The first few pebbles in the avalanche

 

Last spring I opted to take a break from painting Epic scale TYW and dig into the lead pile.  I have a number of War of Religion era Landsknechts and Gendarmes from a successful Kickstarter from back in 2017 still awaiting my attention. I worked at them over time, but never really got them finished.  Even after returning from my Germany deployment in  2023, I got a lot of paint of them  but basing and pikes eluded me.  

Cut to last Spring when I decided to just have a go at emptying out the 28mm Renaissance box.  First up was a unit of supporting Harquebus

 

I quite like how the guy on the left is looking slack-jawed at the camera.

That was followed by a mounted General that I think was supposed to be Charles V

Lastly, I finished the last of my Pikemen in a very colorful unit.  (I wanted to experiment with Slapchop methods for these guys.)

This of course inspired me to go back and touch up the existing stands as many had lost their wire pikes by this point. 

You have no idea how many times I stabbed myself with a pike setting up this shot.

And this is where it all went sideways.  You see, I also have a sizable collection of 3rd-5th edition (mostly 4th) Empire miniatures from WHFB.  I really like the old Perry sculpts as they were all inspired by the early Renaissance Germans.  Thus, I decided to finish painting a few partially completed models... and rebase some of them... and print some movement trays... and maybe get some used figures to round out some units... and paint the rest of that beastmen army I collected to oppose them when I moved away from my usual opponents in the late 90's... ooh! and then GW re-released some of the sculpts I could use to round out a few more units...and then there were the 17th century 28mm Russian and Polish figures I had sitting around in  the leadpile. (Literally lead for some of the older sculpts)

Wait!  Those can't be even more Winged Hussars in yet another scale can they?

Maybe you can see where this is going.  In my next few updates I will be posting a running log of all the units completed over the last 9 months in this fool-hardy endeavor.