What I Have Painted Recently

I haven't written a post like this for a while but recently I've been having a bit of fun working through some odd packs from my lead pile and even a few new figures. So I ended up with quite a few finished items from different armies and periods.

First up are some Bedouin light horse using RKMA4 from Roundway with a mixture of Roundway & Donnington horses:

Flag Types During the Wars of the Roses (*)

Or know your standards from your liveries!

Edmund Tudor's heraldic flag.

Lockdown Update (Doesn't Time Fly?)

I've just realised that it's two months since my last post.  In the UK we are half way through week seven of our first COVID-19 lockdown.  But that's only a small part of the reason why I haven't posted anything.

It's mostly down to lots of fiddly jobs around the house, painting display models for Fighting15s, and dealing with the year-end accounts for my wargames business.  Not to mention the April weather; it was marvellous, atypical and didn't exactly encourage sitting indoors.

The one thing I did finish was Volume II of the Hobilar Archive for the Lance & Longbow Society.  I started this project in 2016!

15 mm Italian Wars Artillery

I've just completed another mini-project.  This time it's a couple of artillery pieces for my Italian Wars army.  When I saw these figures I was struck by how characterful they were so they've jumped a good few places in the painting queue.

What I Have Painted Recently

I've finally got around to photographing my latest unit. It's a group of late medieval or early renaissance mounted hand-gunners:

I apologise in advance for my poor photography skills. Clicking on an image will bring up a much larger version which will look much better. Even so I seem to struggle with depth of field and I don't think the dark colour scheme helped either, but I wanted a scheme that reflected the end of the era of "white harness" and the beginning of blackened armour.

What I Have Painted Recently

In the past six weeks I've been busy working on quite a few new hobby projects.  Unusually for me I now have lots of projects underway; normally I only have one or two.  This means I've not yet finished any of them. Typical wargamer I hear to say.

I have however made a lot of progress.  I've nearly finished: my Bosworth commanders, some late medieval mounted hand gunners and some Russian mercenary cavalry for my Lithuanian army.  Plus I have made a start replacing the War of the Roses heavy infantry I sold last month.

In these circumstances what's a wargamer to do? Start another project of course! However, this one was deliberately chosen to be finished in a week and sold on eBay. Here are the results:



I've used a different set up for my light box to match the bases.  I didn't finish the basing so people can easily match their existing basing scheme.

The figures are from Essex and Donington, and the guns from Kallistra.

Work In Progress And An Appeal

This is a slightly convoluted story so please bear with me but if you have any unpainted Roundway 15 mm medieval figures you don't want jump straight to the end of this post.

At Britcon I bought a pack of Essex MER13 late medieval mounted handgunners from Instant Armies. I bought them because I was fascinated by the depiction of a knight on horseback firing an early hand gun.

I decided to go with blackened armour with brass detailing. Here're the results



As you can see they are only partly based. I wondered if I could get some other figures to give the bases a bit of variety. I remembered that Roundway do a suitable figure. At this point things got complicated.

Fortifications

In April I saw an offer on TWW from Alternative Armies for a bundle of 40 mm frontage wall sections in five different styles that was too good to miss. I ended up with a total of 2.4 m (yes metres!) for only £20.00 delivered.

Last month I finally got round to painting some:

The sections on the left are for my Later Polish army and those on the right are for my Timurid & Islamic Persian armies (hence the different basing schemes).

Timurid or Persian Light Horse

I have just finished basing these. They are a mixture of Roundway and Donnington figures and horses and will see service in my medieval Timurid and renaissance Persian armies.

What I Have Painted Recently

Medieval Eastern Europe Command (15 mm Essex XMED1)

For my Later Polish or Lithuanian armies.  I posted some WIP photos in February.

Recently Painted Miniatures

The lead mountain shrinks a little bit.

This afternoon I finished the figures for a general's element for my Late Polish/Lithuanian army. I've to varnish and base them but here's a few WIP photos of the general riding the mandatory white horse:

The figure is from XMED1 from Essex Miniatures. The others will feature in the photo's of the finished element.

Translyvanian Hussars

When I was exploring the options for Transylvanian Hussars I bought a few samples of renaissance pistol armed light cavalry from both Irregular Miniatures and Legio Heroica. I still haven't painted the latter but I did do most of the former and this week I finally got a result I am happy with:



First time round I wasn't happy with the red: it was too orange and looked washed out with weak shadows. Re-touching using a new recipe for the red worked a treat. For those "paint nerds" I used Palka Signal Red (32) with a highlight of Plaka mixed with a small touch of Vallejo Model Colour Sunset Red (802) just to tone it down.

