It’s been some time since I have written a blog post but the good news is that I have been busy gradually expanding my collection of painted figures and if not reducing my lead pile, then at least keeping it under control!
Rather than a step by step guide to a particular project, this post is really just a round up of some of the stuff that I have been working on. If I can get back into the habit of writing a regular blog, I will perhaps revisit some of the projects – I think that the making of movement trays might be quite useful.
Stradiots!
I had to get this unit of Stradiots finished for the Derby Billhooks BASH. They are from Perry Miniatures and I bought them last year at ‘The Other Partizan’ and they would complete for now, my Italian states army of Gendarmes and Landsknechts.
Elizabethan era Kern
The five Kern were from a set produced by Battle Flag Miniatures. I had already painted the three Gallowglass in the set and wanted to finish these to add them to my Irish army. The figure wearing the Morian Helmet is really more suited to the Elizabethan age but I doubt if anyone will notice if I sneak him into a WOTR army for service at Stokes Field!
The Irish Commander
I also finished the commander of the ‘Fighting Irish’ Battleflag miniatures set. I’ve hedged my bets a bit here and finished him in Spanish colours. He will work as a commander for a Spanish army of Conquistators, maybe a Tercico for the Italian wars or even as a commander of an Elizabethan force fighting the Irish.
Rohan Standard Bearer
In a change of direction, I painted this Rohan Standard bearer from the Magazine collection, Battle Games in Middle Earth. I have now reached issue 41 of this series. I really could do with a blog post rounding up my collection so far.
New Movement trays
I’ve also been making movement trays for some of my units. These Anglo Danes were originally a Saga force but we have been playing ‘Never Mind the North Men’, yet another spin off from Billhooks, written by Jan Ash. I’m really quite pleased with the new trays. I used 60/000 black plasticard and 1/8 inch balsa strip to make the trays. Once you have the first one made, you can use this as a template and it is suprisingly quick to knock out more!
Ashigaru Archers
I now have 24 of the Fireforge Ashigaru archers completed. The plan is to have a complete army based on Fire Forge figures for ‘Never Mind The Naganitas’ another NMTBH’s rule set that I am working on.
Ashigaru armed with Naganita’s
With these 12 Ashigaru completed, I am close to finishing the army. Another twelve to do and the troops will be completed.
One of the Seven Ronin
The last figure is from the Grey for Now ‘Seven Ronin’ boxed set. I painted him more or less at the same time as the Ashigaru, using the same colours. I’ll work my way through the set – they are lovely figures but I’m not sure what I’ll use him for yet!
The 6th Bill Hooks BASH was held on Saturday14th September at the Boards and Swords venue in Derby. Organised by Pete Harris, this event is a celebration of the Never Mind the Bill Hooks game, played in a non competitive spirit, the emphasis being on having a fun and enjoyable day with like minded enthusiasts. The players are split into Yorkist or Lancastrian supporters and the winning faction can enjoy boasting rights at the end of the day!
To confirm the social bias of the event, it has been customary for players to meet for a meal (latterly at the very pleasant Exeter Arms) and a few drinks on the Friday prior to the event. This is very much an evening of great conversation and banter as well as laughter. Of course, it’s an ideal way of breaking the ice for new participants. This year we had 13 attendees for the meal – I laid out an additional place at the table to make fourteen as I thought that having 13 diners on Friday the 13th was testing lady luck!
And so to Saturday when battle was joined! I’ll write a more thorough overview of the day that should be published in Wargames Illustrated,.This will include details of the winners of the painting competition, overall results and list the participants This blog article will just concentrate on reporting on the two battles that I fought on the day. As usual, my reporting is not quite up to par – I failed to record details of my opponents army or photograph them before battle – Doh!
Battle 1 vs John Kersey’s Italian State Army
John was fielding an Italian State army which had the benefit of being composed of plenty of units but the slight disadvantage in quality as some of the units were rated as Levy. I felt that the Landsknechts under my command would be more than equal to the opposition. As I had a unit of light cavalry (Stradiots) and John only had heavies, I was able to out scout him and he was obliged to place his Skirmishers and artillery as well as one other ward first in the deployment phase. With his artillery and heavy cavalry deployed on his left Flank, I deployed my Landsknecht blocks well out of the way on the my left ( his right). Pike blocks can be very susceptible to artillery fire and I wanted them to be as intact as possible as they moved across the field of battle.
The movement phase commenced with me detaching my gunsmen from the pike blocks and moving them forward to open fire on the opposition pike block causing the first casualties of the battle. We then went to turn one of the cards and the two armies began to close. As luck would have it, my skirmisher card came up again and the gunsmen delivered another volley into the pikes. Early into the turn, John won a bonus card. This can usually mean trouble but on this occasion it was a blessing for me. A sudden rainstorm meant that no shooting was permitted! Under the cover of the rain, the Compte de Biscotti advanced his Gendarmes to counter the advance of the Italian heavy Knights as he confidently ignored the artillery and crossbowmen threatening him!
The Compte de Biscotti chases off the Italian knights!
Turn two saw Biscotti charging home against the Italian knights and despite the counter charge, Biscotti was triumphant, winning the combat and routing the Italians. This prompted the Crossbowmen skirmishers and the artillery to run off the table with the knights! For now, my right flank was secure.
The situation on the left – two blocks of Landsknechts move relentlessly forwards!
On my left, the infantry on both sides closed with each other with my two blocks of Landsknechts facing two pike blocks and a levy spear unit supported by skirmishers. Unfortunately, the spear unit had advanced a bit to far from the support of the pike blocks and was very exposed! The gunsmen in the woods continued to harry the Italian pike block.
Turn 3 and the Vorhut, under the able command of Lorenza de Pala charged home against the levy spearmen. Despite the mismatch, the spearmen held! Bravely fighting on for another turn. Undeterred, by this slight setback, the Gerwalthut, commanded by Captain Nicomo Cosca attacked the levy pike block. This was a more successful combat for the Landsknecht’s, with the levy pikes breaking and routing from the field, taking the supporting skirmishers with them!
