The 'Los Blancos'
I originally got these figures from North Star Miniatures sometime in the late summer last year, I have already painted-up one 24 figure Tercio of little guys but wanted to complete a second Tercio, to join my other Spanish tabletop forces.
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| Spanish Tercio in waiting, figures based, awaiting undercoat |
For, anyone that is interested, these are relatively new additions to the North Star 1672 range, they replace similar figures that North Star were stocking up to about 18 months ago, that were based upon the original Copplestone Casting figures that are the basis of this range. As such some are a little smaller than the old range, which makes up the majority of my Spanish Army.
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Pike stands formed up around the central with
Command stand, OCD at work here!
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As you may know Spanish Tercios of the period tended to adopt distinctive colours to distinguish them selves form other Tercio units. This was the beginnings of the move towards regimental uniforms - in the Spanish world each unit picked a coat and facing colour. It wasn't until the early 1700s that coat colours became standardised and the distinguishing feature was the facings colour!
So for the challenge I decided to do a unit based primarily in white with red facings. I had seen pictures on the internet of a couple of Tercios that had these colours - the 'Los Blancos' and an enigmatic 'Tercio Alemana' or German Tercio, for which I could only find an illustration of an officer. I opted for the former with the option of changing unit flags to allow for the later if scenarios required.
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| Another view of the Pike Block |
Well I have always struggled with White uniforms - especially getting the shading right, and this unit was no different!
As usual I undercoated in white, before doing a top coat in white, then adding in deep red facing colours. I then built up the other required colours - browns for musket and darker brown for shoes and scabbard. Tan leather was added for the straps, gloves and boot laces and then flesh, steel etc.
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| 4 x Musketeer Stands |
I then went to fix all the mistakes and in doing so ran into the challenge with white - most colours show through it - and with reds the colour seems to bleed into the white paint and stain it pink. I had to leave the figures to dry for a couple days, when I returned to them the bleeding issue was solved!
In the meantime I started work on the French dragoons - see below...
When ready I used Army Painter dip to add shading, I deliberately left the tin unshaken so that the level of pigment in the dip was as low as possible, nevertheless for a number of the figures the white uniforms ended up being over-stained and looking rather grey and dull.
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| The command stands, featuring the speculative flags I made |
So after applying matt varnish, I over painted the white coats with white paint again - using a semi-dry-brush method, really just to emphasise the highlights and lightening up the coat colours.
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| Completed Tecio lined up just as I like them! |
I based the figures as per other units, on 40 x 40mm bases, Pikemen and command stands on 40 x 20mm half-stands to enable my OCD tastes in figure placement within the units - i.e. A central block of 8 Pikemen, surrounding the command stand , flanked by two musketeer stands on each side....
Final touch was to make two speculative flags for the unit, if finding info about uniforms is hard for the period it's even harder finding info on Tercio flags - plenty of pictures but no one seems to know which units they belonged to!
So I kept it simple a couple of Burgundy crosses on white backgrounds, they came out a little small for my liking so may have to redo them a bit bigger!
The 'La Bretesche' Dragons
These four guys were painted to add to the 8 other Dragoons that I recently painted - enabling me to bring the unit up to two dismounted squadrons of 6 figures each. I still need to do the mounted versions at some point!
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| Completed - Additional French Dragoons before integrated with existing figures |
These also enabled me to continue being productive whilst pulling out what little hair I have left waiting for the Spanish figures to thoroughly dry!
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| And the figures integrated into the existing unit. |
I have also re-worked the bases of the original 8 figures to integrate the new figures into the stands.
POINTS
28 x 28mm Spanish Infantry @ 5 Points ea = 140 Points
4 x 28mm French Infantry @ 5 Points ea = 20 Points
Total Points 140 + 20 = 160 Points
