Sunday, December 11, 2016

Italian Wars Pike and Shotte from the Cantons of Lucerne and Zug


Here are a set of pike and shotte for my Italian Wars collection. They are flagged and togged out in the blue-and-white of Lucerne and Zug.

I've been wanting to expand my collection, but being a fairly slow painter I took a page from Simon Miller's (aka BigRedBat) playbook and commissioned some unbased figures to be painted. These Perry plastics are from my friend ChrisH. 

The pike shaking out into battle formation.
Chris did a great job on these figures. They have a rough and ready attitude about them while still proudly wearing their cantons' colours.

The shotte softening up the enemy.
As I suspected, once I added a little highlighting and based them to match my other figures, they blended in marvelously. Ready to be hired by the highest bidder.


The two units being harangued by their leader.

Next up: Some light cavalry for the Italian Wars.

29 comments:

  1. Lovely looking Perry plastics, they do really well as Swiss, I have to say I went less canton specific wth mine so I can use them as french and Italian, but these are very nice and I like the slightly jumbled pikes .
    Best Iain

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    1. Thanks Iain. Some of my units I can change out the flags but with the distinct colours of certain cantons/units I thought I'd indulge them with their own units.

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  2. Excellent group, very nice indeed.

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    1. Thanks Hendrid, the Perry pike really look good when they're massed up.

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  3. Top-notch work on these Swiss :)

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  4. Great work guys - lovely figures!

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  5. Lovely work. The painting is very nice and should fit in well with your existing collection. The basing simply rocks...

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    1. Thanks Nick. Yes, I find that as long as I do a final highlight in my colours and base them the same as the rest then they blend in very nicely.

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  6. Wonderful looking regiment!Sometimes when doing a very big project one needs a helping hand at times.

    Christopher

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    1. Thank you Christopher! Yes, I realized early on in this project that if I truly wanted to do this period in a big way (and enjoy them before my dotage) I needed some assistance.

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  7. There is a lot of painting work there... Really nice and impressive.

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  8. A really impressive unit - I love the density of the Pike Block. I am looking forward to seeing the light cavalry

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    1. Thanks Oli! Yeah, I think pikes need to be done en mass to give them the veritas they deserve.

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  9. Absolutely stunning work! I dabbled in some WFB Empire way back and decided back than that Landsknechts is not an era I would like to seriously collect or paint but pictures like these do get the juices flowing. How do you decide what Cantons to chose or what colour-scheme your next Landsknechts will have? And I also noticed this unit to be rather uniform in comparison to some of your other units who look more like a put together rabble colour-wise.

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    1. Thanks Sander - it was a joint effort between ChrisH and I.

      If you do a google search on Swiss cantons you will get their history and banners from the Renaissance. I believe there were 13 cantons in the Swiss Confederacy in the 16th century: Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Glarus, Appenzell, Zürich, Bern, Luzern, Zug, Basel, Fribourg, Solothurn, Schaffhausen.

      To be honest, these 'uniforms' are highly conjectural as I think most of the Swiss lads would wear whatever they had at hand. They might have a jerkin or hose in their canton's colours, but I suspect that was more the exception than the rule. Nonetheless, I like to have some 'sense' of canton uniformity and I like them to tie in with the banners.

      As to landsknechtes, well, they were a complete cacophony of colour and design, with no uniformity at all. I find them an absolute b*tch to paint but once they're done they do make for an interesting unit.

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  10. These are very nice - nothing quite like a block of pike!

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  11. Awesome! These look fantastic and this force is growing rapidly. It's going to be a great collection. cheers

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  12. Wonderful stuff! You really must get around to sending me some heads mate...

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  13. Cracking stuff ... once you get your head around having other people paint stuff for you it can expand a collection quickly . Your Stradiots will be along over. The winter too ...;-)

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Thanks for your comment! As long as you're not a spam droid I'll have it up on the blog soon. :)