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| My Italian Wars infantry arrayed on the table. |
The process began simply enough. I got some two-part epoxy to fix the pikes and then finished a few figures for some units I was working on. First up was a unit of mounted Swiss Knights with Halberds inspired by some art in an army book from the period. The knights were pictured with thick cloaks and full plate armor, brandishing polearms. I opted to use some of the knights from an old kickstarter as they really didn't fit well with my existing Foundry Gendarmes:
All this basing work had me looking at my old WFB Empire collection, and how I could incorporate them into the collection as well. These are the old 3rd and 4th edition Perry Sculpts that were taken directly from Landsknecht era uniforms, and I already use some of their Handgunners and Crossbowmen as missile troops for my pike blocks.
Games Workshop has re-released WFB as "The Old World" with a fundamental change being the move from 20mm to 25mm bases. This means that 20mm to 25mm 'conversion' movement trays are now widely available as STLs I could print with my new FDM printer. I prefer these types as each miniature is framed in place and less likely to fall out when you move the unit. It also had me re-evaluating my overall unit sizes as the 20 stand blocks work quite well for infantry units with 2 15-stand bases stacking up for the pike blocks. I am also thinking I could incorporate the great-sword or halberd armed troops into the unit stand as a single presentation for larger battles.
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| A pair of recently painted Muskovite pike units to illustrate. |
I also like the block system as it would allow me to incorporate 'unit fillers' into my collection as they have become more common in rank and file fantasy games. (Essentially small vignettes of equipment, shrines, camp followers to allow you to fill in place of more infantry models.) That should help with units like the Streltsy shown above where I only need a few more models to fill out the unit and would rather not buy a bag of 30.
I also wanted to fill in the gaps with my old Fantasy army, so I opted to order some of the Warlord Games Landsknechts to serve double duty. The first were a unit of 15 Zwei handers cobbled together using both the Zwei hander and Missile troops sets. I settled on keeping a semi-chaotic color pattern for the uniforms while focusing on using 4 colors to still keep some visual cohesion on the table.
I have a distinct lack of Crossbowmen for the early period, so I opted to paint a small unit using more of the figures from the Warlord set.
I have them presented here as two units of 8 to support a pike block, but can also add a few command figures to make them an independent unit
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| Shown here with a pair of GW Empire command models |
Overall, it has provided plenty of inspiration to charge forward on both projects including some miniatures that have been waiting over 30 years for their chance at some paint.
Next up a look at my Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Kislev-ite efforts.
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