Ghassanids - Later Pre-Islamic Arabs

LPIA Allies

I was asked to paint up an LPIA allied contingent to go with a Patrician Army by a clubmate. He provided the figures, I don't know the make, they didnt have enough shields and were missing their spears. I must admit I didnt know much about the LPIA list and was informed that Ghassanids were the tribal grouping that would have supplied these troops. As part of Project Lead Mountain I have tons of left over bits and pieces. The figures included a Medieval horse from Essex Miniatures for the generals figure which didnt match the other castings so I checked the spares box and found an almost identical style sculpt in the remnants so added the Essex horse to my own spares and substituted this horse instead. I put his shields into PLM and sorted out some shields to match the figures and gave the general his own distinctive shield. The thrusting spears are some sort of segmented bamboo type of spear with a metal tip.

After cleaning up the figures and drilling out their spear hands I glued in some plain wire thrusting spears. Its a shame I cannot be sure of the make but suspect the might be CB or LH type castings.

I started them three days ago and hand varnished them yesterday evening. My clubmate does his own bases so I have temporarily hot glued them to MDF bases to take some pictures. They also make transporting them easier when secured to a base. He wants six Essex camel riders painted as well which I am currently working on. All in all this little commission was a nice change from painting Polish troops for my own Medieval army.

Camels now finished and posted further below.

Early and Later Polish - Part 2

Polish Feudal & Medieval Polish - Part 2

Continuing on from the pictures of the first contingent of Knights I posted yesterday here is the first batch of infantry I have managed to complete in the last month. As before it was a case of seeing who made what, what I already have and if there were any cheap bargains to be found on EBay.

Since I like to have unique elements where possible first up are the Town Militia. These are classed as Reg Bw X/O DBE in DBx and were uniformed standing troops in the Later Polish Medieval army.

I had a huge bag of left over Pavises from the now discontinued Corvus Belli Range after having produce the Bohemian Crossbowmen elements late last year. So now I needed to identify suitable troops from Project Lead Mountain that could be converted to shield bearers. I had some Minifigs Z305 13th C Kettle Hat, Axe figures which are nice sculpts but because of the age had really weak axe shafts where is joined their hands and to be honest the pose is a bit strange.

Minifigs Z305 13th C Kettle Hat, Axe

So out with the knife, off with the axes and I had 24 castings waiting for conversion. Careful drilling out of the hands with a pin drill allowed me to insert thin metal spears that were bedded into a hole drilled into the base for additional strength. Once I sorted out the pavises I glued them onto the fronts of the figures and set them aside whilst I researched Town Militia liveries and the correct Town Arms for the pavises. The rear rank figures ended up being Minifigs 484X castings as I had three packs of these surplus to requirements. They wear armour in part so make ideal figures to use as troops sheltering behind pavise bearers in the rear ranks. For me the label on a figure is just a guide as in Medieval Europe there was so much commonality in armour styles across the whole of Europe there's no point in being hung up on a figure being called Burgundian and it not being suitable for other nations armies. Unfortunately there's no picture on Minifigs website for figures 484X in the Burgundian range so I cannot be 100% sure this was the casting I used.

It took a few weeks of patient work creating the Town Militia due to my having to constantly change colours and wait for the various layers to dry properly to ensure there was no bleeding across the borders between colours. It took be a couple of days to paint the pavises which isn't bad considering the variety of designs I settled on. For me a day isnt a solid 7 hours but a few hours grabbed as and when between other things.

Unfortunately the Town Militia also have the option of being normal crossbowmen so I also need to paint up twelve elements of liveried Reg Bw O behind Pavises in due course. This will come later and I already have the metal put aside for this.

The Early Polish list has four elements referred to as Murderous Rustics and classed as Irr Bd X which luckily enough carry on into the Later Polish list. During my cheap figure hunt on EBay I found three packs of Minifigs Z340 Russian/Polish Peasant Infantryman, Furcap, Axe. so I bought them with the intention of using them as part of the main army but the pose is so great they just begged to be the Rustics. The WRG book claims that Polish peasants are usually dressed in a mix of Blue, Green and Brown clothing and traditionally painted the exposed wood on the fronts of their shields the almost ubiquitous red colour which sets off the clothing rather nicely.

Minifigs Z340 Russian/Polish Peasant Infantryman, Furcap, Axe

People often overlook Minifigs for more modern sculpts but they have an excellent range of figures and lots of them easily hold their own against newer figures. The only down side is the single pose they have in each figure code. This can be annoying but unless you are unwilling to mix and match makes in an army not a problem for me. The figures were easy to paint and required minimal cleaning. I am very pleased with how they turned out and should frighten any European knights.

