Final Batch of Gladiator/Blackhat Feudal Spearmen and Some Crossbowmen

Finally Completed my Feudal Infantry for the 12th Century

With this blog entry I have now completed the planned replacement of my 12th C Feudal Spearmen along with the unplanned replacement of some 12th C Regular Crossbowmen.

All the of figures are from Gladiator/Blackhat which I purchased at 25% off due to Vexillia having an end of discontinued range clearance sale due to his ceasing to sell this figure range after its sale to Fighting15's. The figures are excellent sculpts and I now have 34 mixed posed spearmen left over along with 36 more crossbowmen still to paint but these are not going into my collection unless I decide to replace some of my Irr Bw O elements.

The Codes from Fighting15's are FE21, 21 & 22. I freely mixed up what I purchased and have no proper idea which specific code the spearmen are from now! The first batch are generic and suitable for my Communal Italian army and others that use Town Militias etc. These finally complete the 32 elements I wanted to have.

This batch were painted using a shield sheet of English coats of arms for the 12th C that I found on the WWW as a point of reference. Each shield is hand painted and these elements give me the sixteen other elements I wanted for variety.

Last up are the crossbowmen code FE25 Italian Crossbowmen, though the label is just a guide as this armour was common to most of Western Europe, I had some Falcon Figures that I wanted to replace, so they are on EBay and these have replaced them in my 12th C army collection.

All of the sculpts were well designed and painted up easily.

Even More Gladiator/Blackhat Feudals Spearmen

Gladiator Feudal Spearmen - Part 3

The third instalment of my project to replace the current mix of figures for my 12th C Feudal Spearmen hits the lightbox. They are Gladiator Code FE20,21 & 22, I sorted them out into identical sculpts to ensure I made up liveried, uniformed spear blocks. I already had two bases painted a couple of years ago so added in some additional basing materials to try and make them match the new figures, they are the block on the left of the 1st picture. I have another two batches left to complete, 24 identical castings and another lot consisting of three batches of 8 identical castings each.

I really like these figures, their pose and sculpt really shows off the idea of how uniformed militia contingents should look. The shields and liveries are generic to allow them to be used in lots of European armies from around 1200 AD until approximately 1300 AD

More Gladiator/Blackhat Feudals Spearmen

Gladiator Feudal Spearmen - Part 2

As part of my on going plan to clear my Lead Mountain and to replace some of my collection with more suitable castings I purchased a large batch of Blackhat figures from Vexillia as he no longer had a distribution license and the range is now owned by Fighting15's and sold under the Gladiator brand again. I already posted the details on my blog entry for the 28th September 2019. 

I like these castings a lot and they make up very stylish units when painted properly. I am currently painting up codes FE020 and FE022 castings. 

The FE020 castings come in a few sculpts and are designed for use from 1200 AD onwards so 13th C troops. They are clean and this sculpt is wearing a very thick padded Joupon instead of mail armour with a Heater Shield. The previous batch I painted up with unique heraldry on their shields but for this batch I wanted to create Town Militia so made up a fantasy shield design, Gules, Bend Sable, Three Bezants Ore. Simple to paint yet distinctive to look at Unfortunately I only had 30 castings in this style so I created six elements of Spearmen and used the six left over castings to create two Irr Ax O elements. I replaced all of their spears with metal pins to create more robust elements.

Gladiator FE020 Spearmen

For the FE021 castings I intend to create 32 Reg Sp O elements but each in blocks of two elements. These castings are armoured and wearing surcoats with a heater shield. They are easy to paint and the colour schemes I adopted are based on livery coats and simple armorials.

This completes the block of eight elements using this sculpt design.

This pair is the first two for the second block of eight elements in this sculpt design

I still have lots more to paint but at least now I can start to see light at the end of the tunnel which will then allow me to sell off the replaced figures, which as still good but not the ones I want in my collection.

Gladiator FE020 Spearmen - Formerly Blackhat

Gladiator/Blackhat FE020 Spearmen Addition

I had a load of these codes that I painted up a while ago but I wasn't happy with the figure mix on each element. Luckily purchased at a huge batch of Blackhat castings at a huge discount as Vexillia are no longer selling them and were having a clearance sale. Blackhat have sold this range on to Fighting15's who are now selling them under their original name Gladiator Miniatures see  https://www.fighting15sshop.co.uk/gladiator-miniatures-1128-c.asp

They are lovely castings and its great news that they have found a secure future.

The original castings were painted a few years ago, luckily I managed to match paint the castings, see if you can spot the new castings? [Hint they are the eight in the centre] All the shields are hand painted. This will allow me to have a think about what figures I want to keep and probably result in my selling off some other figures.

Gladiator FE020 13th C Unarmoured Foot Spearmen 

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.