What I Have Painted Recently

The title almost says it all except I hate photographing miniatures! I never seem to get it right. Anyway here are some photos of my last three mini-projects:

Late Medieval Mounted Archers

These are a mixture of Essex and Roundway figures. The latter needed some card under the bases to avoid too great a difference in height.

A Wargame At Last

Yesterday I finally managed to get a game in!  Graham & I traveled to MAWS' new venue in Eccles, Greater Manchester.  It was the first outing for my new Early TYW German Protestant army complete with a newly painted Transylvanian ally.  The army list I used is below:

Off the table things didn't really go according to plan.

TYW Saxon Infantry

Update

Mon 10 April,2023. The flags featured have been unavailable since I closed vexillia.com in April 2021. They are too good to disappear altogether so I decided to re-release them as a set via Wargame Vault.

Each set contains 24 flags in five different sizes, from 18 to 35 mm tall, all in one A4 pdf (for the UK & Europe). Just print the pages that fit your miniatures be they 15, 20, 25 or 28 mm.

Original post

These are early Thirty Years War (TYW) Protestant infantry.  My plan is to morph my TYW Danes by painting fresh command stands with different flags. Until recently I was hand painting the flags but these are the first to use some of the recently updated Electoral Saxon Infantry flags originally released through vexillia.com.

For practical wargaming reasons I'm using the yellow and black striped flags as a surrogate "national" flag. This is to "tie" the units together on the tabletop and to allow me to put two flags with each unit.

Transylvanian Ally Finished

Here they are at last! Thirteen elements to make up a small allied contingent for my latest 15 mm Thirty Years War (TYW) army. The original plan back in August 2016 was to morph my Danish TYW army into a Early TYW German Protestant army with the option of a Transylvanian ally. Amazingly that's what has happened:



The allied commander who can be either Gábor Bethlen (reigned 1613 to 1629) or his "less active" successor George I Rákóczi. The flag details are here and there's more here plus a free sample offer. Figures are Donnington EC03 on TYH08 flanking a Legio Heroica general.

Transylvanian TYW Flag - Free Samples

At the end of September I posted an article about the above. I was very pleased to get a reasonably "historical" flag for my Transylvanian ally general so quickly.

At the end of October I placed an order with Donnington to bulk out the samples I'd bought to a fully fledged allied contingent. The parcel arrived two days ago and the first thing I did was clean up the figure to bear the Transylvanian flag. This meant I had to decide what to do about the flag.

My first plan was to paint the design by hand using a black and white printed version as a guide. I don't own a colour printer. My second plan was to get some flags printed at the local copy shop. This afternoon it was time for plan two. After a phone call, an email and a quick walk round the corner to the copy shop, I had more Transylvanian flags than I knew what to do with. All for a quid!

Transylvanian Renaissance Hussars

Another simple post.  I bought these as samples at Britcon as I am think of building a Transsylvanian ally for an Early German Protestant army of the TYW.



They are 15 mm figures from Donnington and I really enjoyed painting them.  The codes are EC04 & 06 on TYH06.  I’ll be using them as “Bow, Sword” Light Horse.

I particularly liked how the faces turned out on these figures:

Ottoman Akinji

A simple post today.

The weather is good and the lighting is even better so I took some photos of one of my latest mini-projects.  As always click the image for the “warts and all” version.

These are 15 mm Roundway figures: RKOT12 & 13 to be precise. They should see service in both ADLG medieval & FOG Renaissance armies.

Transylvanian TYW Flag

Regular readers may have spotted that I’m contemplating painting a Transylvanian ally for use with an Early German Protestant army for the Thirty Years War (TYW).

I’m so keen on this mini-project I’ve already painted all the samples I bought at Britcon and I’ve moved on to considering my next purchase(s).  Amongst these will be the figures for a general and his entourage.  Obviously, aside from a white horse, he needs a suitable standard so I began looking for a suitable image.  I only wanted an idea as I usually paint my flags by hand.

As it turned out Wikipedia was all I needed.  An article on the Translylvanian coat of arms provided a concise history of the arms during the period and some useful pictures.  Sadly, all the pictures were before 1597 or after 1665; nothing during theTYW.  There was however a brief description of the arms in between.