Knights of the Mittelmark Pt. 5...More Knights and Some Artillery

Guns of the Army of the Prince von Refn stand ready to vomit death into the ranks of his enemies...Typically a knight of von Refn's realm is expected to bring 10 foot soldiers with him to the Raven Standard when called, but these evidently wealthier knights have chosen to bring a gun and crew each in lieu of infantry.  Undoubtedly this improves their standing in the eyes of their Prince.

A veteran crew position their weapon with utmost care...

Another crew brace for the firing of their dangerous charge...

As is typical in von Refn's army, the crews wear the colors of their patrons.

Another shot of the battery...

A less finely accoutered but nevertheless expert crew site in their gun on the enemy...

All figures in this post are from Foundry's old Medieval collection, which I think were sculpted by the Perry brothers way back in the day.  I'm very fond of the line.

A scruffy old war horse

There's a lot of character in these minis...

Love this guy.

So an important step forward for my Warhammer humans.  It occurs to me that my medieval collection might soon be big enough for some Lion Rampant type skirmish games in addition to the Warhammery sword and sorcery stuff.

The fellow on the left wasn't much of a success but I'm not unhappy with the one on the right.  The horse on the left is a bit of a weak sculpt.

Huzzah!  Off to fight the Orcs or whomever else might be available.  I've got a clutch of spell caster types I'm working on.  They'll be the next addition to the army.

Knights of the Mittelmark Pt 4: Even more Bretonnians/Imperials

Every year as winter approaches, I find myself thinking:  "Oh, boy!  Lots of cold dark afternoons and evenings with nothing to do but stay inside and paint!  I'm going to get SO much done!"  It never happens.  Vitaimin D deficiency and general weariness and ennui ensure that I spend almost all my spare winter hours draped lifelessly over various bits of furniture, floppy and useless as a boneless chicken.  Arrgh.

Still, one must keep plugging away until life and sunlight return.  I've been trying hard to concentrate on finishing my unisex Warhammer humans army.  I conceived the army as a blend of Bretonnian and Empire stylings, but its looking more and more Bretonnian as time goes by.  Anyway, here are my two latest knights and the twenty fighting men which the Prinz von Refn requires they bring to battle with them when called.

The leader of this tough regiment is one Jan Slitsya, a priest and tutor to the children of one of the knights.  Though blind, Slitsya insists on leading his master's retainers into battle, and his apparently aimless strokes have an uncanny way of always finding a home in somebody's skull or shoulder...  Divine guidance, perhaps?  His magic war hammer inflicts dreadful wounds, and the Orcs and goblins of the Black River country fear him greatly, believing him to be possessed by daemons or worse.

Again I painted the infantry in colors to match the knights.  My original plan for the army was that every infantry guy would have a shield which would match his knight's coat of arms, so you would be able to pick up any trooper in the army and match him to a knight somewhere.  My ambition on that point has cooled somewhat...I've now accepted that a lot of the retainers won't have shields...and some of the knights probably won't have retainers...but I'm going to continue color-coordinating units with certain knights' coats of arms because I think it looks good and it's fun.  Notice I've sort of given up on painting eyes with these guys.  It's just not possible anymore, not until I break down and get a pair of readers, anyway.  Man, once your eyes start to go, they go fast.  Rejoice, O man, in thy youth.

The two knights...used the same color scheme on them so that their infantry would have a nice, uniform feel.  Once they are mixed in with all their knightly buddies, their identical color scheme won't look so odd.

Repeated the chevron design on the shield fore and aft on the caparison.  I think it looks pretty good.

I originally planned to repeat the shield design on this fellow's caparison as well, but I  the end I thought he looked ok as he was and decided not to press my luck.

The white reins maintain the color scheme anyway...

Off to battle.  When I was finished with these guys I yarded out all my Warhammery humans and was startled at how many I had.  I have a lot.  I actually have all the infantry I need for a strong army.  What's missing are characters, artillery and of course, I need more knights, especially if I am using the Bretonnian army list.  So time to try to get on with some of that!  Perhaps a clutch of spell caster types next?

Knights of The Mittelmark Pt 3: More Bretonnians/Imperials

Two more knights of the Baron Von Refn's army, mustering their troops for battle.  These are part of a push I'm making to try to get my Warhammer Bretonnian/Empire army battle worthy before the end of the year.  Most of the figures are Old Glory Medievals.  The musician is an old Grenadier LOTR Boromir mini.