Flank attack! The Italian Pike charge home!
Despite seeing the levy pike block flee the field, the more professional Italian pikes were undaunted and were able to press home and attack into the flank of the victorious Landsknechts. These tough mercenaries were able to hold, despite taking casualties.
The glorious charge of the Duc de Bourbon!
However, the Duc de Bourbon decided to take matters in hand and on his card being turned, charged home into the flank of the Italian pikes. Although there are are rerolls or charge bonuses for cavalry hitting a pike block ( even in the flank) the Duc managed to inflict 14 hits with 9 kills! with the extra hits from the Landsknechts, the Italians crumbled and retreated from the field!
Just two casualties taken by the Gendarmes as the Italians retreat from the table!
Jon had by now run out of tokens so it was Victory for the French! The Duc be Bourbon boasting how his charge won the battle – a boast that would come back to haunt him later….
John reacts to his pike block running from the battle – Game over!
Battle 2 vs Richard Marriot
Richard and I had met before at Billhooks BASH IV where he had pulled my Irish army to pieces stopping me getting a clean sweep on the day. To read all about this encounter, click here:
I was determined to get my revenge! Richard was fielding a straight forward WOTR army but as noted in my last encounter, unusually fielded a unit of mounted knights which had caused so many problems to my Irish. I was determined that they would not do so again! Deployment was fairly straight forward, we both had light horse so rolled for deployment. There were no real surprises on either side – I did ensure that my commander was safely deployed far out on the left and matched his heavy and lights with my own equivalents. It would be up to the Landsknechts to slog it out with the opposing infantry!
Opening the battle, my gunsmen had already killed three knights before being wiped out by arrow storms!
In the movement phase, I once again dispatched my gunsmen to cause as much of a nuisance as possible. In this case, their target was the English knights and with their opening volley, they were able to kill three of the enemy. Richard was not going to put up with that rate of attrition and so used his archers to send a number of arrow storms and wipe them out! I thought it a fair exchange – three knights and three arrow storms for 12 gunsmen. I’m not sure that the gunsmen would agree…
Turn two saw the Compte de Biscotti charge the English knights and despite superior numbers, they lost the first round of combat! Fortunately, they survived the morale test and combat continued. By turn three, Biscotti’s numbers overcame the diminishing English Knights and they fled the field. Meanwhile, the Landsknechts chased off the light cavalry temporarily and despite them taking numerous arrow storms, casualties were extremely light. The English archers aim seemed to be off and as the two armies closed, the archers were running short of arrows!
Look closely and you will see that two archers are holding up the Landsknecht pike block!
In turn three, using a combination of a sneaky special event card ‘False colours’ the Gewalt were able to charge home against the single unit of archers! The result should have been a massacre and it was, the pikes killing 10 archers. They needed to throw 11 to stand. Bugger! they did just that, holding the Landsknechts for the time being!
Things are getting busy on the battefield!
Things now started to get busy on the battlefield with the Vorhut engaging a bill and bow block and the Stradiots charging another unengaged bill and bow block in the flank. The Stradiots inflicted 6 casualties but the block passed it’s morale test causing the Stradiots to bounce. Meanwhile the Gewalt finally put the archers to flight and engaged the same bill and bow block. Again, the English, whilst taking casualties stood firm, passing their morale check.
The Duc de Bourbon edges closer to the combat – watch out there are gunsmen in the woods!
There was no doubt the the English were under pressure and sensing victory, the Duc de Bourbon began to edge closer to the fighting, ignoring the gunsmen skulking in the woods. However, the English, although taking severe losses somehow managed to fight on, surviving each morale check required. The gunsmen had also started to inflict casualties on the Duc’s Gendarmes, infuriating the Duc!
Biscottti has survived his own morale challenges and ready’s for the charge!
Things started to get desperate! Although the French had yet to lose a morale token, they were beginning to be frustrated by the English army’s resilience and ability to continue to fight. The French had taken 5 morale tokens and when Biscotti charged home into the flank of the engaged Bill and bow block, daunting it, just one more token was required!
Biscotti charges in, daunting the English!
The Vorhut, however, had failed to break the English block that it was fighting and after three turns it was forced to withdraw, leaving a heavily depleted unit. Surely it was just a matter of time before the English folded.
The Duc de Bourbon finds that the English are not going to give up!
The Duc de Bourbons card was then drawn. With the English bill block left with three men, surely it was time for him to charge in and deliver the coup de grace as he had in the previous game! With 8 dice hitting on 4+, re rolling all misses and the commanders automatic hits and saving on a 3+ what could go wrong? Well, the Gendarmes inflicted 5 hits all of which were saved…The billmen inflicted 3 hits, 2 of which were not saved!!! The Duc had lost the combat and would need to check his morale. He failed miserably and ran from the field! Somehow the stoic English had put flight to the French commander and won the game!
I was so shocked that I forgot to take a picture of Richards victory dance – he had snatched a most unlikely win thanks to my impetuous charge. That will teach me, as if I didn’t know already, that in billhooks it isn’t over until the dice say so!
So two fantastic games with two excellent and sporting opponents, John and Richard. I trust that we will meet again at a future event. Thanks once again to Pete Harris for organising the day and the superb meal, thank you to Boards and Swords for hosting the day and of course, thank you to all of the participants for making the day such a great event.
Just one of the magnificent entrances to Rhodes Old Town
It’s nearly two months since I’ve written a blog post! In that time, I’ve had a lovely holiday in Rhodes, relaxing and reading as well as exploring Rhodes Old Town and the beautiful medieval fortifications built by the Knight’s of St Johns also known as the Hospitalers. I’ve also been on numerous picnics and days out with Julie and Grandaughter Eleanor. The sunshine has not helped, it has been at times too hot to paint and certainly not the weather to be sat in front of the computer typing a blog post. And then there is the Olympics and the football!
