Early Medieval Commanders

 Well I finished the commanders but my table isn't clean enough for an army shot. I've got a Viking chieftain as well as the two Frankish leaders. All three are Gripping Beast metals.

As a bonus, here's a size comparison with a typical GB plastic, and an action shot.

Almost the rest of the Franks

 Here's the remaining units for my Carolingian army, done except that I might do a second pass on some of the shields. All I have left for them is a mounted warlord and a priest. I'll post a full army pic once I have those characters ready.

Carolingian Franks

 A third army, or at least the start of it, to scrap with my Slavs and Vikings. Pretty much just Gripping Beast plastics mixed up, with a few metal Franks and warlord Celt heads. The highlight is the shields, made of upholstery tacks and press-molded greenstuff bosses, which admittedly mostly came out more "spike" than "sugarloaf". 

More Renaissance Characters

 Here's some more, these are all Assault Group (except the mace and mace hand are from Perry plastics).

Still messing around with rules stuff on a conceptual, pre-playtesting level, but I think I'm starting to close in on some gameable ideas...

A medley of Renaissance characters

 Been painting up a variety of figures for an Italian-Wars-adjacent mini-project. Spinning off of my Novara (1513) project, I've been toying with an idea for a small-scale skirmish game set in the same era. I don't want to share too much of my planning at this point, but I'm happy to post these miniatures by way of preview.

I've organized them by manufacturer, for no particular reason.

First up are two unconverted Old Glory Landsknechts from their artillery crew set.

Next are some Perry "European Armies" figures, I'm done some modest converting to bring some of them forward a decade or two, but as you've probably noticed by now my sense of period-specificity is impressionistic at best.

Last up for this post are some metals from Warlord Games' landsknecht collection. Lots of character in these. No conversions except for a beard on the herald/town-cryer type character.

Got some TAG minis on the way, then after that I might start talking a bit more about the specifics of the new project...

Gosiewski Rides Out (Pikeman's Lament AAR)

It took a while, but I finally bought a battlemat (from deepcut), set up some tables (uline), and put together a solo Pikeman's Lament game to refamiliarize myself with the system. I even tried to write a narrative battle report, but it was really hard to account for the high number of botched orders.

The terrain is pretty minimal, PL says at least one piece per quarter so I went with that. The forces are PL approximations of a couple of skirmish lists from By Fire and Sword, a game that I doubt I'll ever play but regard highly as a resource.

In particular, the BF&S ruleset has made Wincenty Korwin Gosiewski a minor celebrity among Eastern European Renaissance wargamers, on account of his 1649 raiding party being the only way to field winged hussars in the skirmish level of that game. His Cossack foes for this battle are based on the generic Cossack skirmish force from the same game. For the scenario I went with the basic Ga Pa line-up-and-fight deal, with the Cossacks defending and the Lithuanians attacking.

Cossacks:
2x12 veteran shot (Registered Cossacks)
2x12 shot (moloitsy)
2x12 clubman (peasant rabble)
1x6 commanded shot (plastuny scouts)

Lithuanians:
1x6 veteran gallopers (hussars)
2x6 trotters (rajtars)
2x6 raw gallopers ("cossack-style" light cavalry)
1x6 dragoons

To keep things simple, I made the hussars Veteran Gallopers but not aggressive, both because I didn't want to have to remember the mechanic, and also because I felt that the Gosiewski Party background justified less reckless hussar behavior. I also made no attempt to represent the spearmen mixed in with the Cossack moloitsy, I have a few ideas on how to do so, but didn't want to bother with house rules for this game.

Turn 1: the rajtars and hussars advanced, but the "cossack-style" light cavalry and the dragoons stayed put, a reasonable enough set of results. The actual Cossacks all advanced, save the moloitsy on the side of the village (who were not asked to), and one of the peasant rabbles (fair). The plastuny scouts moved with special elan, accruing a bonus point of honor for their officer on account of their remarkable sneakiness perhaps. First blood to the Cossacks!! Not in-game, but rather, when I was moving one unit of moloitsy, a Cossack in the stationary moloitsy unit stabbed me in the finger with his wire spear, hard enough to draw literal blood. Good for him!

Turn 2 began well enough with the rightmost rajtars advancing, but ended prematurely and absurdly as the hussars decided to flee a half move, apropos of absolutely nothing. The now-exposed rajtar unit prepared for the worst, and while the first salvo from one registered Cossack unit did indeed halve their numbers, the rest of the Cossack army was apparently as confused by the hussars' retreat as the other Lithuanians were....

For Turn 3, obviously the priority was to get the elite hussars going back in the right direction (i.e. towards the enemy), but they were unable to move as their commander had to pause to receive a dispatch from high command; unfortunately, his dragoons were being reassigned, effective immediately. Gosiewski's only solace was that his foes remained baffled by his force's shambles, and themselves took no action.

