A much needed kick up the behind!

Well after saying so confidently last time I was back on the painting wagon I quickly hit a rut in the road and promptly dropped off again! My Vorhut are still staring at me forlornly from the shelf, waiting for a final rank and basing. I've been doing a fair amount of archery stuff so managed to fit in much painting, however I recieved something through the post earlier which may change all that....

That's right - the new Perry Mounted Men at Arms - I've only put two horses together this evening but Wow! The detail on the armour's immense and the various styles bring something completely new to 28mm plastic miniatues. Needless to say I'm impressed! After getting this far you may have realised that there is in fact nothing new to show off, however I basically wanted to pick the brains of any experts on heraldry out there.

I spent quite a while wracking my brains for a way to fit in a unit of mounted men at arms into a pike based army when I saw the models were being realised. After a little research I stumbled across Rene II, Duke of Lorraine who'd hired a force of Swiss mercenaries to reclaim the city of Nancy in 1477 (leading to the well known battle)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_II,_Duke_of_Lorraine - have a look here for more info.

I'm thinking of using the body with the surcoat for Rene himself - so I can get his heraldry on there. However I'm fairly unsure as to what this looks like - my research has found this:

Which could be interesting to paint. I'm unsure if its right though. I'm also fairly unsure on Rene's banner, whether it would look like the above or something else. The Krigspil site has this:

Looks a little naff to me though. So, has anyone got any other ideas? If not I'm sure I'll come up with something, though it won't necesarily be correct!