Despite all of these distractions, I have been steadily painting bits and pieces, including some Samurai Cavalry.
Samurai Archers – Four more painted to complete the unit
I’ve added four Gendarme Standard bearers to my collection.
Gendarme Standard Bearers
I’ve also added a couple of LOTR models to my collection and I’ve now reached issue 38 of the magazine collection by painting Grima Wormtongue!
Grima Wormtongue
Finally, I’ve painted another of the ‘Giants in Miniature’ models produced by Wargames Illustrated, Great D’Arcy of the pale. In this case, D’arcy was a bit of a giant – he was reputedly the tallest man in Ireland at the time. William D’Arcy was an Irish lord who was involved in the Lambert Simnel plot to topple King Henry VII in 1487. D’arcy carried Simnel on his shoulders at Simnels coronation in Ireland. Fortunately for D’Arcy, he did not follow Simnel over from Ireland to the battle at Stokes Field as he may well have suffered the same fate as the rest of the Irish rebels, killed or hung as traitors during and after the battle!
Great D’arcy of the Pale!
He makes a nice addition to my Irish collection and will no doubt take to the Wargames table in future engagements as one of the commanders!
That just about rounds up most of my hobby activity for the last couple of months. The plan is that the blog will be upgraded and changed from the Arcane Scenery blog to ‘Steve’s Hobby Blog’ to reflect my newly retired status. I hope to write on a more regular basis and include a few ‘tutorials’. Mind you, I’m a bit concerned that my eye sight is deteriorating – the eyes on Great D’Arcy are a bit wonky when viewed up close but despite this, hopefully, fellow hobbyists will find some colour guides and research that I do useful.
Having finished my resin Gendarmes, I decided to crack on and paint the Gendarmes that I had picked up from Foundry Miniatures. They are actually listed as Casting Room Miniatures but are an off shoot of the Foundry brand and available from the factory shop in East Stoke.
Once again, I have to point out that my research with regards to the actual colours that these knights appeared in is limited. I used the Foundry web store pictures and references that I found on Pinterest and Google images as a guide. To be fair, in some cases, I simply attempted to copy the superb work that other people had produced. If you type French gendarme knights into google and click on the images tag, you will see plenty of inspirational images and for that matter, models. Here’s just a couple.
If you do follow the links, it’s worth clicking through to some of the blogs. You will see some of the models that have influenced me (those that I copied!) and there is some good background research. In painting these Gendarmes, I was aware that I may be closer to Fantasy that reality. However, some of the artwork shows some amazing designs – I nearly copied a knight with bee hives and bees painted on his horse’s armour but decided it was too complex! As it is, my free hand was being pushed beyond what I would normally attempt!
And so to the miniatures. The Foundry (Casting Room) miniatures are lovely chunky models with plenty of character and detail. The horses are perhaps a bit smaller than the Perry miniatures but once based, I doubt that it will be a noticeable difference. They were a joy to paint and needed very little cleaning up. Rather than detail the painting process, the general method that I followed was to block paint the horses and armour with the base coat colour. Then to apply the freehand design. The difficulty that I encountered was my lack of skill in replicating the exact design on both sides of the horse. I soon realised that you cant see both sides at once anyway so it wasn’t so much of a problem!
Once the freehand design was completed, I shaded the colours with either black, brown or light brown ink from the Army painter range. I find that Black ( Dark tone) works well over Silvers, White and Blues, the dark brown (Strong Tone) is good for Reds and Leathers and the light Brown ( Soft Tone) is good over yellows. Once the colours were inked, I then re-highlight with the original colours, occasionally adding a further highlight of a lighter tone. This gives me a clean a bold finish that I prefer. It might not be to everyone’s taste but as I am slightly red/green colourblind, I like to see the colours clearly and anything too subtle is lost on me!
When it came to the lances I decided to use the very pretty candy stripe design on each lance, choosing the colours to match the livery. To get the candy stripe effect, I painted the lighter colour on the lances first and then used Tamiya flexible 2mm masking tape to get a spiral design and then painted the darker colour. It’s not always perfect but a bit of retouching and it looks fine! I suspect that these lances would not have appeared on the battlefield but would be reserved for the jousting yard or parades. I guess that if it came to the actual battle, if they decided to charge, they could always get their Squire to change lances.
The unit is nearly finished – just the tufts and flowers to add
I had intended to put flags on each lance and ordered a selection from Pete’s flags. Although the flags are lovely it seemed that it would be too much to add them to the lances. Thanks to a suggestion from a facebook comment, I think that I will model a commander and banner man as a separate command stand. That can wait for now though!
The finished unit ready for battle!
So. another unit is ready for Battle – I now have a growing army for the Italian Wars. I think that after painting these I will have a break from the period and complete something a bit more straight forward. I also have a Japanese project that I’m itching to get on with….Watch this space!
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Having finished my Landsknechts force (for the time being…) I thought that I would add some heavy cavalry and I fancied painting some Gendarmes. Although it goes against the grain somewhat – adding French troops to my collection, that is – I couldn’t resist having a go at painting these ‘fancy Dans’!
Having spent a little time researching the options to purchase some of these heavily armoured knights, I chose two very different options. I bought eight 3D printed resin knights from Terrain Store on eBay and six metal ones from Foundry Miniatures. I also had three spare Perry Miniatures plastic knights that would give me a total of 17 figures; two units of 8 gendarmes and a commander. I am happy to mix and match manufacturers. By and large the size difference is minimal and can be hidden with some careful basing.
At 24 points a unit, the chances of fitting these Gendarmes into a typical ‘Bill Hooks’ army seems remote and for that matter, impractical but they will look nice in the cabinet!
