Quarantine Challenge: Latest Elizabethans and Border Ruffians

Here is my latest batch of Elizabethan Border Ruffians, as I often do, I have found this batch of figures on eBay and of uncertain manufacture. In this case I believe that they may be old Vendel Miniatures, which I believe are no no longer available...

Figures were painted using my usual methodology of white undercoat, add colours and then apply Army Painter Dark Tone followed by Matt Vanish from Windsor & Newton. Figures then based are flocked with electrostatic grass and other materials.

Two mounted Ruffians, all lances are steel spears, acquired separately,

used as they much more robust than lead versions,...

... and from the other side

Two more mounted ruffians, one English and one Scots - with the Targe

From the other side,

Border Family loyalties were somewhat fluid, when it came to national ties,

in times of national emergency, hey would turn out for whichever

nation was offering the best opportunities for the family.

Four Ruffians, three with calivars and one with pistol

Three more Ruffians, all with calivars

One bow armed Ruffian and one with a crossbow.

The final two Ruffians in the batch, one English and one Scots

Quarantine Challenge: 28mm Louis XIV French Infantry Regiment - Late 17th Century

I am so pleased to have gotten this regiment done! They seem to have been on my work bench for weeks, waiting for me to get time to paint and finish them off.

As such, I realised how much I enjoy having time to paint miniatures and when that time gets squeezed, even when it is for very good reasons, it soon gets frustrating.

The full, 28 figure, regiment, in line of battle

Anyway I have done a number of similar french regiments in the past but during these lock down times I was scrambling to be able to pull together enough figures to enable me to field this unit.

This group of models represent Regiment Plessis-Prasin, which was formed in 1616 and was thus named in 1650, after August 1682 this the regiment was known as Regiment Poitou. As with most regiments of this period, and as with every country, they were named after their Colonel.

All the figures are from the North Star 1672 range, except for a single Dixon Miniature's pike man. At first I thought that its no good, I can't possibly have one figure taking a knee to receive cavalry whilst everyone else is standing at the ready.

Pike men on 2 x Half Bases, I'm guessing you can see the odd man out mentioned above!

Typically Dixon figures are a quite a lot shorter than the North Star figures,

this pose however, is the exception they are very comparable.

Then I remembered a story told to me by a couple of friends, Mike & Phil, who participated in English Civil War re-enactments, they'd dragged another mutual friend, John, along as a 'birthday treat'. During the height of the re-enactment, John and the guys were standing at the ready with their pikes, looking about and John spied a troop of enemy horse approaching them at a good pace.

He tried to tell the guys around him what was happening but as he was a 'newbie' they all ignored him, they were looking the other way, within moments the troop of horse were on them!

So my explanation for this one figure being at the ready to receive horse is that he has either misheard an order or he has seen what is coming and decided to protect himself.....

One wing of the regiment with musketeers, pike & command

And the other wing

So these figures were undercoated white and then given a grey base coat. Leggings, cuffs and linings were all blue so that made things relatively simple. I did add in a few guys with grey stockings to break-up the uniformity a little.

Hats were also grey - either light or dark grey and a few have black hats, again to reduce uniformity, all had blue hat ribbons.

Shaded using Army Painter Dark one Dip and then matt varnished with Windsor Newton's Acrylic Medium.

Command elements, each on a half stand,

enabling mix and match of command elements when fielding different regiments of the period,

flags can also be swapped in case I want to redeploy the regiment as another one

Officers, as was their want at the time, wore pretty much what the liked, so a variety of colours here with a few nods to the grey and blue uniforms of the rank and file. Drummers either wore reverse colours or wore the King's livery, I could not find reference to how this was done in the historical regiment so have gone for reverse colours.

The Kings livery was blue coat and red leggings, cuffs and linings so if my guess proves to be wrong - it can easily be changed

Frontal view of musketeer base, 4 figures on a 40x40mm base

Another frontal view, highlighting the business end of the muskets

Rear view of a musketeer base

I decided to do all the pole-arms with this regiment as painted, parade ground items, obviously on campaign as shafts get broken and repaired they would be a natural wood colour. Not so here...

Two more half bases of pikemen - all at the ready.

A quick plug for the SYW Templates Blog site, they provide free to use flags for the SYW period - luckily for my purposes the french used the same flags in this earlier period as well.

Free to use standards, click for link

Quarantine Challenge: 28mm Ottoman Cavalry

Well this is my first post for quite some time as I have been struggling to get free time to paint.

It's a small three figure posting, but will be followed in the next day or so with another post - as I'm also nearly done with some Late 17th Century French Infantry...

So these little guys are representing Ottoman Heavy Cavalry in the late 17th Century, the figures were taken from a batch I got form eBay and were originally aimed to be Polish Winged Hussars.

However my collection is already pretty heavy in Winged Hussars and I have opted for the Warlord variety! These guys look generic enough to be any eastern heavy cavalry in my opinion!

So they are mounted on Hat Industrie - 28mm, Moorish plastic horses, these are good value at 12 per box. (I throw away the riders as I do not lie the figures, but you can often get these horses at less than 80p each - it all counts if working on a budget.

