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.