Long Awaited Landsknechts

Warlord finally released their plastic landsknechts, over two and a half years after they were sculpted for Pro Gloria.  After Pro Gloria sold out to Warlord, the kit seemed to languish in development, until today!

Originally the Pro Gloria release was going to have 24 figures, with 20 regular pikemen/spearmen/halberds and four command, but it appears that when Warlord reworked the figures, they increased the total number to 30, while altering the options to allow you to build either entirely pike or a few Arquebusiers (and reducing the number of heads available as well). 

These seem to be well suited for their intended purpose, and would also go nicely in an old school Warhammer Fantasy Battle Empire army, which is where any I bought would end up.  Unfortunately with the demise of WHFB, sort of a low priority for me (and I have half a dozen regiments to paint first anyway) but something I will certainly keep an eye on.

Plastic Landsknechts - IndieGoGo

Pro Gloria's Indiegogo campaign

€24 gets you a box of figures, including 20 regular pikemen on two sprues, and four command figures on two command sprues. Enough arms to equip with halberds, spears, or pikes, and more than two heads per figure so you can have plenty of variety. Shipped worldwide, some time in mid 2015, although it may be longer...

Higher level rewards and add-ons are of course available. As of this writing the campaign is at ~15% of its goal, but I think it will make it, if not here, than later, since the figures are already sculpted.

I do not think I am going to be taking part in this, since I have plenty of pikemen currently, but I hope that this comes to fruition sooner or later... because I will eventually need more, and they look great.

023 Sells Army

ZeroTwentyThree is selling his WHFB Marienburg (Empire) army. While this is undoubtedly a great tragedy for him, it should be a great opportunity for someone else [or rather two chances, since he is selling humans in one lot, and weirdos in another].

Ebay win(s)

After a year or more, and at least 20 bids, I finally won a high elf griffon from the Isle of Blood Warhammer Fantasy Battle starter.  I guess the market finally became saturated enough that my low ball bids had some success (fortunately for only one griffon and not all of the ones I was bidding on!).  As is my custom with ebay, I then checked out what other items the seller had for sale... and ended up with a Skaven regiment and some bits.

You can not tell from my crummy camera phone picture, but the sculpting is amazing, and the skaven in particular are super sharp, and have no duplicates in 20 figures, something that would be inconceivable when I started in this wacky hobby over 15 years ago, when plastic meant "monopose" 99% of the time.

Now I just have to decide if I want to change the griffon's rider to something for fitting for the Empire, like a wizard lord, or if I like the model enough to leave it as a high elf, a testimony to an army that I will never start.  The skaven can be used in D&D games or WHFRP, or with some conversion in Mordheim, although I like the figures enough that I seriously considered getting a few more of these regiments and starting an army... but just for a few minutes.  Skaven armies are massive, and I do not need a fifth unbuilt/unpainted Warhammer army. (do I?)

 

Landsknecht Painting Guide

The Empire in the Warhammer world is set up as a pseudo-Holy Roman Empire in the late 1500's, and correspondingly its soldiers look like Landsknechts.  Games Workshop has drifted away from this focus slightly in the last decade, and correspondingly my interest in the new units of the army has declined.  Fortunately, I have enough troops to make a [sizable] army using the earlier 5th and 6th edition plastics, and do not need to resort to the newer pajama-men-with-poor-dental-work-and-bric-a-brac that now pass for proud soldiers of the Empire.

Unfortunately, Landsknechts can be pretty hard to paint, as they had no "uniform" colors in the standard sense, and just went with whatever looked good, wore layered clothes with ribbon sleeves, and otherwise made it hard for the poor contemporary painter.

Enter this Landsknecht painting guide that I found via link on TMP. Very useful that, and will be particularly useful for mercenary units and individual character figures that do not correspond to the Empire state armies.

