Italian Wars - Milanese Horse and Landsknecht Arquebusiers

Continuing the Italian theme, this is the group of 28mm figures I managed to finish this month (including basing them): eight Warlord plastic Landsknecht shot and four Perry riders in Milanese livery.

Steel Fist Knights and some Old Friends

A while back I ordered eight lance-armed knights from Steel Fist - a rather hefty amount of white metal if you ask me! 

I finally got to finish the first unit - the basing is for my own games, in which pikeblocks are on 120x120mm bases and every other troop type on 60x120mm to accommodate the figures well and have enough blank space for mini dioramas.

As the Perrys I finished earlier joined the Imperial side, I chose these to be French men-at-arms, but generally just went with over the top colours and a moderate amount of white armor.

Perry Men-at-Arms #2

Here's three more figs from the Perry set, this time the horses have Gothic armor as well. I chose to paint with sub-assemblies, the horse, the armor and the riders were separately done and this produced a nice clean effect. The armor is also somewhat darker than the previous batch, but I think it looks cool.

Handbüchse

I just realized I have not yet shown most of my 28mm Renaissance collection here, although I have painted many figures. This is the Warlord metal set of a baby cannon and two Landsknecht crew. I made the pavises from 1mm plasticard.

More men-at-arms

With this, 11 of 12 Perry riders are complete. They are very fun to assemble and paint. I believe this time there are no mis-matched left and right arms as well.

Landsknecht Command

Here's a sample of what I have been painting recently: a bunch of various Renaissance characters. 28mm figures take more time to paint , but hopefully there is a return in the quality.

Perry Men-at-Arms

I could only get one good photo, so here it is. Three Perry mounted fighting men, one with a Pro Gloria head swap. 

I mixed the two right arms on two riders, but it's not very noticeable. They were a bit difficult, but fun to paint. The rest of the set will not have such heavily armored horses.

First of the Plastic Landsknechts

After assembling a larger bunch, I painted and based the first four figures out of the Perry and Warlord (Pro Gloria) plastic parts.

More Italian Wars

A few more 6mm figures march off the painting desk in orderly formation. All of them are H&R Italian Wars stuff. 

Tiny Landsknechts Episode One

Just a quick situation report from Random&Creativeland: I have received the large(ish) order of Renaissance figures from Heroics and Ros and started painting away. I'm still amazed how quickly and effectively a 6mm force can be completed. 

I based the figures on not very traditional 50x35mm bases, which will suffice for Pikeman's Lament and most homebrews - the 60x30mm version does not have enough depth for the lowered pikes or multiple ranks.

Renaissance Stuff

To get back in the saddle, I chose to paint a few 28mm bods. These take longer to paint, so the more comfortable pace did good.
As the order in which they are placed from left to right is quite random, here's a list of what's what instead:

• a Perry horse archer from the light cavalry set, 
• two Hasslefree ladies bought on their Black Friday sale,
• two Pro Gloria (now Warlord) landsknecht captains.

I bet the pictures are still too grainy, sooner or later I'll fix the flash, for now I'm working with natural light and the flash of my telephone, which is obviously not enough.

Artizan Doppelsöldners Part 2

After three unsuccessful attempts at photographing them properly, here are the shots of the figs. Grouped each pose together, one showing the back and one facing the camera then turned them in 180°. Genuinely added a letter to each for color patterns (required a lot of planning), these are C and D or Carl and Dietrich if you wish.

Bases are 10 HUF coins (for a while I thought they will be too small), sand+ water-based varnish, dark brown undercoat, light brown and grey drybrush. Also drybrushed the static grass with a light green.

Artizan Doppelsöldners - Finished

Here are two group shots of the finished 28mm Doppelsöldners. As I'm not really glad with the results I'll post more photos of each fig individually. Have fun till then.

Choosing the right men

I hinted earlier that I'd like to start something in 28mm, painting up a few metal figs really brought my attention to these, and as I've always been fascinated by the attire of Landsknechts my choice was to start a little group of them as a first journey to the world of this scale.

The figures in no particular order:

Artizan Doppelsöldners attacking

Pro Gloria Renaissance Command

Lead Adventure Landsknecht Captain 1, this last one more out of curiosity (the rest of the range looks good too but I see no way to mix them with any others)

This altogether would mean a dozen figs and a lot of working hours until they're finished. If anyone has experience how these look next to each other (browsing TMP in the meantime, I might find something useful) please share the info. This is just some hectic change in the ever-growing pile of 1/72 plastics and don't know if I would let the number of figs grow.