My renaissance cavalry

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that I have been building a renaissance-era landsknecht army. This despite the fact I know next to nothing about either the renaissance or landsknechts! So my accuracy is likely to be suspect, but the overall look of my army fits what I imagine for the period … and that is enough for me.

Anyway, I wanted some cavalry to support my pike blocks of landknechts. I had no real idea of what sort of cavalry would have taken this role, but had in mind knights with long skirts and lots of plumes, but not with the heraldic surcoats worn in earlier medieval times.

As this army is really just a kind of doodling project, lying outside my main interest areas, I also didn’t want to spend too much on my figures! So I settled on a box of Perry Miniatures plastic mounted men-at-arms.

The Perry figures are designed for the Wars of the Roses period, which is a little earlier than what I wanted. But with a little basic conversion, I thought they could be ‘updated’ sufficiently to achieve the look I was after.

The first thing was to do a few head-swaps. I had plenty of spare landsknecht heads from the Warlord Games sets I had previously assembled. Adding a few floppy hats and bearded faces amongst the Perry helmets quickly gave a more renaissance feel to the figures.

I wanted some of the figures to have the long full skirts that you often see in pictures of renaissance knights. So I got somewhat ambitious (for me) and tried a little Green Stuff conversion work.

I’ve never really worked much with Green Stuff modelling putty before. But I was quite pleased with the results of my ham-fisted sculpting efforts, some of which you can see in the above picture!

Painting my cavalrymen was fun, as each figure could be painted in a different way. The end result was a cavalcade of riotous colours – exactly what I was after!

Here are all twelves of the figures, with bases sanded and textured. The flag came with the Perry box.

I was thinking of maybe changing the plain wood colour of the lances (which, by the way, were a Deus Vult product) to painted ones. But looking through pictures of renaissance period battles, coloured lances didn’t appear to be too common in combat.

Perry figures are always beautifully sculpted and animated. There’s a real sense of movement in those horses, even with all the metal they are carrying.

Finally, here’s the last view a poor foot-soldier might have as my armoured cavalry gallop out of the sun and ride him down.

An unplanned landsknecht army that came from nowhere!

This is kind of weird, as I never planned to build a 16th century landsknecht army. I don’t know much about the period, I have never played any games in this era, and I have no-one particularly interested in building up opponents for this army.

Nevertheless, I now find that I have sort of organically reared a moderately sized landsknecht army.

It all started with one freebie sprue of Warlord Games’ plastic landsknecht pikeman. I painted them up on a whim, and then thought, ‘Why not buy one box just to see what a pike block looks like?’

Then the one pike block grew to two, then three. And when a fellow gamer mentioned a joint club order to Old Glory, I couldn’t resist seeing how a pike block of their more animated metal landsknecht figures would look in comparison to the rather staid poses of the Warlord plastics.

Along the way I realized I also needed some hand-gunners, then some zweihänder (two-handed) swordsmen and halberdiers, a cannon, some generals … and before I knew it, a landsknecht army had grown from no-where!

So for your delectation, here are some pictures of my latest additions to this unplanned army.

I mentioned above that I had been curious to see the animation of the Old Glory landsknechts. I had heard these were one of the better ranges that Old Glory put out, and I must say I was indeed quite impressed when I received them.

Apart from a couple of the officer poses that looked over-animated to my eye, the figures in general looked pretty realistic. And boy did they convey the famous panache of that slashed and be-ribboned landsknecht clothing!

I think I must have dipped my brush into every paint-pot I own to paint these guys, and even then mixed a few additional colours myself. I am really pleased at the resulting spectacular mélange of different hues and tones.

My painting style is pretty impressionistic. So from close-up the figures look a bit messy, but they do really pop when you stand back to normal tabletop height.

I rather like the officer in red in the above picture. The flags were made from images I found on the web.

This wee fifer is one of my favourite of the Old Glory figures. He looks like he has stepped right out of a renaissance-period print. Again, my slap-dash paint style is obvious here (from the GW Contrast paints that I like to use).

