Later Swiss - Part 2

More Later Swiss Now Added to My Collection

After what seemed like a short time but turned out to be three years I have now completed Canton contingent 11 of my Swiss army. The Canton of Appenzell whose flag is a black bear on a white field. As with all my Swiss contingents I based their clothes on their flag colours to create pseudo uniforms for them. They are more of the Naismith/Roundway range which has sat in my to paint pile for far too long. Only three more contingents left to paint along with some more elements to enable me to use some of these troops for the Early Swiss army if I ever feel the need.

Discontinued Museum Miniatures Hordes

Arab Hordes - 10 x Irr Hd [O]

Museum Miniatures are in the process of replacing some of their ranges using 3D printing to create the masters before making the castings moulds. I already had a lot of their old Indian Arab figures and I rather liked them and didn't want to mix in new sculpts to make up some missing elements of hordes. Dave at MM had informed me that the old figures were no longer available, even to special order as he has retired the range. Luckily I had purchased a lot of them a couple of years back and like magic a large batch of them appeared for sale on EBay. I decided that I didnt like a lot of the improvised weapons on the peasant castings so I drilled out their hands and replaced a lot of them with metal spears! I had already painted up lots of hordes a few years back but had sold most of them on to other people and thought it was time I made sure I had enough elements of my own just in case I need to field them.

I scanned the army lists and worked out I needed ten elements of Indian Horde, which I already had, twenty elements of Syrian type hordes, which meant I will add another ten elements in a slightly different painting style. I had completed my Fatamids many years ago so I already have Ardath and Rioting Egyptian City Mobs! 

The figures took me about a week to complete because I wanted them as colourful as possible.

Museum Miniatures MD04 Hordes

Later Pre-Islamic Arab 15mm Commission

15mm LPIA Commission

Paul wants to expand his LPIA ally contingent and asked me if I had anything suitable to be used for their Irr Bd I/O options. After asking the sort of figures he wanted, being told bare headed, shieldless and a mix of spears, swords and bows if possible as per the list notes I came up with a bag of discontinued Museum Miniatures Arab/Indian Hordes.They came with a mix of top knot turbans, traditional turbans and bare headed. I sorted out all the suitable bare headed male castings and proceeded to drill out all of their hands after removing their improvised weapons to give them all metal spears. I ended up with 28 castings, 7 with swords, 7 in one pose with spears and 14 in another pose with spears. After cleaning them up, painting and varnishing as per Pauls specification I think they will fit in quite well with his ally contingent.

Whilst working on my next painting task I found another four castings suitable to add to this commission! All Museum Miniatures as before, three converted to hold steel spears and one swordsman. This now gives Paul 32 castings to create eight elements of Blades.

More Ancients from Project Lead Mountain - 15th C European Infantry

15th C Medieval Infantry Oddments

Back in February I posted a blog on an Hussite EBay purchase. https://drewjarman.blogspot.com/2019/02/hussite-infantry-part-1.html

I have finally painted the last of those figures along with 8 others and have made a profit on the items I already sold on.

As you can see from the picture about they are a mixed lot from two different makers, Minifigs and Oddziat Osmy.

First up are the Minifigs German Spearmen. They are Code 222X from their Renaissance Hussite Wars Range but the armour style actually dates from 1400 AD. Being very old sculpts in the typical Minifigs pose they needed some cleaning up due to having lots of flash. I cannot comment on the casting quality as they must be quite old castings so may well have been redone.

Minifigs 222X German Spearmen

The other Minifigs casting is 225X Hungarian Spearmen also from the Hussite Wars Range. Again the armour style dates from 1400 AD.

Minifigs 225X Hungarian Spearmen

Lastly I bought a box of Oddziat Osmy Code MT04 Teutonic Order Command 1410 AD figures. It contained nine knights and eight swordsmen. They were cast in rock hard pewter and were original 1st generation Polish sculpts. The Teutonics do not have any actual swordsmen in their army lists that I use but I painted them up to go with the other spearmen. They are nicely sculpted figures and were easy to paint.

Oddziat Osmy Teutonic Order Swordsmen

I had planned to sell them in due course but might keep them instead.

When You Must Have More Superior Quality Knights

Some Reg Kn [S] From Project Lead Mountain

As part of the ongoing saga to clear my unpainted 15 mm lead I found a loose bag of eight Minifigs High Medieval Knights code 57XC French Chevauleger from their Renaissance Early/Mid 17th C Range I also had a bag of eight Minifigs fully armoured horses. I cannot ID the mount code and have no idea if the riders and mounts were originally sold together as I often mix and match up castings when I want to create special elements. Luckily I also had a spare Essex Miniatures Nobel on a fully armoured horse, most likely code MID69. This allowed me to create three elements of Superior knights. They are certainly suitable for the later half of the 15th Century, from 1475AD onwards and will go into my army box to grace the table one day. 

A Special Commission for a Booby Prize 2019

When Your Army Is Really Sh*t

I have been asked to create a booby prize again for Caesaromagus 2019 to accurately reflect the standing that the person who comes last will get.

I managed to find the Sh*thouse on Thingiverse and got a friend to reduce it from 28mm scale to 15mm scale before he printed it for me. It didnt take long to complete either. Probably less time that the person inside using it would take!

Wallachia - Under Vlad The Impaler 9

Wallachian Army - Part 9 Addendum

For those who followed my blog back in October 2017 they would have seen that I had claimed to have completed the Wallachians. In truth I had completed the army because I used four elements of spare Medieval Knights to make up the Crusaders knight contingent and I didnt think any more of it. The army list describes them as not actually being proper Crusaders in the true sense but were actually hired mercenaries from Italy, Bosnia and Croatia wearing Italian armour. This of course got me thinking about if the figures I used were correct. 

As part of Project Lead Mountain I have been trying to clear out all of my unpainted 15 mm ancient armies metal. Last week I had just completed another commission and was looking for another small project to do when I came across a bag of 12 old Minifigs knights wearing what I discovered were Barbute helmets. I cannot find out their casting code unfortunately and being loose I married them up with twelve contemporary horses from my spares box. They might be Code 484XC from their Bungundian range, but don't quote me on it!

More information about these here.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbute?fbclid=IwAR38jtDOWb1dV-FCUOU-GJR4B-TI-b5KA6FOYY-cKR1qUwAn0ljPWoZKoSw

Being uniquely Italian in origin it gained little popularity outside of Italy which got me thinking about those Wallachian Crusader knights and the list notes in the DBx list book.

After some minor cleaning up I painted them up over the last two days and have now added them to my collecting in place of the other elements I had used. Given how old the sculpts are I am amazed just how nice they have turned out compared to much more contemporary castings from other manufacturers. Because I am adding them to an older army I based them to match these figures rather than use my current basing technique.

Minifigs Knight in Barbute Helm Code Unknown

Lastly I found five left over castings from my original Wallachian project, three of them are ERM castings code VL2 and VL3 and two are unknown castings.

The VL2 castings are listed as being Unarmoured Boyar but given the fact I had used two of them to represent the armies sub generals on armoured horses with shields I decided they would be OK to make up a spare Light Horse element on unarmoured horses. I think that no one would know the difference unless the elements were side by side.

ERM VL2 casting painted as Light Horse

The last element I just painted up to remove the castings out of the Lead Mountain. They make up a reasonable generic commanders element found in an Eastern European Medieval type army.

ERM VL3 casting in centre with two unknown castings to either side