Work in progress – some of the 3D print lines are obvious from this close up – they’ll pass as battle damage!
Just a brief note about the 3d resin figures. The detail on these figures is simply beyond anything achievable in casting metal or plastic. With separate reins on the horses, detailed spurs, raised visors with open vision slits and more, I couldn’t wait to get paint onto these figures. There was a slight downside, however. Whilst the fine detail is wonderful, larger surfaces are actually not so good, with the 3d printing lines showing up across some of the armour plates and other flat surfaces. You could really only see these once the models were painted and I was happy to treat these as ‘battle damage and scratches!
The resin lances were quite badly bent and difficult to straighten, even with hot water treatment.
Also the lances were anything but straight. I managed to correct some by dipping them into hot water and clamping to a straight surface but lost a number to breakage in the process. I had to replace the broken lances with ones from the Perry mounted men at arms set. So, I’m not quite a convert to 3d resin figures yet and I have yet to see how they will survive the rigors of gaming or for that matter, time.
A Perry plastic lance cut ready to replace the bent resin one – I used a razor saw to cut near the base of the resin lance and simply super glued the replacement.
When it came to painting the figures, my main references were Pinterest and other internet picture sites. There has been some discussion on the Facebook Bill Hooks site recently, as to what is ‘accurate’ when it comes to livery or colours for this period. As I rarely attempt to model a specific character or unit for a specific battle, I’m not too concerned with the detail. There were 2000 or so Gendarmes at the Battle of Pavia. If I was so minded, I suppose that I could find out who they were and maybe what they were wearing but it’s not my idea of a good use of my time. I wanted to paint some really colourful Knights that will look good on the table as they make a glorious charge to victory or oblivion in my little table top battles.
First two knights in plain armour.Ser Loras leads the charge!
With the freedom to use whatever colour scheme took my fancy, I have gone from some fairly conservative colours to those bordering on fantasy. The white armour with the roses is inspired by the Tyrells of Highgarden – they use a yellow rose on a green background but when I first read the Game of Throne books, I had imagined Ser Loras in white armour.
The black and red schemes are based on various illustrations that I have seen, although my freehand skills were not up to some of the details! As for the lances, the ‘barber shop’ twisting patterns were inspired by other models that I had seen and look pretty, if unlikely. I doubt that they were used in battle but rather saved for the tournaments in the tilt yard. It’s fairly easy to paint the spirals using 2mm flexible masking tape (Tamiya) to mask off the base colour as you apply the darker top colour.
Seven Knights in the picture but the red knight is still being painted and the Black knight needs basing.
I’ve completed six of the resin knights so far, with two more in progress, so this will be my first unit. I intend to paint the Foundry knights as well and I will go for flamboyant colour schemes to see if I can push my freehand on again! I haven’t covered the details of painting these figures. I’ve used the same procedure as usual; that is block paint, wash and highlight. The exact colours are not important as I have already ‘confessed’ that I have not followed a particular livery scheme.
Finally, I mentioned that I had bought a Pegasus from Foundry for my Granddaughter Emily. Well, here’s a picture of her progress with the model. She has of course chosen the colour scheme and followed the block paint and ink method to paint it – just some basing to finish and Emily will have a nice model for her bedroom shelf. I may yet convert her to wargaming!
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My intention was to produce a Landsknecht force that I could field using the Bill Hooks Deluxe rules set. Having painted a force of three units of 24 pikemen, along with three units of 6 gunsmen, I felt that the only other requirement would be to add some artillery. I already have a few guns in my collection but any excuse to add some more sent me searching online. I also needed an army commander and although I had some nice models on foot that could fulfill the role, I wanted a mounted general so that he could move quickly on the battlefield to rally any daunted troops.
To start with the General first, I copied an idea from Andy Callan, who in turn based his model on the cover of the Osprey book on Landsknechts.
It’s actually a very straight forward conversion. I simply took a Perry Miniature mounted man at Arms with the fully armoured horse and added a Warlord games Landsknecht head that looked about the same as the guy in the picture. I also added some spare feathers to the the rear of the horse armour and the commanders staff was made by cutting down a spear arm from the same Perry’s set.
My Landsknecht commander – Heinrich Kane of Bayern!
You can’t see it in the above picture but I’ve also given him a big dog as a companion. I’ve re-used an existing base that I had and will at some point make another and change the dog from ‘the biggest spotty dog you ever did see’ (older readers will get the reference and joke) to something more Germanic – a Great Dane or Rottweiler seems appropriate. I like to add dogs to my army – it helps that I have direct access to the Deezee range!
With the General sorted it was back to the artillery. My internet search had resulted in me settling on the guns and crew produced by Foundry Miniatures. Again, I am lucky to have easy access to Foundry. They are just 9 miles up the road from my house, so I was able to spend a pleasant couple of hours visiting them and showing my Granddaughter the Church and Battlefield at East Stoke. As well as purchasing two of the guns and crew, I also picked up a couple of packs of Gendarmes and a winged unicorn for my Granddaughter Emily! I have to report that the service at Foundry was first class. The young lad on ‘front of house’ was extremely helpful and ensured that I was able to get the models that I wanted. You can read about one of my previous visits to the Stokes Field Battlefield and find links to Foundry here:
Stokes field – the view to Hoveringham and the Trent – The Yorkists retreated over these fields!
Foundry Miniatures are sometimes thought of as being smaller than the current ’28mm’ crop of models. I have not found this to be so. As a general rule, some of the older ranges maybe but I found that the Landsknechts were, if anything, more on the large size but certainly compatible with Warlord and Perry Miniatures. I suspect that one of the Perry’s probably sculpted these figures.
When it came to painting them, I simply copied the figures on the Foundry web site. I actually went a bit rogue with the colours on the guns. According to one reference that I had read, the wheels were natural wood and the carriages painted red. I decided I preferred the wheels painted red and the carriages in natural wood. What a rebel, Heh!