Above is the third of the Warlord Games pike blocks I painted. I intended that this regiment might hail from Bavaria, thus the blue and white flags. But to tell the truth I don’t know how realistic this is (as I said, I don’t know much about the period). But it is cool to look at, and that’s all I want!

For those intrigued to know how Warlord Games and Old Glory landsknechts match up, here are a couple of comparison close-ups.

As you can see, the faces of the Warlord figures are very realistic, even with no more than just a single wash of GW Contrast flesh paint. The poses are quite static, but look very natural.

Meanwhile the Old Glory figures have very active poses, and their clothing is much fuller and more flamboyant. I had to drill their hands to take the pikes (which are plastic spears from Fireforge Games). Their faces are not quite so finely sculpted, but still capture the look of the period.

A group of halberdiers, also from Warlord. The right arms are made out of metal, so they were a bugger to attach to the plastic figures. In the end I had to pin them, which was a bit of work. But I am pleased with the result.

These figures are from the same box as the halberdiers, but equipped with the plastic zweihänder swords, so a cinch to glue on compared to the halberds.

And of course I needed some handgunners. These are mainly by Warlord, but there are a couple of Steel Fist Miniatures metal gunner in there as well.

The handgunners look great defending this scratch-built farmhouse.

The cannon is by Steel Fist Miniatures. I like the way the figures are posed pushing the gun into position (though I imagine such a large gun would actually take more than just two men to move!).

Winners of the big hat competition are these two generals, the only mounted figures in my army so far.

I am currently mulling over what type of cavalry I should get. I don’t want to go overboard (famous last words?!), so just one unit. But should they be heavily armoured gens-d’armes, or maybe some lightly armoured pistol-wielding reiters?

A colourful diversion into Landsknechts

This new period caught me more-or-less unawares. Whilst I’ve always liked the renaissance era as such, particularly novels set during this period (especially if they feature Leonardo da Vinci – I can thoroughly recommend ‘The Medici Guns‘!), I never thought I would ever collect a renaissance wargames army.

But my latest painting project has indeed been a renaissance one – Bavarian landsknechts, commanders and a gun – and I plan on adding to this army in the near future.

This new fad actually started two years ago, when on a whim I bought and painted a box of Warlord Games landsknechts. My intention at that stage wasn’t to build an army, but just an interesting one-off painting project to keep me occupied during New Zealand’s first covid lockdown.

I was happy with how they came out (as you can see above). But even then I never gave any thought to expanding my one unit into an army.

I don’t really know what it was that led me two years later to suddenly decide to buy another box of Warlord Games landsknecht pikemen, and then to order a few extra metal landsknechts from Steel Fist Miniatures. Whatever it was, it came hard hard and fast, as I had them all assembled and undercoated tout-suite!

This despite knowing absolutely nothing about the period (other than the afore-mentioned novels, and watching a season of ‘The Borgias’), nor even how a renaissance army should be organised.

And here is the result: the second pike-block in my little army. I chose to give them Bavarian flags to differentiate them from my first block.

I have probably shot myself in the foot for using these figures for gaming in my area. Rather than the 40mm wide bases that come with the Warlord box, and seem to be accepted as the de facto base-size here, I though they should be on 30mm bases to give more of a packed-in appearance. So that’s what I’ve done, games-standard sizing be damned!

However, I am sure that (once I eventually find an opponent) we can fudge a bit to play our respective base-sizes in the same game.

I was especially pleased with how Games Workshop’s Contrast paints worked so easily to replicate those colourful uniforms. Their flesh tone also does a fantastic job on the beautifully sculpted Warlord faces.

The armour was done with basic silver paint, followed by a black ink wash, then a Humbrol gloss varnish followed by a satin varnish – though the gloss varnish was probably an unnecessary step. It has certainly turned out looking like real metal.

I mixed in some Steel Fist Miniatures figures to provide a little more variety. Here you can see a Steel Fist officer drawing his sword on the left, and a drummer on the right. These figures are a smidgen bigger than the Warlord plastics, but as you can see, they fit in OK.

I also got this impressive gun and its crew from Steel Fist Miniatures.

