Early and Later Polish - Part 5

Feudal & Medieval Polish - Part 5

QR Miniatures PA1 & PA2 Early Polish CinC element

Peter Kershaw let me know about QR Miniatures from Poland a little while back and I have already blogged some of their castings. Since I decided I am building both the Early and Later Polish armies I needed to ensure I had sufficient correct looking figures to form the core of the army. I sent off an order to QR on 2nd April 2017 and within a short while I got my order back. I already have lots of suitable castings to paint up for the Early Polish mounted arm so I decided that part of the order would only have a few castings for the Early Polish army to create the command elements. The figures are very crisp and required very little cleaning up. They come as single piece castings and have separate spears which means you will have to drill out their hands. I discarded the spears because I wanted to have longer spears to act as standard bearers and they were a bit flimsy for my linking. Each command element is colour coded because they are Irregular generals and this is necessary to ensure the correct dice is used when rolling. Here are the four completed generals elements.

  

Much to my surprise the ongoing task that is Project Lead Mountain keeps giving up more options to create other armies. I still have lots of Medieval knight castings to paint so a quick root through the box produced 15 Essex horses and 14 riders. I wanted a distinctive 15th rider to become a general and I had a rather fearsome looking Minifigs knights with crested helm and axe in the spares. The Later Polish army has the option to take a 4th Regular Knight General commanding Bohemian regular Mercenary Knights. Its only a small command and both the general and the knights are optional but if taken the general can only command the Bohemian knights and no one else. If he isn't taken the knights can be commanded by any other Polish general. The figure codes are lost in the mists of time but do paint up very well and I dont mind mixing Minifigs and Essex riders is they are all on Essex horses. I didn't like the Essex mounted standard bearer as originally cast so I cut off the standard and replaced it with a metal spear.

Mixed Essex & Minifigs Medieval Bohemian Mercenary Knights 

Both the Early and Later Polish armies can use Lithuanian cavalry Light Horse and the Later Polish list gets the option of taking a Lithuanian general to command this contingent. I already had two odd Lithuanian light horse elements which I had picked up off EBay for next to nothing late last year as part of a job lot left over from someones Teutonic army sale. They were Essex castings and I ordered some more EMED22 castings to match these and since I wanted a LH general I ordered a pack of XMED13 and XMED14 for him. It means I still have some left over castings but as the old saying goes you never know when these will come in useful. Potentially you can take 21 Lithuanian LH including their general and also take 2 Tartar LH S if you want. I know that I shall probably never need that many LH elements for the Polish army so decided to only complete 9 elements including the general. If I need any more I can also use some of my Hungarian castings to bulk them out and the Hungarians already have a few Tartar LH elements so I didnt need to paint any of those. I decided it was easier to match paint the additional castings to the original four castings as I liked their finished effect.

Essex EMED22, XMED13 & XMED14 Lithuanian Light Horse