Minifigs Z340 Murderous Rustics

The Early Polish list has 12 elements of Irr Ps O of Slingers and 40 elements of Irr Ps O or Irr Bw O Archers that vanish from the Later Polish list. I assume this is because of the change in how the nobility decided to drawn on the peasant population to fight invaders. I meant that in respect of the archers I can use my huge number other Irr Bw O Feudal archers and ignore the fact they are not entirely accurate clothing wise. Whilst hunting for figures on EBay I did find five packs of Z341 Russian/Polish Peasant Infantryman, Furcap, Bow and I already had three packs of Z315 Staff Slingers in Project Lead Mountain. So this decided it for me. I would use the Z341 figures for 20 elements of Ps and the Z315 would make up the Staff Slingers and clear another small part of the Mountain.

Minifigs Z315 Staff Slingers 

Minifigs Z341 Russian/Polish Peasant Infantryman, Furcap, Bow

I cant seeing my ever wanting to use more than 20 elements of the Ps Archers but if I do I have plenty of other Feudal types that can make up for the shortfall. I might just decide to create proper Irr Bw O archers for the Early Polish army one day but at present it is a case of using whats to hand first to get it on the table. Plus 40 elements of Archers is a lot of new metal to buy. I also figured that the Psiloi types would be more suitable to fighting in broken ground and dressed to better protect themselves against thorn bushes etc whilst the Archers would be fighting in a closer formation and may well be encumbered by the use of heavy cloaks etc.

Minifigs Z315 Staff Slingers

Minifigs Z341 Russian/Polish Peasant Infantryman, Furcap, Bow

With this blogging post I am now up to date with my painted figures. Its probably going to be a while until I can post more progress as there's a lot of figures still to paint.

Early and Later Polish - Part 1

Feudal & Medieval Polish - Part 1

After spending the last five years working through Project Lead Mountain and having mined out all of the mother lodes I was finally forced into making the decision on which new army to build from scratch. Having read the army list books far more times than I care to think about I decided to go outside my comfort zone and looked into the two Polish army lists in book 3 and 4.

They are quite large armies and have a lot of options and changes depending on the historic era chosen. The Early Polish army list has three distinct equipment eras in its 375 year span and the Later Polish army list two distinct equipment eras in its 190 year time span. This means for me to properly cover both lists I will need to effectively build five different armies with some overlap as styles change with the progress of the decades.

I have started out by purchasing lots of cheap remainders on EBay at knock down prices. Some of it bare metal and other bits just purchased for next to nothing because it was so badly painted. I then put in some orders from Minifigs, Irregular, Donningtons and QR Miniatures. I am still finalising the figure mixes and have two orders outstanding to ensure I end up with what I believe is a series of Polish armies that look fairly accurate. I have spent much more than I planned to but I am actually building five different armies in all.

Having started painting some of the first batches of figures in March I finally completed some of the figure options from both lists. I am not working on a specific part of one list and will prefer to work though bits and pieces  of the armies as takes my fancy. This way I wont get as bored like if I was painting up for example 160 identical spearmen castings!

First up are a few of the knights for use from 1200 AD onwards. The Kingdom of Poland had started to adopt the Western style of armour and fighting styles by this time. The spread of Western armour was quite slow to reach Poland and they tended to use older armour styles at first which means I can use 12th C figures alongside 13th C figures as the styles took a while to catch up at first.

Polish nobility was organised in Herbs [Clans] and the Herbs all carried the same coat of arms rather than every individual adopting unique arms. This means that there's only about 400 coats of arms by 1500 AD and lots of these are minor families of recent creations. Prior to 1200 AD there wasn't much in the way of what we would recognise as heraldry and they preferred to paint their shields a plain colour, this mostly being red of course. Another constant thing running through Polish heraldry is the use of the colour red, lots of it in fact!

The use of red makes by painting a bit easier even if it can sometimes look a bit strange facing walls of red clad knights. I have used Vallejo Carmine highlighted with Vermillion to gain a very strong looking finish.

12th C Minifigs ZC302 Knights with a modified ZC304 Knight with sword and a new kite shield added to match. 

13th C Minifigs ZC305, ZC306 and ZC307 with Polish Eagle waterslide transfer I created.

Irregular Miniatures do a nice selection of mounted figures suitable for the Polish army so I also ordered a small batch of their knights for variety. These are for the 13th Century and consist of code HR44 flanked on either side by code HR49 castings.

I still have lots more figures to paint and this is just the first instalment for this army.

Early Swiss Morph From Later Swiss

Early Swiss Is Now Started

Having built a Later Swiss army I decided that with the addition of a load of Reg Bd X I would make it into an Early Swiss beast. To be honest it was because I had more metal in Project Lead Mountain to clear from the pile.

So with six packs of Minifigs Z317 European Infantry, Helmet, Bill and not having any other use for them I decided on the Swiss. They are old sculpts, very clean and simple to paint. After cleaning up and prep I decided on a uniform appearance. I am very pleased with how they turned out and will slot into the other Swiss troops I have without any problems. I will have to finish off the last of the Later Swiss to ensure I have enough Reg Bd X to field the Early Swiss but its not a project in a rush.

Minifigs Z317 European Infantry, Helmet, Bill making 16 elements of Swiss Reg Bd X