This photo also reveals that whilst my figures look reasonably good from a distance, from close-up you can see my style is very impressionistic! But overall I hope I have achieved the effect of a team of scruffy, gun-powder-coated gunners.

The gun comes with two barrels – this one with the ragged burgundy cross, and one with fleur-de-lis. I have only lightly glued this barrel onto the carriage, so I can interchange it if I want a French-aligned force.

“You call that a hat?! Now THIS is a hat!” The first of these two Steel Fist commanders sports a big hat, the other an even bigger hat!

Here’s my whole landsknecht force so far – two pike blocks, a gun, a handful of arquebusiers, and the two commanders.

I also have a box of Warlord arquebusiers undercoated and ready to paint, so the ‘shotte’ part of this pike-and-shotte army will soon be extended to 36 figures. Keep watching this space!

My latest article in Wargames Illustrated

I’ve been lucky enough to have another article published in ‘Wargames Illustrated’. I submitted a piece for their ‘Quick Fire’ series, and was chuffed to see it appear in Issue 397 (January 2021).

In the short article I describe how when photographing miniatures, there’s a real thrill when every now and then one of the pictures unexpectedly stands out from the rest.

The article is accompanied by some examples of what I call my ‘serendipitous photographs’ – pictures that I think came out particularly well, despite no extra effort on my part.

The limitations of a hard-copy magazine mean the published pictures are quite small. So, for anyone who may be interested, here they are full-size (click on the pics to expand).

I liked the way that the trees in my garden accidently came out looking like a castle on a hill overshadowing this unit of Landsknechts. (Warlord Games)

There’s more info on this unit in my old posting: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2020/06/02/lockdown-landsknechts/

This is probably my favourite photo – a recreation of Philippoteaux’s famous painting of the Battle of Fontenoy. (Crann Tara and Minden Miniatures)

There’s more info on the original painting and my diorama version in this posting on my blog: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2020/01/31/at-last-my-favourite-painting-in-miniature/

British and French third-rate ships-of-the-line battle it out, as a Spanish brig circles warily. This photo was taken with a simple hand-painted sky background, and sitting on the paper sea that comes with the Warlord ‘Black Seas’ starter set. (Warlord Games)

You can find out more about these models in this old posting: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2019/11/08/black-seas-fleets-finished/

A battalion of French light infantry marches forward in the moonlight. (Front Rank)

This is a really old picture. I recall I added in the ‘moon’ using a graphics programme, as the lighting of this photo came out by chance looking just like moonlight (well, I thought so anyway!).

There’s more info on this unit in this old posting: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/tartanish-and-thunderbirdish-napoleonics/

Māori warriors from the colonial New Zealand Wars perform a fierce haka (war-dance) in the face of the enemy. (Empress Miniatures)

There’s more info on this unit here: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/photos-of-finished-colonial-new-zealand-wars-figures-and-terrain/

A pre-war colonial French column of Panhard armoured cars arrives in an oasis village. (Mad Bob Miniatures)

Below is the same picture, but with some special effects to make it into an old-fashioned snapshot. 

You can read more about these models here: https://arteis.wordpress.com/2020/02/15/motorised-foreign-legion-security-patrol-in-1930s-morocco/

Lockdown landsknechts

 

This pike-block of German landsknechts will always remind me of the Covid-19 pandemic, as they were my main project during our lockdown. I’ve finished them in the nick of time, just as we drop to our single last active case of the virus remaining in New Zealand (touch wood!).

I didn’t use the plastic bases supplied in the Warlord box, as I thought the figures looked too widely spaced on them. So I made my own cardboard bases 30mm wide and 35mm deep. Each base carries three or four figures, and there are a couple of half-bases for the arquebusiers.

The bases are treated in my usual style, using coarse beach sand,and a mixture of various static grasses and tufts. This time I tried something new, adding some model railway lupins. I was pleased how they add some more interest to this already very colourful unit.

Here’s the middle rank of the pike-block so you can see the officer in full armour and the halberdier. It’s been really fun coming up with all these zany and different colour-schemes, too.

