So after recieving my Perry Swiss models through the post on Wednesday I've spent the last couple of days putting together what will eventually be my Gewalthut - I'm intending for this unit to be 35 models in total, based as five ranks of seven models but with the potential to reduce it down to five ranks of six if needs be. Overall the models have been pretty fun to assemble - the metal heads are a bit fiddly to glue on but I think this is always the case really. Here's two preliminary photos of the Gewalthut:
Apologies for the orange glow - it was sunny outside so I shut the blind without realising it'd make everyone look like they'd been tangoed.. You get the idea though - I'm hoping when the unit's painted and based it should make a fairly large and imposing centrepiece for the army with the various cantonal standards in the middle. I've also taken a picture of the plastic mercenary bodies with the metal heads to give you an idea of how they look together:
As you can see the heads fit very nicely on the models (as you'd expect really!) and add a very Swiss flavour to the models straight out of the Schilling Chronicle. As I said I also did a little bit of conversion work on the metal armoured pikemen I recieved.
In retrospect photographing them before undercoating would have been a much better idea really, but forgive me I'm new to this blogging thing! I basically sawed the old heads off and used a bit of greenstuff to fill in the gaps - they turned out quite well. I ended up drilling out the lower hands so a pike would fit in them which was less difficult than expected, the only problem was that a few slips meant some models needed greenstuff nose jobs afterwards, which was less than fun.
Finally I converted up a few front rank pikemen. I didn't particularly want the levelled pike models as they're a bit of a nightmare on the tabletop. So using, the plastic bill arms from the first Perry box and a couple of wargames factory Viking open hands (those models aren't good for much else), I converted up a couple of models.
The converting process was pretty fiddly but I'm pleased with the result. The one on the end is one I prepared earlier, when I was waiting for my other stuff to arrive. Right, now it's time to get down to some serious painting!
