What! Another period I hear the bewildered cries going up...
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| Block of twenty Landschneckts, ready to serve English or Scots overlords |
But no, not a new period, rather an extension of an existing period that I have been building armies in for the last couple years. In my research of the Scots & English Armies in the 1500s, I was reading Osprey's lovely Scottish Renaissance Armies 1513-1559, Men-at-Arms book. Imagine my surprise when I found that both the English and Scottish were regularly using German, Spanish & Italian mercenaries to bolster their forces at home.
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| Another view, from the left |
Fortuitously, I happened to have some sprues of Warlord Games Landschneckt Pikeman at hand and I started to build some to see if I could do the figures justice. I must admit that I was somewhat nervous of taking on such a mini project - largely due to their extravagant dress sense - and the fact that the last time I did an Landschneckt Army as about 30 years ago in 15mm. It nearly killed me!
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| Final view of the bock from the other side! |
So these figures were actually a joy to build and paint. That said I split the unit into two groups, first a batch of eight figures and then a second batch of twelve figures
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| The first batch of eight figures that I painted and was pleased with so... |
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| ... I did a second batch of twelve. |
Simply add a random head to a torso, add arms and then a sword and the figure as pretty much built. I opted to arm a couple of the figures with Halberds, as the pike arms were missing and I had suitable arms available from the Wargames Atlantic Conquistador kit.
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| The models by rank to give a better view |
Figures were undercoated in white before being 'dressed' with various random-ish colour combinations. For most figures I did not try to do all the slashes and contrasting lining colours but instead relied on ink washes to give those highlights and lowlights. Instead I concentrated on interesting colour combinations on the stripes and the various combinations of leggings and sleeves.
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| Second rank, some heads from Wargames Atlantic |
Once completed the hands and faces were washed in sepia ink to give a arm flesh shade and then the clothed areas were washed with watered down Army Painter Dark Tone inks. All figures were based on 20mm round bases, to allow the figures to take a 'close order' formation, I'll also be looking at getting some movement trays to make the whole movement thing easier!
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| And more to give a good overview. Those that were not armoured were given leather 'Jacks' to wear to help give some consistency to the unit. |
Next is to source a few figures to do some command figures, drummer, officer and a couple standard bearers, with the aim of taking the unit up to 24 or 25 figures.
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| Front Rank with two Halberdiers on each flank. Halberds from Wargames Atlantic |
