15 mm Early Medieval Polish Knights (Essex)

This post features something a little different: rebasing & reworked figures.  Normally I don't do either but since my work on my Wars of the Roses archers in January I've become more open to all sorts of rework.

These two bases (units in Art de la Guerre speak) are intended for my Feudal Russian army.   The ADLG list contains just two units of Polish Knights.  This is handy as I have quite a few spare from the days when I played DBMM and built a Polish/Lithuanian army with all the options.

Most of my Polish knights are in later armour, far too late for Feudal Russia (1055 - 1246 AD), but I have few in an earlier style (EMED 11 from Essex).  So I thought I'll simply take two bases and re-base them to match the new scheme I'm using for the Russians.  The armour is not an exact date match for the Feudal Russians but they're close enough for now.

Of course nothing went according to plan.  When I based my Polish army I used DIY filler coloured with cheap paint to texture the base.  This meant I had to be careful removing the old groundwork and avoid getting any of the old basing material on the figures.  With one base it was fine; with another it wasn't.  This created some unplanned repainting.

However, once I'd got all the old basing material off I had a good look at the figures and they had clearly seen better days.  Some horses were very shiny due to a lot of handling.  As I didn't want to rebase play worn figures, I decided to touch up all the figures and re-varnish them.

As the photo below shows I also took the opportunity to add more detail, some brighter highlights and add lance pennons.   Why not?

Before & after
Here's a photo of a refurbished base next to one of the older bases.  The difference between the basing scheme is obvious as one is "pre-tufts" and one is "post-tufts".

Likewise the addition of pennons stands out but if you look at the larger image you should be able to see the brighter highlights on the armour, the surcoats and shields.