As mentioned in my previous postings during my painting progress, I have used GW Contrast paints and Army Painter Quickshade (strong). I have made absolutely no attempt myself at painting any shading or highlights on these figures – what you see here is how they turn out painted straight from the pot! I did make up a couple of new colours myself by adding a few drops of Vallejo paint to some Contract medium. 

I was particularly pleased with how the armour came out. It was simply painted silver, then washed with a mixture of black Contrast paint diluted with Contrast ink medium, and finally coated with gloss Quickshade. You can enlarge the picture for a closer look.

This side view shows the drummer and a couple of the flags. You’ll also see here how my smaller handmade bases make the pike-block look packed together.

I temporarily placed the arquebusiers at the front in this photo. In fact, I have ordered a set of advancing pikemen, with which I can add another rank or two at the front of the pike-block if I want.

I didn’t have quite enough pikemen to fully populate the back rank. So you’ll see there are only three figures across. However, it still looks OK from behind, I think. And, again, all those wonderful colours!

The box only comes with one flag-bearer, so I converted a couple of the figures to take two more flags. The paper flags themselves came with the set. I’m not sure if these patterns would’ve all appeared in the same unit, but I can always easily replace them if necessary.

So there we have it: my first-ever Renaissance unit. Now I just have to steel myself to start all over again and paint another block of them – but let’s hope I don’t need another lockdown to get them done!

Liking and loving Landsknechts

Well, I think this might be becoming a period for me. In a previous posting I mentioned that I was painting a freebie sprue of plastic landsknechts that had come with Wargames Illustrated, just for a spot of fun.

However, I’ve become more and more entranced with them, bought a full box which I have started painting too, and now I have just put in an order for even more of them. So this is starting to look official now!

The fun part is dreaming up colourful schemes for each figure, the zanier the better. This does make it a slower job than mass-painting a regiment of uniformed Napoleonic troops. But it sure keeps the interest alive, with each figure being a one-off.

Someone did tell me I should replace Warlord’s lances with 8cm broom bristles, as they are too short and too ‘spear-pointed’. But I think it would be very difficult to cut the existing lances away from the arm holding them. And I’m not too worried about accuracy, to be honest. I know absolutely nothing about this period, so if these figures just have the right feel, that’s enough for me.

I’m using my new method of painting, consisting of GW Wraithbone spray undercoat, GW Contrast paints, Army Painter Quickshade, and then a final Vallejo matt undercoat over all non-metallic areas.

One thing I did wonder is if the guys wearing front-plates should also be painted with back-plates under their cross-straps, instead of the cloth undershirts I have given them? For example, see the chap in green-and-yellow second from the left (click on the image to have a closer look).

As for basing, rules and so on, I have no idea yet. This is a case of nice figures coming along well ahead of any thoughts as to what to do with them!

Anyway, if you like landsknechts, keep watching this space …

Wargaming Illustrated’s freebie sprues strike again!

Wargames Illustrated’s promotion of plastic kits by providing free sprues with their magazine really works. I can say this with some authority, because I myself have just been captured by this cunning ruse. As a direct result of painting up a set of freebies, I have now been enticed to buy a box of figures for a period I have never considered before! 

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous posts, I am kind of doodling with figure-painting at the moment, as I have no major projects on the go. Having painted every miscellaneous metal figure I have got on hand, my eye turned to the various plastic sprues lying around.

When I painted these Warlord Games German Landsknechts, it certainly wasn’t with any intention to take up this period, but purely for a spot of painting fun.

However, the resulting colourful figures are just so darned nice, I have now succumbed to ordering a whole box of them from my friend Scott at Kapiti Hobbies ( the coolest pharmacy in the world, selling wargaming supplies alongside dispensing medicines!).

So far I have left the figures with their coat of gloss Army Painter Quickshade varnish. But I will re-coat them with matt varnish. Though I must say I secretly quite like the jewel-like effect of gloss  on these colourful figures.

I know absolutely nothing about this period. I have no particular plan to use them for games. I just like these figures!