A new(renovated) crusader force

Okay,

spring time here at the Forward HQ, and with spring come the seasons of cleaning and renovation... okay we must clean every season...

Anyway, jokes aside, let's come straight to the point of this blog, mainly miniatures and wargames. When I started painting 15mm chaps (ages ago, last century!) I painted two Essex DBA (version 1!) prepackages crusader armies, one with knights on horses, one with dismounted knights. Let's be frank, the panting was awful, despite my being proud of it at the time. So awful that they ended up in a box and had been almost forgotten for years... until...

sometime I got bitten by a strange bug... the saving man bug. Why buying new miniatures when I have perfectly usable ones that I can salvage? Here is the result...

Ended up adding troops from another old painting effort, some anglo-norman chaps. I have imagined them for Lion Rampant, bbut can also form the core of a bigger force for battle rules like Ironbow or impetus. Some sculpts are a bit old (Essex regraved the line), but they still work well once painted. 

I have three units of knights, three of serjeants, one of bidowers, and a general (from Gladiator). 

Every shield has been hand painted. I am not 100% sure I can handle 15mm transfers... and I was on the cheap.

Maybe they are not perfect, but the mass effect is here, and I like the final result.

Considering I was just saving soldiers from the forgotten dump box, I am very happy.  now I have a decent crusader force ready for action. Maybe I will add some crossbowmen, they were a stable of crusader armies after all!  I have plenty from gladiator still in their baggies!

Something dangeorus... a XV century bombard...

Okay,

well delayed first post of the year... this really highlights  how unreliable I am in my posting.

Anyway last week I was rummaging in the assorted bits boxes. I found these lovely Foundry chaps in one of the boxes of primed miniatures. Basically I forgot to have primed them!  This is the downside of going back and forth from two countries, sometime I start a project have to go away, forgot that the project has started and the miniatures had been primed...).  You can even retort this is the downside of having kilos of unpainted miniatures. 

Anyway I decided to reduce the amount of primed white metal. I like paint the old Perry sculpts from foundry, and I am slowly building a second War of the Roses retinue, mainly for Lion Rampant.  I also wanted to try round bases instead of my usual rectangular ones for artillery.  



Considering I did everything (painting the gunners and the guns, putting them on the base and gluing the sand) yesterday morning and today I painted the base... well I am satisfied of the quick project. 

It will be a nice objective for Lion Rampant scenarios, or something more dangerous (for the enemy or for its owner it is still to determine!).  The gun does not look very safe at close distance, but it will be nice as a siege weapon. I really like the master gunner figure. It is full of character and was fun to paint.