Bohemian Pike & Shotte for the Thirty Years War

During my last visit to Greg's he showed me his Thirty Years War efforts using Warlord Games' 'Epic' range. As typical, his painting was fabulous, and they really looked the business all ranked up with an impressive hedge of pikes. I was so impressed by them that I wanted to give them a go myself as I was looking for any excuse to collect pike & shotte for this period. As Greg had already started in with the Imperialists, I suggested I give the Protestants a go, starting with the ill-fated Bohemians from the beginnings of the conflict.

I managed to find one of the all-in starter box sets on deep-discount, and so here are my first efforts with an infantry pike & shotte 'frame' from the range.

I like how shoulder-to-shoulder the troops are designed for each strip. I find this makes the painting of them a little easier. That being said, I thought it odd that the front rank of the pike figures are designed with a 45 degree action pose, whereas the shotte has been designed in marching, or at-rest attitudes. 

Of course I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I started pillaging the commanded shotte portion of the frames (which are posed as loading and firing) in order to make the handgunners a little more dynamic, and thereby blending better with their active, pike-armed comrades. As this process was a little fiddly, I'll probably do this just for a few units, maybe to denote veteran status.  

I primed the strips dark brown and then drybrushed them light grey and finally white to help the Contrast paints to do their thing. I then went in with a small brush to pull-out some details and add further highlights. Similar to my other small-scale projects I only paint details on the front rank, keeping the following ranks fairly minimal from the shoulders down. I figure, there's no point painting stuff that nobody sees. I like the more desaturated look to the figures, but we'll see how the process holds up when I get more done down the road. I think I'll want around 10 of these units to make a creditable force.

As to basing, I wanted something a bit more flexible to work with different rulesets.  Warlord has their own 'Pike & Shotte' rules, which are a descendant of Rick Priestly's venerable but still excellent 'Warmaster' system. Those rules have each unit made up of four bases, allowing for various formations to be reflected depending on their arrangement. 

While this is great, our group also enjoys the 'Too the Strongest' rules (the 'For King and Parliament' variant for this period) where we've been having fun making-up single bases to depict units, allowing us to make mini-dioramas to add colour. We also have found that the single-base approach also makes gameplay a little faster, being as players only have to move one thing as opposed to several bits for a unit. Horses for Courses!

Anyhoo, as the bases that come with the box are plastic, I contacted Precision Wargame Supplies to have them cut me steel bases as replacements. I did this as I like the added weight that the steel bases provide, and they also allow me to use magnets (without messing up the polarity) for the large sabot basing I had in mind for the large single bases.

This led me to contact our friendly terrain Minion Byron (also of Northern Lights Terrain) to have him cut me a few bespoke sabot bases as a proof of concept. These sabot bases are 190 x 60, with cutouts for 3mm magnets to keep the steel-shod figures in place. I also put in a cutout for a unit label. I still have a few tweaks I want to do, but I think these will serve nicely.  

One thing about the scale of these figures. They call them 'Epic', intoning that they are around 10-12mm, like their earlier efforts for other periods, but these are actually true 15mm (foot to eye). With that being the case, I think these might mix well with other 15mm ranges such as those from Steel Fist Miniatures, Peter Pig, Naismith, etc. More on that later as I try mixing a few of these ranges in.

Thanks for dropping by!

- Curt

Worst Case Scenario #16: Sally from Munroveccio - An Italian Wars Sideshow

Like many images from the Italian Wars period this picture has virtually nothing to do with what actually happened...

This post begins at 30,000 feet as we wing our way to our vacation in Europe. Poignantly enough, our pilot cut-in to tell us that we were flying over the 100th Meridian and asked for a moment of reflection on the life and works of our nation's recently deceased poet/troubadour Gord Downie, lead singer of The Tragically Hip.

'At the hundredth meridian, where the Great Plains begin…’.

A few weeks ago ‘The Friday Night Raconteurs’ played an Italian wars scenario where the defenders of a fortified town (named 'Munroveccio', in honour of our visiting friend Doug) sallied out in the early dawn hours to disrupt the siegeworks of the dastardly Pietro Duglafino.

In reality, this was a scenario I shamelessly nabbed and embellished from Oli over at Camisado (thanks Oli!). It was also a thinly veiled excuse to paint-up and use some Forge World entrenchments that I've been sitting on for over a decade and to get both Peter and my collections on the tabletop for some colourful Renaissance mayhem.

Being that the town defenders had marched through the night, they would not know how, when, or in what order their troops would arrive. In turn, the besiegers would be caught sleeping and so they would be coming onto the table in dribs and drabs to support their beleaguered artillerists who had slept with their guns. The town defenders, a band of merry Landsknechts, would only sally out in support once they had a clear determination that they would not be isolated and destroyed before getting past the gates (meaning they were a bunch of weedy coves who weren't very interested in sticking their necks out).

Again, one of my amateurish hand-drawn sketch maps describing the table setup:

Many of the following pictures are from Peter, as many of my images got lost somewhere in the webisphere (thanks Pete!). I've tarted them up with some fancy-schmancy arrows to make them more 'dynamic'. 

The action started with units of pike, mounted 'archers' and mounted crossbows arriving on the table and cautiously advancing on the artillery position in the early dawn hours.