I decided to base them on the Sarrisa Precision Terrain tiles for a couple of reasons. First of all they were large enough to accommodate the guns and secondly, I have vague ideas of making a larger diorama/encampment. Here’s the painted guns and crews on the bases.
Landsknecht Artillery on bases prior to finishing.
You can see that I use sabot style basing so if in the future I change my mind, it’s a simple matter to remove the figures and guns. The following picture sequence shows how I made the bases.
The frames are made from thin box wood, the gaps roughly filled with spare MDF and then all the gaps filled with milliput.The bases are covered with Vallejo texture Paste.The bases now painted, scatter and tufts addedA bit of work in progress, the next terrain tile with gabions will be an extra that I can add if I want a defended position!
So that’s the Landsknechts done – here’s a view of the army ( with the artillery not on the bases.)
The light cavalry in the background are a temporary unit – I intend to add some Stradiots in the near future. That’s once I have finished my Gendarmes…
Work in progress – Gendarmes – I plan to have two units of 8 and a leader!
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I’m a bit late writing this up as the event took place on Saturday 2nd September and a lot of beer and bourbon has flowed under the bridge since then…..As usual, I started the day by taking a few pictures and making notes of the battles but as the day continued and the battles became more intense, my note taking dried up, as did my photography. So what follows is more of an impression of the day and some of the lessons that I learnt using my Landsknechts.
The event is organised by Pete Harris and held at the Derby Boards and Swords venue ( link below). Regulars to the event tend to meet up on the Friday evening and have a pre BASH meal and refreshments. Pete Harris had also kindly organised the evening, with the group first meeting in the Derby pub, the Tap (great beer!) and then walking on to the Exeter (great food!). After the usual pre-event banter and an extremely humorous and at times hilarious evening, we retired to the Travel Lodge for a night cap.
The next morning, a full English breakfast and multiple coffees helped to start the day and it was off to Boards and Swords to commence battle.
My Landsknecht force on parade!
My Landsknecht force consisted of three blocks of 24 pikes, each with an accompanying band of six gunsmen. As each block is activated by it’s own card, I only had one army commander, Heinrich Kane, who’s main task was to undaunt any units in trouble or to issue orders to any unit that needed to react quickly to unfolding danger. As well as the troops, I had two Artillery pieces and a unit of light cavalry with their own leader.
Heinrich Kane, my newly imported mercenary leader!
This gave me 7 Army morale tokens, which sounds good but losing just two pike blocks would cost me 8 morale tokens. If that sounds unlikely, bear in mind that only the army commander can ‘undaunt’ a unit so if a block ‘daunts’ in combat it will split and the commander, assuming he is available, will have his hands full trying to rally the units. However, the upside is that the Army will have 5 commander cards plus the skirmishers and so plenty of opportunity and flexibility to move during the game.
The other issue with Landsknechts in the game is their lack of fire power compared to some armies and that they will only save on a 5 or a 6 when shot at. As a pike block, they will also take an extra casualty if hit by artillery fire. To offset this, Landsknechts have the attached gunsmen, that can be detached and sent forwards as skirmishers to harass the enemy and tie up their skirmishers (they can’t directly ‘block’ fire from opposition artillery or full units of archers). In addition, they have the ability to spread casualties through the block, making them less likely to require a morale check due to incoming fire and are therefore more durable in combat.
My Artillery pieces – now based
My choice of two artillery pieces might seem extravagant, particularly as artillery seems to have the habit of blowing up in games. Despite this, I believed the odds ( apparently 216 to 1) would make this unlikely and decided that I need something to intimidate the enemy and inflict casualties at range. This proved to be a double edged sword as I will explain below!
My final unit was a Light cavalry squadron. I will be changing these to Stradiots in the future – any excuse to buy some more toys….but for now they were a mercenary band of Welsh Cavalry led by Owen FitzTudor! I think that light cavalry are a valuable addition to any army. They can be brittle – a couple of lucky fusilades from skirmishers can see them off but they have the advantage of mobility and of course can get around the flanks of an army and cause mayhem.
And so to battle.
Let battle commence – in the background, Mike Peters surveys his table and plans his attack!
Battle one vs Richard Robinsons Burgundian Force
My Nachult block sneeking around the flank!
Richard opened the game immediately by firing his cannon. Despite my earlier comments regarding 216:1 odds of a catastrophe, Richards gun blew up, much to my amusement. So it was straight to the cards with the initial phases consisting of the skirmishers exchanging fire and my light cavalry winning the dice off with Richards light cavalry.
Gewalthut takes on the lone MAA unit and pushes it back!
It was now that I realised that my artillery were counter productive. Although they didn’t succumb to an accident, they just spurred Richard into advancing as quickly as possible! Fortunately for me, this led to Richards army being split, with his bowmen units being left behind whilst his Men at Arms charged home. I was able to defeat the MAA in combat, the pike blocks easily able to match them in combat, and with a pike block sneeking around the Burgundians left flank, they were out numbered and unable get enough shots off to weaken the approaching Landsknechts.
Despite taking casualties from the bowmen, who were protected in a block by spearmen, once combat was joined the pike block was able to use it’s superior numbers the win the melee. Victory to the Landsknechts!
Battle Two vs Ian Callans French Gallia Force
My set up – Cavalry out on the flank, Infantry in the centre
The French force was light on firepower but with blocks of MAA supported by spearmen, the offensive capability in melee is worrying! They get 24 dice for a full unit in combat but are saving on a 3+. Ian set up with a ‘refused’ right flank, pinning my opposing flank with his light cavalry and skirmishers.
Ian’s French with the refused flank
I opened the battle by firing with one of my guns and again, rather than provoke a cautious response, the opposite happened! Ian’s French came charging across the battlefield, eager to engage in combat before they took any more casualties. In addition, his light cavalry slaughtered my lights and then went on to cause mayhem with a flank charge on a pike block and then chasing off one of my artillery crews!
