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. This is for sale on EBay.

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

Wallachia - Under Vlad the Impaler 7

Wallachian Army Part 7 - The Moldavian Ally

The DBx army list for the Wallachians give them a Moldavian Ally contingent or vice versa if you were using the Moldavians. This contingent is drawn from the main Wallachian/Moldavian army list but still counts as an external ally for game purposes. For those who didnt know they were very closely allied for most of their time until the Ottoman conquest installed puppet rulers. It wasn't until 1858 that Wallachia and Moldavia finally joined together in a personal union, becoming Rumania in 1866 and together eventually throwing off Ottoman rule in 1877.

Because I am building a Wallachian Army and I still had left over figures in the box from the ongoing project I checked what I would need for the small Moldavian Allied contingent should I ever want to field it. The list requires you to take a Moldavian ally general Irr Cv O and a single Rich Boyar Irr Cv O along with 2 to 8 Lesser Boyar Irr LH S and between seven to twenty-four foot archers which would be the same casting as the archers I already have completed.

I had purchased some figures from Donningtons which I had planned to use for Vlad himself had the element I created using the ERM castings didn't turn out as I liked. I had 1 x MOLC01 General/Vlad and 2 x MOLC02 Rich Boyar with plain upright lances which were ideal for standard bearers. I had selected MOLH01, MOLH02 and MOLH03 mounts for variety. For the Rich Boyar element I had three ERM VL3 castings left over which didn't fit in with anything else but matched the Donnington castings quite well for size and style as heavy cavalry. The Lessar Boyars elements allowed me to use up the last six ERM VL6 castings which I had previously used in threes for the five Wallachian Noble Irr Cv O elements but would also be perfect for the Moldavian Irr LH S as they are in a different casting style from the rest of the Wallachian light horse elements. 

So with no more ado here are the finished Moldavian allied contingent elements. I created the flags myself and all of the shields are also hand painted.

Moldavian Ally general Irr Cv O

Rich Boyars Irr Cv O

Lesser Boyars Irr LH S

With the Moldavian mounted contingent completed I still had some archers left to do. I have already blogged about the Irregular NR9 Hungarian Archers painted up as Curteni Archers Irr Bw I in part 6. I still had another 59 archers left to paint. I decided that I would make sixteen Irr Ps O elements using 32 of the castings and the balance would make up another nine elements of Irr Bw I to use them all up. It was just a simple case of painting them up in the same style as the previous batch of archers.

Irregular HR9 Hungarian Archers painted up as Wallachian Curteni Irr Ps O 

Irregular HR9 Hungarian Archers painted up as Wallachian Curteni Irr Bw I

Having three odd figures left over I decided to mix their coat colours to use as a signature element in a command if needed.

So apart from twelve light horse castings part painted I have now completed the Wallachian army. 

Wallachia - Under Vlad the Impaler 2

Wallachian Army - Part 2 The Generals

With just 27 mounted castings left over from the EBay purchase I looked carefully at them to decide if I felt they would be suitable for creating the three generals elements. I have already ordered a new Vlad Tepes and two Boyars from Donningtons just in case along with some other figures for this army. I managed to sort out what looked like nine suitable castings and put the remaining eighteen castings to one side. These are bits and pieces and I don't think they will be any further use for this army. I am very pleased with the ERM castings http://shop.eastridingminiatures.co.uk/renaissance-eastern-europe-43-c.asp in the end and for a total outlay of £58 I have achieved the core of the entire mounted part of the army with bits left over on EBay which if sold will reduce my outlay to almost nothing. I still need to paint up the Voynuks and Auxilia but I can use the troops in my collection for the hordes and archers if necessary.

Generals always need flags and in this era they need heraldry too. For the flags I adopted Vlad Tepes personal arms and made a standard in MSPaint. For the other flags I saw that there was a pattern in Wallachian national flags starting with their use of the red flag with its eagle. Late rulers used this flag in white and also blue so that solved my flag problem quite quickly.

Information on Wallachian shield designs is very limited and the WRG book by Ian Heath has some designs for mounted nobles but clearly states that theres no records of any colours used. In the end I resorted to copying the shields in the colour photos from the Warhammer Historicals Vlad the Impaler scenario book. 

The figures took me a total of three days to complete because being generals elements I went OTT and tried to make them as nice as possible.

Here are some pictures of the finished three generals elements.

Vlad is Code VL1 and the standard bearers are code VL6 I mixed and matched the mounts

Wallachia - Under Vlad the Impaler

Wallachian Army - Part 1

Earlier this month a saw a part finished Wallachian Warhammer army for sale on EBay. I dont normally buy on speculation especially since it was clear that the army was incomplete and unbased. I put in a bid and was pleased to see I won the lot for £58 including delivery. Below are the pictures from the EBay lot which clearly shows what I was buying on a whim.

A total of 32 painted foot, 4 painted guns, 34 painted mounted and 51 unpainted mounted troops. They were mostly ERM castings. Along with the lot was the Warhammer Historicals Book for Vlad the Impaler. The Warhammer book is now on EBay as its of no use to me which hopefully means I will be able to recover some of my initial outlay on this lot in due course. Whilst the painting isnt what you say was done to a master level its certainly more than good enough for my needs. I spent three days removing the painted castings from their bases and had to replace the tails on three horses and refix one horse to its base using a belly pin drilled through the base and horse. A quick sort through of the figure types meant that I could create 13 elements of Wallachian Light Horse and another 3 elements of light horse in a different sculpt. There were also another 6 unpainted castings to match these in the lot. I decided that I could probably match paint the group with my own painting and painted them up in a couple of hours to try and get a similar style of painting.

I completed the rebasing earlier this week and am now pleased to shown the end results below.

13 LH O elements

3 LH O elements

This is the batch of 6 castings I tried to match paint.

2 Reg Art O elements

3 Irr Ps S elements going on EBay

2 Surplus Reg Art O elements to go on EBay

6 Surplus Irr Ps S elements to go on EBay

The remaining unpainted castings.

Theres enough unpainted mounted castings to create the 3 generals elements, 5 elements of nobles and 4 elements of mercenary knights with a few castings left over. This means that I only need to buy suitable figures for the missing infantry elements to complete this army. I already have lots of figures in Project Lead Mountain but I might just buy the Curteni figures I need rather than use poor substitute castings. UPDATE I did buy the Curteni figures from Donningtons so I will have this army to complete some time during this year subject to the Poles being in the front of the queue.

Having spent the last two days painting the Wallachian Nobles I can post the completed elements on here as an update revision. It means the long row of 15 black castings at the top of the picture just above these words are now painted having started out as in the picture below.

Wallachian Nobles Irr Cv O ERM VL6 castings