Italian Wars Swiss Pike from Bern, Appenzell and Solothurn

Yooray! Another unit added to my Italian Wars collection. This time out we have a mob of Swiss pikemen from the cantons of Bern, Appenzell and Solothurn. 

The majority of figures from this unit were commissioned from the very talented John over at Jacksarge Brushes & Battles. 

Usually I prefer to paint my own figures, but I wanted to get this collection to a playable state sooner rather than later, so I've enlisted some help from a few pals from around the globe to assist me in getting them done.  I've already blogged about Brendon's Spanish jinete light cavalry and Chris' Lucerne pike; well, later this year you will see some work from two other paint condottiere whom I'm very happy to have as friends. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag until they're all done and based-up - so more on that later.

As I enjoy doing the composition, banners and basework, I had John focus on painting the figures and I'd take care of the rest.

I actually received these figures around a year ago, but the Painting Challenge and other projects sidelined me from getting them properly based-up until this summer.

As you can clearly see John does beautiful work. I'm very, very pleased with them. 

These figures are Perry Dave Andrews sculpts from Wargames Foundry. While they are a little long-in-the-tooth I find that they are really lovely castings; nicely proportioned and conveying a wonderful sense of movement. 

To be honest after my Landsknecht pike I wasn't really keen on doing another formation in a charging pose as they are complete swine to base and take up about twice the space as a regular unit, but I couldn't help myself when I came across these models while browsing the WF catalogue. Oh well, I reason that these levelled-pike units can be used to denote veteran or particularly large-sized units so I'm okay with having a few in the collection. 

I painted up a few more models to help round-out the unit. There's a standard bearer buried in there that's mine, the horn player, the mounted hauptmann overseeing the lads and the poor landsknecht out in front, having a little lay-down.

The banners are from Pete's Flags

In this last shot you see the pikeblock being screened by a unit of Bernese halberdiers and led-in by their mascot, 'Daisy'.

Next Up: A couple of Big Guns for the Mechanicus.

Fernando d'Avalos - Pavia, 1525

Here is another commander for my slowly expanding Italian Wars collection. This time we have a fierce Spaniard, Fernando d'Avalos, the victorious Imperial commander who defeated the French and captured Francis I at the Battle of Pavia, 1525.

The mounted figure is from Warlord Games, and while the casting itself is listed as being from their 'Wars of Religion' range, I thought he serves quite nicely as a early 16th century Spanish commander (I quite like his elegant soft cap, with its jaunty feather).

The dismounted knight at D'Avalos' side is from Steel Fist Miniatures. He is in full harness (probably shedding more than a few pounds, trying to keep up), wearing the distinctive conical 'kettle' helm frequently favoured by Spanish noblemen at the time.

The standard bearer is a venerable Wargames Foundy casting, holding a banner from Pete's Flags.

The two Alaunt pups dashing past D'Avalos's steed (and last seen listening at Francis' command post) were sourced from a private commission, sculpted by the very talented Steve May.

Now, I just need some more Spanish troops for Fernando to command. Yes, yes, I'm on it!  :)

In the meantime: Something Lovecraftian

Italian Wars Spanish Rodeleros/Escudados

I've been working on these figures off-and-on since the start of the Painting Challenge. I was hoping to get them done last Friday (Feb 24th) for the anniversary of the Battle of Pavia, but it just wasn't in the cards.  Nonetheless, I'm still happy to see them off the table and awaiting orders in the display cabinet.

These are Spanish Rodeleros or Escudados.  Translated as 'shield bearers', or simply shield-and-buckler men, they were an interesting troop type which saw brief prominence during the late 15th and early 16th century. 

The rodeleros usefulness was being able to break the deadlock between contesting blocks of pike (and in this respect they were very similar to the halberdiers of the Landsknetches and Swiss). Once the rodeleros maneuvered past the hedge of pikes, and got in tight with their foes, their half-plate armour, long swords and small shields made them superior to the lightly protected pikemen.

Nevertheless, the rodeleros, like most classes of infantry, were particularly vulnerable to cavalry, especially light cavalry and so had to be cautiously employed and judiciously commanded. 

Though they had a short time of glory in Italy, Cortes' campaigns in the New World was largely made possible by having a host of rodeleros at his back.

This unit is made up of an assortment of 28mm figures from The Assault Group (TAG), Foundry and Eureka Miniatures. I really like the Spanish/Portugues conquistadors from Eureka. They have a great sense of spirit and animation - the commander exhorting his men, seen below in the center, is from the Eureka range. 

The TAG castings were somewhat smaller than the rest, so I made a small rise for them running along the center of the base to serve as a crest, to help mask their slight statures.