The battle was decided with a large melee in the centre involving two pike blocks and two of the French MAA and spear combo’s. After a three turn ‘slugfest’, it was the French that were victorious, daunting one pike block and breaking the other. Victory to the French!
Battle Three vs Ralph Duttons French Gallia Force
I was hoping for a different match up after the last battle but drew Ralph’s French in a near identical set up to Ian’s army.
Ralph’s cavalry play hide and seek with my Landsknechts!
Ralph was somewhat wary of the Landsknechts, initially focusing on their strengths rather than trying to find the weaknesses! Once again, that changed when I opened fire with my guns, prompting him to get into combat as quickly as possible! Despite initially holding their own in combat, the 3+ save of the French MAA gradually won the day.
The Vorhut are about to break! In the background, the Gerwalthut have daunted one unit but are facing a charge for the next block – they lose this time!
After a protracted, hard fought combat sequence, again, going into the third round, the Landsknechts had to withdraw, in disarray, as it was them who initiated combat. They were unable to withstand the next charge of the French MAA and were driven from the battlefield. The French were victorious!
The Consultation prize
Well they didn’t fair so well in battle but the Landsknechts were voted the best painted army. So I was pleased with the effort that it took to get them to the table! I have learnt a great deal though. I tended to fight a defensive battle, trying to wear down my opponent before closing in melee. I think that this is a mistake and in future, I will try to be more aggressive and attack first. This will give me all four ranks of pikes in the first round of combat and a re roll of any ones.
There she blows! my only loss to a miss fire!
The artillery is a mixed blessing. I think that the chance of a gun blowing up is exaggerated ( I only lost one throughout the day). However, there were turns when they hit nothing and as the battle progressed, the targets available diminished as my own troops got in the way and combat was joined. The 18 points that I paid for them would upgrade all three blocks to veterans! The other issue with the artillery was that it just forces the opposition into action, in effect giving them the initiative.
Hmmm, as a certain wise man once sang, ‘I think I better think it out again’
Oh! and it wasn’t Chris De Burgh…..
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Following on from my last blog post. Here is a rough guide to how I batch painted my Landsknechts. I am using Warlord Games plastic Landsknechts. I assembled them in batches of 12 models and once assembled and cleaned up, I primed them in Army Painter Uniform grey. I had thought about using a white primer, which would have given the colours a brighter base to paint over but decide to stick with grey as I find it more forgiving if you miss a bit of painting on a figure!
Once primed, I painted the flesh with Vallejo flesh 70955.
I then picked out the armour plates, chain mail and spear tips in Army Painter plate mail. There was one exception, The figures on the far right of the back rank was left as I intended to give him painted armour. I’ve no idea whether this is historically accurate but I had seen some pictures of helmets painted in this way.
At this point, I decided that a batch of twelve wasn’t going to work for me, so I took three figures, painted the hair and then started to block paint the first colour – in this example 70950 Black.
Next, I added the red, 70957. It looks a bit messy at this stage but I tend to tidy up as I go. There’s no plan that I’m following – I just paint the block colours in as the mood takes me!
I’ve now added a third colour to the figures – 70917 beige.
The fourth colour is off white 70820 – we are nearly done with the block paint!
The belts ( front and back) and the shoes are painted 70871 leather. I used this on all of my figures regardless of the colour scheme chosen.
The pikes are painted with Panzer Aces Old Wood 310.
The flesh is now given a wash using Game Ink 72093.
The Black, Red, Plate Mail and White ares are washed with Army painter dark tone – I thin this down slighty with water to make it a bit lighter and easier to flow.
The beige and hair is washed with soft tone.
The next stage is to re paint over the washes with the original colours ( including the flesh) where needed, leaving the wash in the recesses as shading. This gives the colours that nice bright look that I like. If you prefer a more weathered look you could ignore this stage. However, it doesn’t take as long as you would think and if you dont retouch everything it doesn’t matter.
I added some detail by painting the belt buckles and the decoration on the armour with gold 70996 and retouched any errors that I’ve spotted.
I’ve started the basing process. I just spread vallejo dark earth texture paste 26218 and added some fine ballast for extra texture. I’ve covered my basing process in many previous blogs. It’s now just a question of painting, dry brushing, and adding some scatter and tufts.
The next three figures are painted using the same process but I’ve used 70901 Pastel Blue instead of Black and the floppy hats are painted with red leather 70818 and varying the hair colour. By changing up the colours in this way, you get a variety of finishes.
With these three figures I used a very simple yellow, Black and white scheme. the yellow was first painted as Yellow ochre 70913, shaded with Soft tone and then repainted withy yellow ochre before being highlighted with 70915 deep yellow. The imperial eagle is hand painted. It looks a bit rough up close but from a reasonable distance will pass!
Another colour combo in progress. this time 70965 Prussian Blue with 70814 Burnt red and beige and white as background colours. There’s a multitude of choice when it comes to colour combo’s but I think that by limiting the colours for each batch, it makes painting faster and easier but the end result is still very colourful and varied.
Here is the finished block of twelve prior to final basing. I hope that this is useful to anyone starting out or thinking of painting a Landsknecht force. It’s not a fast project but they do look nice, if I say so myself!
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I have been steadily painting a Landsknecht force for ‘Never mind The Billhooks’. I first painted some of these colourful troops back in 2021. I had a sprue of gunsmen that were given away with Wargames Illustrated 383 back 2019 and they had been consigned to the lead pile until I thought that it would be a good idea to add them in as skirmishers to my WOTR army. The truth was that I just fancied painting something different for a change and six figures didn’t seem like a big investment in time. You can see the original blog here:
Having painted 6 Gunsmen, I thought that that would be it. However, I bought another couple of sprues from Warlord in the sale. My ‘excuse’ was that I would use them for crew on my galleys in ‘Nevermind the Boat hooks’. While I was at it, I also added some Doppelsoldiers armed with the Zweihanders- again as crew for my galleys. Thus my Landsknecht army gradually expanded!