Doug oversees the sally in defence of Munroveccio.

The Swiss pike storm the gun position and begin spiking cannon and slaughtering the sleep-addled artillerists. Seen just above the large tent are Jinete light cavalry and Rodelero sword and buckler men, responding to the sally.

Below the Jinettes have managed to scrabble over the stone walls and are trying to manuever to threaten the enemy flank. The Rodeleros following behind are better suited to combating pikemen and so are preparing to get over the wall in order to engage. The blue arrow shows the advance of the mounted archers who will go over the embankment, dismount and begin assaulting the artillery position with their fellow pikemen.

The two light cavalry forces face off, while the Rodeleros wait for the sheep to pass before going into the assault (meaning they completely pooched their roll to charge in...)
.

The Spanish swordsmen go into the assault with a vengeance, but do not have the support that the Italian pike has, so the two forces remain locked in fierce combat. The light cavalry at the top of the picture clash several times without firm resolution except for accruing more and more casualties.

Meanwhile back at Munroveccio, the Landsknects 'prepare' to support their comrades by having a drink first. Okay, maybe make that eight drinks...

Hoi! Just one more for the road, eh?!

While the Italian pike and Rodeleros struggle (fittingly, they would both break simultaneously), the crossbowmen complete the job of destroying the artillery camp. Now, it's time to try to disengage and make their escape. The fly in the ointment is that there is a unit of papal gendarme cavalry in the rear. Hmm, time to send in the archers (which confusingly, unlike their name, was a class of heavy, lance-armed cavalry).

After a tumultuous clash, the papal gendarmes push the archers back, but are severely handled in the exchange, allowing the sallying force to begin to withdraw back to the town.

...which is good because this is what was coming on the table to say hello: two units of veteran Swiss and German pike, with supporting troops, who've put aside their animosity to chase off the town's force. 

The besieger's reinforcements arriving too late for the party...

So, a hard-won victory for the town of Munroveccio!

Many thanks to the guys for playing the scenario - it was tremendously great fun and nice excuse to get both Pete and my stuff on the table. Again, thanks chaps!  

________________________________________

As a final note, if any of you are planning to be at Crisis in Antwerp this weekend, please keep an eye open for me (I'll be the tall guy with silly facial hair, wearing a Canadian Remembrance Day poppy). I'm hoping to meet-up with some old acquaintances and make some new ones as well. 

It's going to be a hoot!

From TamsinP: 15mm Thirty Years War Artillery (40 points)

Tamsin submits a group of ten regimental guns for her Thirty Years War collection.

From Tamsin:

After the mammoth efforts of the Swiss halberdiers and Korean missile troops, followed by the highly detailed work on the coureurs de bois, I fancied a quick win. Looking around the mass of lead I had primed ahead of the Challenge, my eyes fell on two projects  - a bunch of 10 regimental guns for my 30 Years War army and another project.

I wasn't expecting these to be ready quite so quickly, but the basing gunk had dried by Saturday evening so I decided to finish them.

These ten guns are 15mm from Donnington Miniatures. In FoG:R they are quite handy attachments for infantry units (where permitted by army lists) as they give an extra dice during shooting and impact phases for very little cost. 

These are mounted on 25x25mm bases as they are treated as markers rather than bases. I've included a couple of pictures of a marker with a unit of pike & shot.

Very nice Tamsin. They look very cool when combined with your pike and shot units, though perhaps a lone gunner with each piece would help to complete the picture? 

These ten guns will give Tamsin 40 points to pop her over the 500 mark - great work!

Product Review: Total Battle Miniatures - 6mm Granary/Village Terrain Tile

With the Painting Challenge coming off the books I thought I'd relax a bit and do some terrain for a change. I've been contemplating doing ECW/TYW in 10mm and in order to sort out my thoughts I decided I'd work on some buildings that could fit in with the period. (I don't get too hung up on scale for terrain, in fact I often like my buildings to be a stage smaller than my figures as they seem to look better than same-scaled models). When I was at Salute a few years ago I picked up this terrain set from Total Battle Miniatures as I thought the vignettes very attractive and the quality seemed quite solid. 

When I finally opened the box this weekend I was not disappointed. The castings were pristine, with very little cast lines or bubbles in the resin. The base is a type of heavy rubber which takes paint quite well, but I'd definitely recommend that you give it a good scrubbing to remove all the release agent in order to avoid any paint flaking later down the line.

Total Battle designs all of its terrain tiles so that you can 'slot-in' a wide variety of different buildings to suit your preference - very clever. 

I originally picked up this set as I thought the granary closely resembled the one at Essling and I've been wanting to replay the battle using 'Grande Armee' for years. (I notice that they also have a church tile which could nicely serve as the church at Aspern.)

The direction sheet suggested that the models be primed white, but I went with my traditional black approach instead and drybrushed up from there. It seemed to work OK and I had a lot of fun picking out the fine details revealed in the sculpts.

Here is the tile next to a base from my 6mm Napoleonic collection.

Overall I had great experience working on this set and I can certainly see myself collecting more from the range over time. I'm already eyeing both the charming mediterranean Hill Town and the huge Walled Town sets... Highly recommended.