Tuesday 29 March 2011

A New Batch of Pike!

So I spent most of last weekend painting up some of the Swiss stuff I got through last week. They literally seem to have taken forever but I'm putting this down to the fact that I haven't batch painted in months and that I'm a massive perfectionist (which is getting quite annoying.) However after hours at the painting face I present you with the first new lot of pikemen!


These guys will be making up the front and second ranks of the Gewalthut (hence the pikes being lowered.) I'm really pleased with how they turned out in the end. The metal Swiss heads look a little hard to paint up when you first get them out of the box. But once they're undercoated it's quite easy to pick out the detail.


Here's a close up of three. The model on the right is the one I converted from a plastic billman and the other two are metal.



These two are metal again but were given head swaps with the Swiss seperate heads. I'm really pleased with how they came out in the end, especially the one on the right. Anyway, I'd best get started on the next batch I guess!

Saturday 26 March 2011

A Few Frantic Days of Gluing Later...

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!

Wednesday 23 March 2011

Some New Arrivals.

Just a quick one really. I returned from work earlier to find a nice surprise waiting for me: My Swiss stuff had finally turned up from the Perrys. To be fair though it's certainly been worth the wait as all the models look great. I have one pack of the seperate Swiss heads (36 in total), which I'll use to convert the plastic mercenaries, and also a pack of the armoured pikemen with weapons at 45 degrees (picture below - though to be honest the pictures are better on the actual Perry twins site)

The casting on everything looks ace - a few mould lines here and there but they should be quite easy to get rid of. The only problem I can see is that some of the pikemen's lower hands are cast fairly solidly, so I'll probably have to try and get my hands on a smaller drill bit than the one I have currently to drill them out. I'm also planning on beheading a few pikemen and giving them Swiss heads instead, so there's a little variety in there. More updates to follow soon.



Monday 21 March 2011

And so it begins....

Hey guys,
Welcome to my new all singing all dancing blog! I've been keen on the idea of doing a Fifteenth Century Swiss army for a while but didn't fancy taking out a bank loan to buy models from Foundry. As a result the Perry's releasing their Mercenaries box has been a Godsend. I've begun putting together an allied force focusing mainly on the four cantons of Berne, Uri, Basel and Lucerne (Mainly because these are the flags which are conveniently provided in the box..)

Since Christmas I've been waiting on the release of the separate Swiss heads that the Perry's have been promising for so long - and hopefully these should be making an appearance later this week (fingers crossed) so this project should hopefully be able to properly take off! However here are a few Swiss models I've been working on in frustration since Christmas..

Cantonal Standards - (L to R) Berne, Lucerne, Uri
Gewalthut Command
Various Pikemen (Couple of Assault Group models thrown in)