However, the push that I needed to commit to making a full Landsknecht contingent came from an off beat source. I have been reading the fantasy books by Joe Abercrombie. If you haven’t read these books, I recommend that you do! The characters are superb and the action and dry humour is just top class. One of my favourite characters in the books is the mercenary captain, Nicoma Cosca. In my imagination, he is the perfect Landsknecht captain, first of all leading the mercenary band the Thousand Swords and then the smaller but no less ill disciplined and deadly mercenary unit, ‘The Gracious Hand’.
In an exchange with another character, Nicoma Cosca is getting dressed to lead his men into battle. He asks;
“How do I look?”
“Like a pimp lost his mind in a military surplus store”
“Exactly the look I was going for!”
Well, that sort of sums up Landsknechts for me! The final push was the publication of the expanded NMTBH’s rule book, Billhooks Deluxe, which covers the periods of the Burgundian- Swiss and Italian wars and of course, includes rules for using Landsknechts.
As for reference, I fell back on the tried and trusted Osprey series, as well as a number of articles in Wargames Illustrated. Of course, the internet provided plenty of reference, from pictures on Pinterest, various blogs ( once again, Camisodo is a superb reference – I used him to help with my Irish army). I wasn’t overly concerned with specific colours, I just wanted to create a really different and bright looking army.
When it came to choosing the figures, in the main, I have used the Warlord Plastic sets. I prefer plastics over metals for the main army as it makes transport and storage easier and the plastics tend to be more durable on the tabletop and easier to repair if broken. The other aspect that I liked about the warlord figures is that the crisp molding and clear representation of the various types of ‘uniform’ make it easy to pick out and paint the details. Having painted the plastics, I tried my hand at some metal figures, notably the Artizan range and now that I understand how the various frills, slashes and armour all work together, I found painting the metal figures more straight forward than had I started with them. Incidentally, the Artizan figures are superb and entirely compatible with Warlord and Perry figures.
One down side of the Warlord figures is that they are all very similar and a limited in the poses available. I varied how they looked with a few head swaps from the Perry sets. I also mixed up the arms and heads supplied to get a good mix.
As I became a bit more adventurous, I tried a few simple conversions. The easiest was to have a Landsknecht holding his hat – the figure in the middle below, looking remarkably similar to Rick Priestly, is my first attempt! Incidentally, the head is from the Fireforge Northern Folk Rabble set!
When it came to painting, I did some batch painting but eventually gave up and just painted three or four figures at a sitting using a limited pallet of colours. In my next blog article I’ll show my step by step approach and the colours that I used. Although I wanted a really bright and colourful army, I also wanted some similarities to the figures to try and tie them together. So all of the pikes were the same colour, as were the socks, shoes, belts and in the main, the feathers.
As you will have noticed, I haven’t finished basing most of the figures in the pictures. I’ll show you the completed units in the next blog – as I write this, I am just four figures away from completing three pike blocks!
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It seems that every blog post that I’ve written recently starts with an excuse as to why I haven’t published anything in the last couple of weeks. Well, I’ve out done myself now and it is a couple of months since my last blog.
In that time, I’ve had a nice holiday to Santorini, where as well as sampling the local wine and food, I did manage to visit the Archaeological site at Akrotiri, an ancient village consumed by the volcanic eruption back in 1700BC. The site is huge, with most of the village or town, being preserved by the covering of ash from the volcanic eruption. Incidentally, it is this eruption that is thought to have caused a massive tidal wave that overcame Crete, thus prompting the legend of Atlantis. If you would like to know more, I attach a link to the Wikipedia article and a visitors guide:
As well as the visit to ancient Akrotiri, I also explored the local castle above the modern Akrotiri village, built by the Venetians to guard the settlement from attacks by pirates and Barbary Raiders. The history hit was most enjoyable but didn’t inspire me to start any more new projects!
I am still very invested in ‘Nevermind The Billhooks’ and it’s various spin offs. Whilst lounging on my sun bed I did manage to read Dan Jones ‘The Hollow Crown’, a very readable and entertaining history of the Wars Of The Roses, If you haven’t read this, I thoroughly recommend it as a very good overview of the period.
As well as recharging my batteries, I have been steadily assembling and painting a Landsknecht force for the next Billhooks BASH at Derby. The event is due to take place on 2 September and it will be a close run thing as to whether my force will be ready. I now have two pike blocks of 24 Landsknechts finished, together with 18 Gunsmen. This means that I will need to get another 24 pikes finished, together with some artillery and a unit of cavalry.
Here’s a shot of the army so far.
And the next batch that will complete the two Pike blocks..
Heres a close up of the commander of the ‘Vorhut’ block – Lorenzo de Pala.
My intention is to publish a guide on how I went about painting these but dont hold me to this….I’m too busy trying to get the army finished in time for the Billhooks BASH event!
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The subtitle should be ‘where did that month go’! If you were to talk to my wife, she would confirm that I have spent as much time as ever out in the war room painting but somehow, I don’t have quite as much to show for the time. I think that I know the answer, I can sum it up in one word: Landsknechts! More on these later.
I have completed a rather odd trio of personality figures. In the middle is Irena Sendler or as she is sometimes known, Irena Sendlerowa. The figure was given out at the recent Partizan show and in keeping with my resolution not to add to my lead pile, rather than putting ‘her’ to one side, she was promoted to the painting desk. I needed to find out who exactly Irena was and why she was being sculpted at all. This wiki article will tell you all you need to know:
Suffice to say, she was a Polish hero that fought the Nazis in WW2, rescuing many Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto and I am glad that researching the figure gave me the opportunity to read her story. I decided to place her on a renedra paved base, surrounded by debris as a nod towards the conditions in which she was working. I’m not entirely pleased with the ‘finished’ result – I’ve made a bit of a hash with her eyes, which confirms why I usually dont bother! I may have to go back and have another attempt!
