February's Painting

I looked at my watch this morning and realised that it was the last day of the month. I thought about the things I've done for my Cerignola 1503 game during the past 28 days. This game will be a demo at Sheffield Triples later this year; there is a deadline. The 'to do' schedule is not that demanding but, I've surprised myself with the amount I've actually done for it in just four weeks: I've managed to break the back of the figure painting.

24 Gendarmes. 

12 crossbowmen and 18 French pike. 

72 Swiss pike. 

8 foot of 'widened ditch' to sit in front of the Spanish earthworks.
















Next on the agenda:
Two units of 8 Stradiots (actually only 15 cavalry figs).
Another three units of 8 Spanish / Italian 'gendarme types' (24 heavy cavalry).
Two buildings (already constructed - one can be seen above) to paint.
Three feet of 'town street' (sections cut) to cobble with lentils, then paint.
One foot of earthworks to make and paint.
Table cloth (15 x 6 feet) to re-spray much lighter, with tan and yellow 'rattle' cans.

Swiss pike courtesy of Russ Dunaway

Following a blog post earlier this year, Russ Dunaway, of Old Glory, commented favourably,on TMP, about the paint job I'd done on the Old Glory figures that make up the bulk of my Italian Wars pike. That would have been enough: But no, Russ went one better and promised to donate, gratis, the figures for a new Swiss phalanx for my efforts. I picked the figures up from Big Andy C. at Vapnartak (York) in February.

Here arethe first 36 of those figures. There will be 72 figures on 12 stands of 6 figures; so the first 36 are here awaiting the other 36 figures painted with a slightly different pallet for more variation. Another 36 armoured front rankers (6 stands) are also on the painting schedule. This will bring my Swiss pike up to 216 figures, plus another 72 Foundry Swiss that I use as French should they be required (for Marignano, etc.). All pictured pike are OG; there are a couple of Foundry halberdiers and command figures (that I had lying around) mixed in. 

Thank you Russ Dunaway!

These figures, once completed, will replace the Landsknechts bulking out the Swiss pike square featured in the previous post. BTW. I'm going to go for the deep square formation - it won by a landslide.

I've already undercoated the next 36.


These will be similar, except that there will be a dark (rather than bright) green. A darker and paler blue than in the previous batch. A red brown, and a dark red. There will be no pink or yellow jackets. Striped trouser will feature yellow and green rather than white. Hats will be black, green, red, and tan.
When added into the spaces on the bases, the mix will be complete.

Which looks better?

At Cerignola there were about three and a half thousand Swiss pikemen. I'm currently planning on re-fighting this battle at a figure scale of about 1:20. This gives, using nice round numbers, 180 Swiss pike figures (30 stands of 6). That is a lot of figures to deploy as a block, and far more than I'm used to - so which of the following looks better?

Please note: I do know that there are 12 stands of Landsknechts in this unit - I'm in the process of painting up the 72 Swiss replacement figures.

 The two shots above show them deployed in 6 ranks of 30 files - I'll call this "Linear".

The two shots above show them deployed in 10 ranks of 18 files. I'll call this "Square".

So, which do you think is better, looks better, etc?

Newly recruited Gendarme types

Someone once said that a wargamer could never have too many Landsknechts. Well the same goes for Gendarmes in my opinion. I have added another 6 units, each of 8 figures, to the 'heavy metal' pile. This week I painted half of them. This is a strange batch, in that it comprises several ebay purchases (hence only 5 barded horses in the mix instead of 8) rather than a chosen mix, but there is still enough variation to make them look irregularly dressed.

To speed up the painting I have not been over ambitious in the 'design' of dress. No vines and flowers in this batch, I'm afraid, just simple geometric designs. But, they look good enough for me.

Also, there is only one standard bearer. He was a spare from the re-basing of the collection. In the next batch of three units, I'll do 5 standard bearers - thus giving one for each new unit.

All figures are Foundry, but lances are by TAG. All were painted by me in Humbrol enamels, though the highlights on the metal bits is Vallejo (because Humbrol bright silver, is no longer bright!)

Anyway, here are the new additions. They still require some groundwork on the basing (as usual, LOL).