Another two dozen halberdiers finished!

Thanks to a dry morning today, I've managed to varnish my remaining 24 halberdiers;

Once again, these are all Perry plastic figures and the first dozen represent a well-equipped group of heavily-armoured halberdiers, probably a retinue force belonging to an important military leader or maybe a group of professionals from a condottiere's company.

I was originally going to give them a simple red/white livery but decided to add some blue to the palette to brighten them up a bit.

One of the things I really like about these Perry figures is the wide range of variations you can get from a single box, and the even more wide range of figures you can get when you add in bits and pieces from the other box sets.

I've given the final twelve a red/black colour scheme. 

I've decided to call them the Rossoneri (look it up if you don't understand this). Perhaps they might be a group of well-equipped mercenaries from Milan? I've given them a standard-bearer, too. I think it adds a nice variation. The banner is plain red. I was going to give it black stripes but forgot to do it. I might go back and add them in because I think it would be more striking.

So. I have almost finished my project. All that I have left to finish off are the men-at-arms on foot I mentioned previously. I think I'll do something else in between working on them as a break from all that plate armour.

Swiss halberdiers join my Condottiere's band

I've had these halberdier figures half-painted for a while now, but got back working on them and finished them off yesterday. Once again they are Perry European Mercenaries 1450-1500 plastic 28mm models.

I wanted these to form part of the Swiss contingent of my Papal band, and I wanted to paint them in the same yellow/black scheme I used for the pikemen, representing the Canton of Uri.

There are 11 halberdiers plus a leader figure in heavier armour with a mace and a buckler. First, here they are as a block of troops;

And here they are in a line of two ranks;

I shall be using these as Fierce Foot for Lion Rampant, as suggested in the rulebook. Of course, they could also be deployed as Averland troops in an Empire army for Dragon Rampant or some other ruleset. 

The polearms (a mixture of halberds, glaives and voulges) were made by cutting down arms with pikes from the box and glueing polearm heads onto the shortened pike shafts, a rather tricky business. I've deliberately made the weapons differ in shaft length and also used a number of different heads for variety.

I like the way that they have turned out. I added in a few touches of red to provide a subtle colour lift to the overall group. The red codpiece on a couple of figures is a nod to 80s funk group Cameo.