the perry medieval mercenaries box would be a great asset - I did some conversions last year, and the box was useful.

[Knight of St John]

The Maltese outnumbered the Knights by about 100 to 1 so I am going to need a lot of them. Could you put some photos up of your work please Corso.
Thanks Michael.

[Corso]

The Maltese outnumbered the Knights by about 100 to 1 so I am going to need a lot of them. Could you put some photos up of your work please Corso.
Thanks Michael.

Roughly there were about 4500 maltese militiamen on foot, about 30 maltese mounted noblemen, 200 mounted maltese militiamen and 500-600 knights. Other combatants included greek and sicilian residents, mercenaries and adventurers, and spanish/italian soldiers of the Tercio Veijo de Sicilia.

I suggest you get the book by Stephen Spiteri 'The Great Siege MDLXV - Anatomy of a Hospitaller Victory. Very expensive but worth every page.

Here are some picts of models I converted last year
1) Maltese militiaman with a half-pike and leather sleeveless jack. He wears a sort of  cap similiar to one shown in a painting by Favray
2) A greek resident, wearing headgear from an illustration of a dalmatian mercenary. He carries a crossbow, used during the siege.
3) Maltese militiaman carrying a trump, an early flamethrower. He wears a cap known as milsa. He is nearly identical to a reanactor I met. Used the tighs of a warlord games musketeer and bare feet of victrix unarmoured greeks.
4) Maltese militiaman musician, playing a bagpipe known as żaqq. He's converted from Warlord games scottish piper.
5) Italian adventurer. He is perry mercenaries with arms from the pike and shotte command frame, from warlord games. I used the painting by Caravaggio 'Cardsharps' showing an Italian nobleman as the basis for this model.

Great initiative you're doing.  Some battles, though spectacular, are sometimes forgotten

[Knight of St John]

Thank you Corso they look marvallous . I have got every book I can get my hands on to do with the siege but one book I can not find anywhere is the Stephen Spiteri one. Even went to Malta last October and still no luck.
Michael.

[Vanvlak]

It DOES seem to be unavailable - strange, wouldn't have expected that.
There were some errors in the first print - not research errors, but some typos and proof reading slips - so maybe a second print was not done becauseof that, but I'd have expected a 2nd ed. to come out, it's a good book.

[traveller]

I also have an obsession with the Siege but decided to limit myself to the battle for St Elmo. I share your pain in trying to find the Spiteri book, a rare asset indeed. One interesting piece of information, if you want to personalize your models a bit, is a list of all the participating knights. I emailed the knights current organisation in search of the names, hoping to find some Scandinavian names and they told me to search for a book which I was lucky to find on Google books. On page 504-509 all the names appear:

https://books.google.se/books?id=VetDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA421&hl=sv&source=gbs_selected_pages#v=onepage&q&f=false

At least interesting to see that there was a group(14) of German knights involved

[Metternich]

I am looking forward to seeing more on this project.  I also have a great interest in the period.  Does anyone know when Warlord is intending to bring out the figures ??

[Kommando_J]

See my above cooment, it is pretty much the last thing they said on it.

Warlord is too busy pushing Antares and their new wargames factory partnership.

I wsih they'd get back to their 'core' games, haven't seen anything new for pike and shotte or Hail Caesar, so far we've had re-releasing the arsenal minis and those Godawful Janissaries.

[Vanvlak]

If you're into 15mm - and if they can still be found - Venexia had a whole range of models many of which were suitable, although not quite right for the Maltese themselves, I believe.