The other two figures are from the ‘Battle Games in Middle Earth’ magazine. I am gradually working my way through the series and with these figures, I have now reached issue 31.
King Theoden was the most challenging to paint. I’m very happy with the result and he is now safely in the display cabinet.
I’m also quite happy with the Uruk-Hai berserker. A much more straight forward paint job than Theoden but a nice addition to the collection. I must at some point have a round up of all the figures that I have painted in this collection just to show them off. Perhaps a project to mark when I reach issue 50!
The project that is taking most of my painting time is my Landsknecht unit. I have decide to branch out into the Italian wars for ‘Never Mind The Billhooks’ by painting a Landsknecht contingent. I’ll need about 96 figures and at the rate I am painting, I should have them done for the autumn!
As you can see, I have 12 Dopplesoldiers more or less complete and 6 pikemen well on the way. I hope to do a full article showing how I have approached the task of painting them. It’s certainly a challenge but they do look nice when they are done! Like everything, the more you do the easier it becomes as you learn that there are some quick wins. So that’s it for now.
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I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I am an expert when it comes to Medieval Ships in wargaming. However, I do have some experience of boat building. My model ship building almost predates my involvement in wargaming and in my younger years, I was a competent sailor of Marblehead yachts and a member of the Gosport model boat club. In an effort to improve my knowledge on the topic, I do spend my lunchtimes perusing the internet searching for information and it would seem to me that there is much that we don’t know about the development of ships in the Medieval period.
I found this piece to be quite interesting:
At the beginning of the 15th century the big seagoing sailing-ship had one mast and one sail. Fifty years later she had three masts and five or six sails. Unfortunately this great change comes just at a time when we are very badly off for pictures or descriptions of ships. English inventories of 1410-12 have been published and these give little light on the first stage of the change, but after that comes darkness. Other inventories of about 1425 are known to exist, but they have been not yet copied and printed. The documents of 1410-12 show that one ship in the English Royal Navy – and only one- had more than one mast; she had “I mast magn.” and “I mast parv.” – in other words, one big mast and one small mast. The latter may have been in the top as a topmast. We are not told which, but the reference is very important as being the first evidence of a second mast in Northern waters. It must be noted that this small mast was found in a ship called the “carake” and a carrack was by origin a Mediterranean type… The name ‘carrack’ was not new. It occurs in Spanish documents before the end of 13th century, and there is an account of the capture by Spanish galleys in 1359 of a large Venetian carrack; but it is in the 15-th century that the carrack was in her prime, and we see her then as a three masted ship developed by the southern nations from the Northern one-master and then taken up all over Europe. Genoa was the chief port… There were Venetian carracks as well, but usually the vessels from Venice were galleys,… designed and equipped for long voyages and cargo-carrying. … From the book : A Short History of the Sailing Ship by Romola Anderson , R.C. Anderson
Some of the information above seems to be out of date. we know that the Grace Dieu, Henry V’s warship was launched in 1418 and she was a massive ship ( literally a Great Ship) with three masts but it serves to show what little detail that we have of vessels in this period. We also know that Grace dieu had a number of escorts – smaller ships of similar design, or Carracks.
So when I was very kindly sent a kit of a medieval cog by George Antioch, a follower of the facebook ‘Never mind the Billhooks’ page, my first thought was to make an escort for my version of a Great ship, ‘the Sun In Glory’ ( shown above, cruising past the toaster!)
George had designed his kit as a cog but I felt that it was sleek enough to convert to a carrack, by adding the extra masts and building up the two castles. The first task was to assemble the hull.
Using the mast to ensure everything was aligned and the temporary square lugs, fore and aft, I used PVA to hold the hull pieces together and clamped it whilst it dried.
With the hull assembled and the decks of the fore and stern castles in place, I thought that I would add some planking to the card formers that made up the hull. I was too lazy to cut out the individual strips of paper and came up with the idea of using my paper shredder to produce instant planking by running a sheet of good quality paper through it! It was an easy job to apply the paper with PVA to get the effect of planking on the hull.
Once the hull was dry, I added the stern castle and forecastle using balsa – I used the card pieces supplied by George as a template but wanted them to be a bit taller than those from George. You can see that I’ve also added the two extra masts and a bowsprit. The masts are of doweling, the bowsprit is a ‘posh’ barbecue skewer, so I didn’t even have to sharpen it! The fighting top is made from two round 40mm bases with evergreen strip ( pack 159,) cut to size and glued into place.
The next stage was to paint everything. I used my standard process of a mixture of browns, finishing with a highlight of yellow ochre. I’ve added the links to my earlier blogs so that you can see this in detail if you need to. The checkerboard pattern was marked out using a black biro. With hindsight a pencil would have been better as correcting mistakes was difficult. The effect is OK but don’t look too closely! Yellow is a bugger to paint at the best of times!
Once I was happy with the painting, I added the spars and furled sails, ladders and anchor. I also modified the fighting top by adding a band of half round evergreen strip ( pack 243). It’s not as straight as it should be, the blooming clamps slipped as it was drying but I was too impatient to correct this and it just about passes!
Here’s the ‘George’ accompanying the ‘Sun in Splendour’ on the floor of my wargames room! I now have quite a fleet to fight using the new ‘Never Mind The Boathooks’ rules set – watch out for my next battle report!
Here are some useful links to my previous blog articles – there are others but these, I think are the most useful:
You can get hold of the rules for ‘Never Mind The Boathooks’ by purchasing issue 426 of Wargames Illustrated. As well as a free supplement with the rules, there are some useful boat building articles! It is available while stocks last here:
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