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.

Milanese Civic Militia Under the Visconti's 1277 AD to 1447 AD

Milanese Civic Militia Spearmen 1277 AD to 1447 AD

As part of my ongoing project to clear out unpainted metal and replace items in my collection with more suitable figures I purchased a batch of QRF Italian Militia Spearmen back in April Code MIT03 Italian Pavisiers/Spearmen

https://quickreactionforce.co.uk/product/mit03-italian-pavisiersspearmen/ 

Some of them ended up at Catalan Company troops as per a previous blog entry and I had 24 left over castings in the same pose that were ideal for Spearmen or the front tank of Pavisier carriers.

Subsequent to this I purchased a huge batch of Blackhat Italian Spearmen at 50% off in the Vexillia Clearance Sale as they have discontinued selling these castings as he restructures his business into other options. This meant that the original plan to use them to create more Reg Bw X/O elements went out the window.

I recently used my Italian Condotta Army in a special game at the Club Open Day and fielded the Milan version against the Republic of Florence. The Civic Militia Spearmen I had were actually Roundway Hungarian Spearmen and totally unsuitable for the army but were the only figures I had when I created the army 20 years ago. I have now rebased the figures and repainted their shields into something more Eastern European looking and intend to sell them on [pictures at the end of this blog].

Since I wanted to field the Visconti Era army I looked at the heraldry for this time and realised that the Milan arms are the Flag of St Ambrose, which English people will notice is exactly the same as the Flag of St George. To be honest plain white shields with a red cross are really boring and uninspired so I took the liberty of creating my own shield transfers using the Family Arms of the Visconti's as the model. I often create my own flags and transfers and I am very pleased in how they turned out.

QRF MIT03 Italian Spearmen

These are the now surplus Naismith/Roundway Hungarian Spearmen

Roundway RKH08 Armati Heavy Infantry

Anglo-Norman Generals 15 mm Commission

Final Part of a Recent Commission - Anglo-Norman Generals

Bob's commission finally ends with six Legio Heroica commander figures Code CRU03. These are for his Anglo-Norman army and although the range specifically states that they are designed for the 1150 AD to 1190 AD Crusader era there's nothing wrong with using these figures from 1085 AD onward as long as you do not paint them with heraldry and stick to the Zoomorphic style of shield decoration and the earlier pre-nation state style of flags and banners.

The figures come with separate horses and shields and the spears supplied with them were very thick so I exchanged them for some thinner ones from my conversion store supply.

There's two command groups and I matched then horse pose style and ensured there was a good mix of clothing colours. I started them four days ago and they are unbased as Bob will be basing them up to match his other figures. 

1st Group

2nd Group

Richard the Lionheart 15 mm Commission

Richard the Lionheart Commission

As part of Bob's commission he wanted painted up three figures from Legio Heroica Crusades Range CRU20 King Richard I plus escort. Link here http://www.legio-heroica.com/CRU20.JPG
These are how Legio Heroica decided to paint up their examples on their website.

Legio Heroica CRU20 King Richard I plus escort

This is based on the Osprey Elite 19 Plate E The Crusades. I found a copy of the plate online which was used as the cover of the Del Prado part work, I have reproduced it here as a reference under fair use conditions. Copyright Osprey & Del Prado

There is some doubt as to the arms Richard carried in this period.

The earlier arms could be Gules, Single Lion Rampant Or; Gules, two Lions Combatant Or as per the Osprey Illustration. It is definitely documented that Richard adopted what became known as the Arms of England Gules, three Lions Passant Guardant in Pale Or by 1198 AD. The use of the Flag of St George was also commonly used to represent England by this time period as the cross was widely adopted by knights who had been on the Crusades to show their devotion to God and piety as crusaders.

This is what I chose to use as my guide as it make the element stand out clearly as Bob didn't give me any painting references to follow. The figures are all unbased as Bob will be basing them himself.

Onto the completed figures. First up is King Richard, all the fine detail is hand painted.

Next the Royal Standard bearer. I created the standard myself.

Finally the Royal Herald with silver horn.

In all it took me three days to complete these figures bearing in mind that I only tend to paint for an hour at a time and work on multiple projects between coats drying.