I often try to put a boulder or stump at the rear of my large bases so players have something to grip on to when moving them on the table. For this base I've used a 3D printed stump that I scaled down to a useful size (this same design was used for my Francis command stand).

Historically, these bravos probably wouldn't be carrying their own banner, but I like my units to have flags, so they've been gifted one from Pete's Flags to hoist in the breeze.

There you go! Thanks for visiting folks, I hope you have a great week!

Francis I and Montmorency Surveying the Investment of Pavia, October 1524 - 4th Submission to AHPC VII

For our 'Armour' theme, I've returned to the Italian Wars with a vignette of Francis I of France overseeing the investment of Pavia, October 1524. 

Francis is seen here with his helmet under his arm, discussing the proposed dispositions of the French siege with one of his advisors, Montmorency, Marshal of France. The two men have recently arrived in front of the city and have placed a map of Pavia on a makeshift table made from a wagon wheel set on a tree stump. A pair of Francis' hunting dogs, Alaunts (a breed now sadly extinct), are at his side.  His banner-bearer, bored out of his mind, stands at the rear, holding the Royal Standard. Francis' attendants have brought out a stool with a refreshment of wine in pewter goblets.

Francis' figure is roughly based on an oil-on-wood painting from an unknown artist which was contemporary to the battle. In the painting he is depicted wearing gold armour with a red surcoat emblazoned with a large central cross. 

I kept the red surcoat, but instead painted him in his tournament armour, which in real life is  beautifully detailed with representations of fleur de lis on the knees, elbows and helmet (which, of course, nobody can see now due to the placement of the figures. Doh!). Francis' armour can be seen today at the musée de l’Armée, Les Invalides. 

The figures of Francis, Montmorency and his standard bearer are from the very talented Oliver James over at Steel Fist Miniatures.  These were part of a Kickstarter which I participated in a year or so ago and are now available on his website.

The two Alaunts were sculpted by Steve May as a private commission for Simon over at le Jay Emprins, who kindly provided me with a couple sets (Thanks Simon!).

Alaunts at the kill of a wild boar from The Grimami Breviary, 1490

The tree stump, wagon wheel, stool, wine bottle and goblets I printed off on my 3D printer (I LOVE that thing).

Francis' brave banner is from Pete's Flags.

As a historical postscript, the French siege of Pavia went on too long and a Imperialist relief force was dispatched to attempt to raise the siege. After a bold night march, the Spanish Imperial army smashed Francis' forces on 24th February, 1525. As the ultimate disgrace, Francis himself was captured and sent to Spain as a prisoner to negotiate his own release.

_______________________________

Next Up: I think something from Indochina is in order.

Renaissance Swiss Commander from the Canton of Lucerne and DIY Cypress Trees

Last week I promised an Italian Wars command stand and so with shortened breath I'm delighted to report that I've managed to deliver. In fact I even had time to gild my post with some do-it-yourself cypress trees, but more on those in a bit.

Readers with sharp eyes (and/or benefiting from week-long memories) will have noticed the drummer from my previous post is curiously absent. Well, being a fashion-forward kind of guy (cough, cough...) I realized that the drummer's rather 'busy' purple, buff, green and red outfit just wouldn't work with the clean-and-simple blue and white motif of Lucerne.  

 So, ordering a quick costume change that would make Karl Lagerfeld proud, I swapped-in a better garbed Swiss piper in the drummer's stead. La! The sartorial splendour of the Renaissance has been maintained. Phew!

The mounted figure is from Foundry's late medieval range while the two foot figures can be sourced from the Perry's somewhat vaguely titled 'European Armies' collection.  The flag is from the talented Pete, from the much better described 'Pete's Flags'.

I quite like the forked beard of the Captain. I suggested this to Sarah as a future winter look for me, but strangely she rolled her eyes and returned to reading her book, which I believe roughly translates as, 'Don't, you'll look like a git'.

Right, moving along. In the quest to make my Italian Wars tabletop look a little more, um, 'Italian' I've decided that I needed some proper cypress trees to go with the nice rustic cottages I got from Grand Manner. I looked around the webiverse and found that my friend Simon (BigRedBat) had a wonderful tutorial on this very subject. Please check out his great how-to as I, being a brainless muppet, completely forgot to photograph my work-in-progress. Suffice it to say they are made of twisted pipe cleaners, glued to washers, painted green and liberally coated with PVA and green flock. Here are 5 of the blighters, but I did up a dozen for good measure.

I look at the finished product and feel the need to order a plate of prosciutto, a glass of red and finish it all with the Medici-esque poisoning of my rivals. 

Ciao Bella!

Hope to see you soon - Have a great week!