Turn 4 saw the bulk of the Lithuanian force (both light cavalry units and the intact rajtars) finally advance, but a botch on the hussar order saw them become wavering! Perhaps their lances and wings had gotten tangled as they attempted to turn back to face the Cossacks? For their part, registered Cossacks shot down two more rajtars (although the final member of that unit refused to budge), and the other registered unit moved up to the fence, but when the moloitsy outside the fence were ordered to shoot, they decided to advance instead. While it is usually a poor plan for infantry to charge gallopers in this game (or ever), given how poorly the Lithuanians were performing I can't blame the moloitsy for feeling pretty confident.

Turn 5 began with the hussars successfully shaking off their wavering status. This auspicious occurrence was followed by a "successful" caracole from the intact rajtars, that is to say, they received and executed the order, but failed to do any damage to the registered Cossacks opposite them. The remaining cavalry all moved as directed, marking the first turn in the game where an entire force carried out all orders. By way of contrast, the Cossacks failed the first order given.

At the beginning of Turn 6, the hussars advanced for the first time since turn one, though sadly they were unable to charge due to their previous dawdling. Both units of light cavalry, however, were in range to charge, and did! They attacked the out-of-position moloitsy, the first unit dealing some damage before being scattered by the moloitsy's first salvo, the second dealing additional damage and only losing two men in return. Tied for damage, the second light cavalry unit was forced to withdraw (as the attacker), but both units remained in good order. Meanwhile, the intact rajtars performed another ineffectual caracole, while the lone rajtar was unable or unwilling to perform the maneuver.

Turn 6 continued with the registered Cossack units opening fire on the rajtar squadrons nearest them - the lone rajtar was finally gunned down, while the larger unit lost two cavalrymen. Reduction of the Lithuanian force to half strength meant morale testing for every unit, but only the remaining rajtar unit began to waver. The pastuny, who had scaled the hill in such a praiseworthy fashion earlier in the encounter, seemed content to continue posing, choosing to disregard the order to shoot at the nearby light cavalry.

At this point I called it for the Cossacks. While the veteran gallopers are a tough enough bunch that they might well have been able to turn the tide singlehandedly had the game continued, quite frankly I did not want to give them the opportunity after their absurd incompetence throughout the previous turns.

I'm already planning a sort of rematch, with 36ish points per side to more accurately reflect the skirmish lists, more liberal use of special/house rules, and perhaps even a custom scenario to reflect Gosiewski's historical mission.

Mounted Crossbows for Italian Wars

Post-move pandemic hobbying continues! I built a batch of mounted crossbows, mostly from the Perry light cavalry box but with a handful of Warlord's landsknecht bits to bring them into the early years of the 16th century.

My ultimate goal, which I don't think I've actually mentioned on this blog yet, is to field both sides of the Battle of Novara (1513). I'm using Olicanalad's blog as a reference for force construction. It's not so much due to any particular interest in this exact battle, as it is a way to guide and constrain my general interest in Landsknecht, Swiss, and associated early-1500s troop types.

Don't worry, I intend to swing back around to 17th-c Eastern Europe soonish...

new Swiss, new apartment

Hey all, pandemic precautions have been less productive than would be expected, on account of moving to a whole new apartment. But I finally unpacked enough to resume hobby activities! Have some freshly-painted Swiss skirmishers:

As before, batchpainting for convenience. The final units will be more varied.

Vikings

Mostly minis I bought when GB first released their plastics, just rebased and touched up in some cases. Army shot only, I might pick out some favorites to highlight later, but honestly this bunch is pretty out-of-the-box.

Now with Flag

The flag is adapted from a wikipedia image of an artifact depicted the thunder god Perun. I was going to add a border, but honestly I kind of like how stark it looks without one...

more slav elites, and the voivode

The elites are a mix of GB plastics much as before, except the lamellar armor is carved directly into the chest of Dark Age plastic figures (ouch!), instead of being taken from the Arab Heavy Cav box like last time. Also, the flag and horn guys are GB metals, the last of the purpose-built metal Slavs I got from GB. I have yet to decide on a flag for the army.

And here's the general for these guys. He's a Gripping Beast Arab, with a Warlord Games Celt head, and some greenstuff fingers and nasal piece. I figure he's an older dude who prefers to let others do the actual fighting these days, which accounts for his relatively relaxed pose and lack of body armor. He should still stand out on account of having the only helmet in the entire army though...

Slav elites and army shot

Here is the final unit of my core Early Slav force, a small group of armored infantry. There are two Gripping Beast metal Slavs, and the rest are kitbashed out of GB plastics.

And with that, my Early Slavs are basically ready to go. I really like how the limited palette approach worked out, they look quite irregular but still visually cohesive and at least moderately intimidating.

(If you're curious about army composition, I literally just looked up the DBA list for Early Slavs and then doubled the figure count. Since that totals to less than 24 pts in Lion Rampant, I then added the "Foot Knight" elite infantry to bring them up to the target.)

Slav Cav

Here are the cavalry for my Early Slavs, just straight Gripping Beast Dark Age light cavalry except for a few headswaps and a greenstuff hat.