Wallachian Army Part 6 - More Curteni Archers
As part of the ongoing Wallachian project the Curteni Archers get the option of them being Irr Bw I or Irr Ps O. I already blogged about the previous batch of archers that can be upgraded to Irr Bw O.
I purchased a bag of 36 Irregular HR9 Hungarian/Croatian Archers off EBay for £5-10 inc delivery back in May which worked out as just over 14p each compared to 30p each from Irregular.
Once Ian at Irregular and I had discussed the pose mix for this casting code I placed another order for 48 figures from Irregular and got on with other painting tasks. The figures arrived last week just as I was finishing off my current painting tasks.
They are quite old castings compared to some sculpts but look anatomically correct and well proportioned. The figures required some cleaning up but no more than is usual for Irregular castings.
I sorted out the various poses to see what variations I had and decided that the best option for me would be to create two batches of eight Irr Bw I and a batch of sixteen Irr Ps O. I put aside the second batch of Irr Bw I and the Irr Ps O and decided that I would paint up the batch that are all wearing fur cloaks. Since I have already done coloured bases in the first batch of Curteni archers I decided I would duplicate this for the inferior archers.
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| Irregular Miniatures HR9 Hungarian Archers painted as Wallachian Curteni |
This means I now have another eight elements of archers to paint along with sixteen elements of psiloi which will complete the Wallachian portion of this army.
The Wallachians get the option to have a Moldavian ally contingent. Part of this contingent is infantry which may optionally become Mounted infantry. I already have sufficient Essex Miniatures mounted archers suitable to use as the mounts for Irr mtd Bw I/O but don't have any mounts suitable to use if I wanted to use the Irr mtd Ps O option.
Whilst browsing on EBay as you do I saw someone selling four elements of mounted archers, using the same Essex MID22 castings which I used. Whilst the painting wasn't really up to much and the pictures were not that clear I decided to place a single speculative bid. The total price I ended up paying including delivery was £6-00 which was still £1-00 less that the unpainted metal from Essex.
As you can see from these pictures taken from the EBay listing I have expected to have to strip the figures and repaint them from scratch. I failed to spot that one of the castings was wearing armour, more about him later.
I quickly decided that whilst the paintwork wasnt brilliant they would only require a quick retouch here and there along with an armour wash for that stray officer and they would do perfectly for a troop type option I am almost certainly never going to EVER use.
Below are the finished figures rebased, all I did was scrape the edged clean, add some magnetic sheeting and them plaster the entire base with Vallejo Earth Brown Sandy Paste to cover up all that lurid grass flocking. Finished them off with some patches of static grass and a brown contrast edge as usual and finally sprayed matt varnish sealer on them. Considering how they started out I am quite pleased on how I managed to save them from being stripped.
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