I added muskets, saddle holsters and bows and as ever I always use steel or brass spears for lances & pikes.

Added bow and Gripping Beast's Shield to this guy

The unseasonably hot weather in the UK has not done any

favours to the application of Army Painter's dip, will be adding some

thinners to get it to flow better on next batch

Second fella, simply added a bow to this one

And a saddle holster, for his horse pistol

Final guy, he had a wheel lock Carbine added and a saddle holster

Angry end of an Ottoman Heavy Cavalryman!

Quarantine Challenge: Mounted Elizabethan Border Ruffians

Again real life events and running a PBeM campaign have severely cut into my painting time but I was determined to get these little guys finished this week.

Three Ruffians on Perry's WoR Horses

I got an eBay lot of 16 mounted border reivers a few weeks back and I was looking for suitable horses to mount them on, then I remembered I had a couple of boxes of Perry's War of The Roses mounted figures in the loft.

Unusually for me I glued this English flag in position permanently,

here are two Warlord Pike & Shot Horses Centre & Right

Seems I'd already raided these boxes for horses and between them I managed to source 12 horses, so I then dragged in 4 Warlord Pike & Shot horses to make up the numbers.

One figure came with a moulded on Targe, he makes a good leader figure

I found some bags in my spares box, to add to the horses and also made some extra blanket rolls to add extra clutter to the figures but what I was really looking for was some small 'Targe' shields to add to some of the figures to give them that additional something else.

More usual for me, a Scots flag that can be swapped as needed,

also an example of a saddle holster added to give more period flavour

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any, so maybe later the lockdown I'll look harder and add some of these to the figures...

I like that only two of the figures have muskets, two others have crossbows

and one I added a pistol, as his saddle holster was empty! 

I'm not certain of the manufacturers of these figures, I suspect Wargames Foundry or Hoka Hey as they fit in well with my foot figures for the period.

Another view of some of the figures

So I'm now out of Elizabethan figures to paint, so guessing I'll revert back to Pike & Shot, Siege of Vienna figures. I have an infantry regiment to paint up and I have just found three Ottoman Heavy Cavalry figures to have a go at,,,

I use steel spears / lances on all my 28mm figures and yes, they are sharp!

But I find players give the figures more respect when they know they

can hurt themselves if they mishandle the little guys....

Another random selection of the little guys...

And a final shot, I added swords to a couple of the figures to give variety,

half of them are spear armed.

Quarantne Challenge: More Elizabethans and Border Ruffians

So my rate of output since the regular challenge has dropped hugely, partly due to using the regular challenge to push through my lead & plastic mountains has left me 'painted out' but also because I'm running a club campaign via eMail and that's taking up a lot of my time at present.

So I finally got the next group of my Elizabethans / Border Ruffians completed.

Auld Walt's Henchmen

The group of six foot figures are the Hoka Hey 'Auld Walt' and his family gang, they are a pleasure to paint and as with the Armstrong family I have designated two of them to be leaders and the other four to be their closest henchmen

View #1

So 'Auld Walt' is the grey haired guy in these two photo's and not having much imagination, I'll go with his companion being his son, 'Young Walt'

View #2

The mounting figures are three mounted senior officers or government officials, these are from Casting Room Miniatures if I remember correctly and are offered as Generals.

Again these figures were fun to paint, lots of horse flesh which I enjoy and then a good mix of armour types, sashes and leather attire.

Officers form the front

And from the rear!

Next up a job lot of Border horse, without riders! I plan to use horses from an old Perry's plastic WoR Mounted Men-at-Arms set to mount the majority of these.

Quarantine Challenge : Elizabethans and Border Ruffians

First off, hope everyone and their families are doing OK in the present crisis, I work in IT infrastructure so have been really busy with working, looking to ensure that there is enough capacity to cope with the sudden huge leap in demand from people working from home.

Anyway, that's just an excuse for why its taken me time to completed my first post, which is a collection of Elizabethan & Border Riever figures by Wargames Foundry and Hoka Hey miniatures.

First to show and tell are a group of 6 x 28mm Garrison Archers, by Hoka Hey Miniatures. These painted up nicely and I have given them blue tabards edged in yellow to signify their garrison status.

Garrison Archers from Hoka Hey

Next on show are 8 x Wargames Foundry Swashbuckler Pikemen, in a mix of breastplate and leather jacks. These are some of my favourite figures done to date for this period, they come in a wide rage of dress and with separate weapons the pike can easily be substituted with a spear, bill or halibard to make even greater variety.

Wargames Foundry Pikemen

Third on the list was a second set of 2 x 28mm Hoka Hey figures, this time representing the Armstrong Family. Again these are very nice figures and I have based two of the figures that I took to be leaders on a 2 pence piece instead of the 1p sized bases I ]'m using for other ranks.

Armstrong men form Hoka Hey

Hoka Hey's Armstrong Leaders

Finally is the group group of figures from Hoka Hey, consisting of 6 x Calivar men, in a variety of stances. Like the Archers depicted earlier in this post the figures paint up nicely, though I did notice some need for filler where voids in the casting process elect gaps in the figure as supplied - but nothing to disastrous...

Calivar Men form Hoka Hey