15mm Military Orders Knights Hospitallars Commission - Part 1

Military Orders For Richard the Lionheart - Part 1

At the club some players are time poor and ask me to paint up bits and pieces as commissions once in a while. One of the members is now building a Later Crusader Army for Richard the 1st and wanted some military order troops. He told me they are Legio Heroica castings codes CRU 6, 7 & 9.

The 18 castings were very clean but needed assembly which is my pet hate! Horses, riders,shields and lances where carried all make for a time sink. I was also asked to give them pennons, flags and decorated shields which meant I need to create new flag sheets for this period. There is only one set of command figures so I rooted through Project Lead Mountain and found three more castings from Essex that are ideal for a second generals element which I have offered on a first refusal basis. These will be on the next blog entry - probably?

I painted all the horses first then did the nine Hospitallars riders which is what this blog entry will show. He wants the figures unbased so he can match them to the rest of his army.

15mm Greek Cavalry Commission

15mm Greek Cavalry Commission

As part of an ongoing project one of my club mates is building an Athenian Later Hoplite Greek Army, specifically the one commanded by Iphikrates between 374 BC and 353 BC.

Part of the army commission meant I was asked to paint up sixteen Xyston Greek Cavalry, Codes ANC20025 & 20026. As with all Xyston castings there were lots of fine flow line tags and they of course require assembly. The figures on the website on show using one throwing javelin and with careful drilling out of both hands I was able to provide each casting with two javelins which looks more realistic.

I was asked to proved them unbased so he can match them to the rest of his army.

More Catalan Company Infantry

Catalan Company Infantry - Part 2

As part of Project Lead Mountain I had a large number of QRF MIT03 Italian Pavisiers/Spearmen going spare. I had intended to use them to create more Italian Double Based crossbowmen with front rank pavisiers but after having a sort out of the casting poses I realised that only one of the three poses was ideal for that still to do project. This left me with 48 spare castings in two batches of 24 castings each of two poses and three spare castings with the upright spear which were left over that would be ideal as standard bearers. I cut off the soft metal sprear and replaced then with metal spears for the standard bearers. I also had a mixed bag of old Gladiator Games/Blackhat War of the Roses commanders that were spare which look perfect in the command elements for the 14th C period.

I sorted out which castings mixed in with the QRF castings and ended up having enough figures to create twelve more elements of Catalan Company Almughvars Reg Ax S and three Generals Almughvars elements also classed as Reg Ax S.

Since this is a morph project I decided that these would make the core of the army and the other Medieval Regular Auxilia elements I have painted up will be used to bilk out the army to make it usable. I cannot see me using the army often but at least now I have cleared out some more unpainted figures.

Lastly I needed some flags so I created my own flags based on historic Catalan designs and settled on using the first three flags for my generals. If I add more troops to the army I have the option of using the other flag designs. I have no idea how accurate the flags are but they are based on the Aragon flag with historic variations.

Iphikratean Peltasts Commission

Iphikratean Peltasts 15mm Commission

As part of an ongoing project one of my club mates is building an Athenian Later Hoplite Greek Army, specifically the one commanded by Iphikrates between 374 BC and 353 BC when he ordered Athenian Marines removed from their ships and deployed as special long speared shielded peltasts classed as Reg Ax [X] in DBM. 

He chose to use a mix of Xyston ANC20018 Peltasts with pilos [16 figures] and ANC 20032 Peltasts with Attic helmets [8 figures]. I also added in two spare modified Museum Miniatures Peltasts Code SE04 because he wanted a couple of spare figures for a command element. He wanted a mix of shielded and unshielded figures for variety so I mixed and matched as best as I could using the 16 shields he provided. Xyston are annoying castings because you have to drill out the hands to carry their very long spears and their shields are loose so they needed gluing on. He will be basing them himself to match his other troops so I just needed to paint the bases sand to hide any bare metal that might show through the basing materials.

Information is scant on what they looked like and the only images I could find had red and white crests where worn and light blue shields with nautical motifs.

I started them a week ago and I am quite pleased with the end result. I hand painted the shields because they were too small to use transfers on without a lot of aggravation. As they say "the cash is useful!"

Xyston Mixed Codes ANC 20018 & 20032

Museum Miniatures Code SE04