Captain and banner bearer are Mark Copplestone Fantasy Warriors.

This is one of 2 great weapon units I'd like the finished army to include.

One of the Old Glory figures here...

There are also quite a few Wargames Foundry figures in the unit.

Chop chop!

Wargames Foundry Knights....

I'm terrible at painting the designs on the shields and caparisons but I felt I had to try to get away from using decals all the time.  From a distance they I hope they don't look too bad.

Since the infantry are meant to represent the retainers and henchmen of these particular knights, I painted their clothes to reflect the colors of the knights' heraldry.  My plan for the near future is to have one troop of nice with caparisons and one without, perhaps to represent lower ranking knights.

Using the same colors on both the knights made it easy to create a unifying color scheme for the infantry regiment.  A Wargames Foundry axeman and...

...A nice old Josef Ochmann figure and maybe my favorite of the whole bunch. 

Ready for fightin'!  I now have 2 1/2 infantry regiments, 30 crossbowmen, 6 knights and a whole ton of peasant auxiliaries.  In the end that does't add up to much on the table top.  Long way to go, yet.

The Black River Landesturm

 In even the Most sheltered portions of the Baron Refn's realm men must always stand ready to help defend their homes and families against marauding enemies.

 Such auxiliary troops usually have little real combat value, and leave the hard fighting to the professionals, serving in transport and other support roles.  In desperate hours, however, they may be forced to fight to in the line alongside the men-at-arms.

 Though generally poorly equipped and largely untrained in battle, such militias can occasionally become formidable if fighting to defend their homes, or inspired by a particularly capable leader.  This impromptu regiment appears to be following some pugnacious spiritual leader of their community.

Nonetheless the lack of military expertise amoung such troops is hard to overemphasize.  This individual appears to be trying to use his spoon for a helmet.

Dealing with the wounded of both sides is an important role for many Landesturm units.  Friendly wounded must be evacuated from the battle and tended to.  Enemy wounded must be located and dispatched, as shown above.

 Musicians are important to inspire the troops and help steady their shaky morale.

 This is one of several projects that came together at around the same time, thanks to some time off that I've had lately.  It was inspired largely by the peasant rebellions in Medieval Germany, which I read a little about this summer.

It will serve to bulk out my Warhammer Empire/Bretonnian army a bit, though it may not be much good for fighting anything other than Snotlings and Skavenslaves.  I'd like to 2 more units and some wizards to that army by the end of this year.

Knights of the Mittel Mark Pt. 2

 I was browsing back through some old posts recently and realized that it has been almost (gulp!) four years since I've added anything to my Oldhammer Empire/Bretonnian army.  Almost 4 years?  Is it really possible that that much time has gone by?  Father Time.  He's a man without pity.  Well, time to get back to adding some things to it and hopefully I can push my army out past 2,000 points by the end of the year.  We'll start with more knights and infantry.

The concept for my Warhammer human army that I dreamed up way back in the day concerned a Lord whose father had lost his barony back in Bretonna, and who had carved out a petty princedom in the Border Princes, on the very edge of the Old World, on the banks of the Black River.

Decades later, his son is doing his best to hold on to his embattled patrimony with the help of a collection of knights who've emigrated to the Border Princes from all over the Old World, bringing their servants and retainers with them.  Each knight is expected to bring a lance of ten retainers and/or mercenaries to battle with him when the Baron calls.  I wanted each knight in the army to have ten infantry somewhere in the collection whose colors matched their knight's livery.  Since this is a frontier army, I wanted a good deal of variation and improvisation to be apparent in the force, however, and although the army has a very feudal/Bretonnian feel so far, I wanted a mix of arms, clothing and equipment to reflect the idea that a number of different Old World races and cultures were represented in its ranks.  This also makes it easier to switch over to the Empire army list whenever I want. I like both army lists, and want to be able to use both without having to have to collect two different armies!

The figures here are a mix of Citadel/Wargames Foundry and Old Glory Medievals...

...with an old Metal Magic fantasy figure thrown in here and there...

I'm not too keen on how these guys turned out, but I guess they'll do for rank and file.  Anyway, I can't spend any more time working on them as I want to get some Syrian archers finished for my Hittite army by the end of this month and time is pressing.

Next I'm going to work on a little clutch of wizards to give the army some powerful character options, then I'll go back to more knights and infantry.  Need some cannon, too.

Marching out to meet the Greenskinned hordes...