Perry Plastic Men At Arms

As some of you probably noticed over on The Miniatures Page, the Perry Brothers have announced that the Mounted Men at Arms will be available at Salute, and that if you buy three boxes, you get a "free" Charles the Bold figure also, which is pretty cool.  I should probably paint one of my existing knights regiments before buying a new one, but these are pretty good looking figures, and should work nicely with my Empire/DOW army, as well as being useful for various historical battles.  I have frothed over these figures before, but they look great, and you should buy some.  [12 Knights and horses for £18]

Also, I apparently missed Conquest Sac again, which probably says more about my attention to conventions than about their advertising.  Looks like a good time was had, and Black Cavalier reports that attendance seems to be up as well.  Maybe next time then.

We have been sick at our house, so not much hobby activity going on, which will hopefully change soon when the taxes are filed.

Eureka Miniatures

As part of my D&D project, I needed to get some dogs to serve as retainers for the PC party.  (or as wild dogs to slay the PC party)  Looking around the various dog options from the myriad of sources on the Internet, I fixed on the Eureka Conquistador dog handler and dogs set as being the best bargain, and bought it from Eureka USA (for somewhat less than from Eureka AU).  Since they have flat rate shipping, I tossed in a few other useful figures for monsters and the like, which I will not talk about now. (I was also very tempted to get a squadron of Saxon horse for my 1809 project, but fortunately sanity prevailed)

My order came very quickly, and was packed quite well. I was really quite pleased with the service that I got from Eureka USA.

The dogs from the set are great, perfect for what I want to use them for, and while they have a little bit of flash between their legs, they are cast well, and should clean up nicely. 

Not necessary for this current project, but also interesting is the dog handler himself. I had always thought that Eureka figures would be too small for use with GW figures, but as you can see from the picture below, that is not the case at all. I am quite pleased with its size and heft as compared to the smaller Bretonnian figure on the left, and the larger Empire figure on the right.  Consequently, I think it should be possible to make a small Estalian or Dogs of War force using Eureka figures, and they would not look out of place with GW figures at all. Unfortunately, I have not opened my pack of Foundry El Dorado adventurers, so I was not able to compare with those, but I think they should match up fairly well.

With my Eureka purchase, I also threw in a Venturan trooper with SAW 15mm figure for comparison purposes.  Since these are relatively new, this may be of use to someone who is interested in getting these figures.

Left to right we have a Resistant Roosters US soldier in Greatcoat, the Venturan, a late war German  Grenadier from BattleFront (Flames of War GE722), and a German anti-tank gun crew man from Command Decision (Old Glory).  As you can see the picture they are all close enough for use on the same battlefield, although, possibly not in the same squad.  

The Venturan was well cast and quite proportional, although a bit thin legged considering he has body armor on. The integral base was quite thin, and would be easy to blend in. The SAW, as you may be able to tell from the picture, is pretty clearly a SF BAR, which I found amusing. At $0.67 a figure, they are quite reasonable, and a full platoon would not break the bank.

As a concluding cautionary note, the Eureka figures do contain lead, so be sure to handle them appropriately, if like I do, you have small children.

Soon, I hope to discuss the other figures I am getting from Perry miniatures, Red box games, and Ebob.

Pro Gloria Miniatures

I probably would have noticed these figures earlier if I had been to the Warhammer Empire forum lately, but a new company (to me at least) called Pro Gloria, has just released some lovely HRE civilian figures, sculpted by Paul Hicks!

Very exciting, and not too expensive either, at €5.95 per pack.  There are currently four packs, and hopefully there will be many many more. These figures will be excellent as NPCs for WHFRP, or for Mordheim type skirmish games.  As an aside, the paint job on these is by Andrew Taylor, and just look at that herald... he has a double eagle under his arms... amazing.

Sometime in the future, I need to get these figures.

Glorious Weißenland

From Miniatures

Above is my WHFB Weißenland army circa early 2007. Sad to say, not much progress made since this picture was taken. I have completed a 10 knight regiment of the Black Griffon, I have just started painting the next full regiment for the army (32 spears) and have painted a number of NPC types to populate the WHFRP version of this world, but no real progress. Around 1000 points depicted.

1. Archer detachment, 2. Captain and swordsmen, 3.Wizard, 4.FreeCompany, 5. Huntsmen, 6. Cannon, 7. Crossbows, 8. Knights