Last of the old year - "English" HYW Commanders

The Black Prince has already been seen, but I've added his standard carried by Sir Richard Fitzsimon plus Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch.

I couldn't find who might carry Jean's standard so I used Denis de St Omer, Sieur de Morbecque who captured King John II of France at Poitiers

Romanian Artillery - part 1

I painted all the Hat Romanian Artillery figures, but until I acquire some more guns (some suitable 105mm howitzers) I will leave half unbased. These were based up to go with the very nice but fiddly First to Fight 75mm guns. The limbers are Hat WW1 German and the limber horses Zvezda Napoleonic French, so this certainly clear a bit of the stash.

At the back are some of my old gunners (Airfix German mountain troops) rebased with a couple of PSC Pak 97/38s

Burgundian Artillery

I have painted the Zvezda Medieval Field Artillery I bought at Recon as Burgundians. I added a Jean de Vergy, Marshal of Burgundy figure alongside the pointing commander. At the back an unit of coustiliers made up from various odd figures.

Medieval bystanders

The figures from the Italeri Jousting Knights set are useful for the inhabitants of either a camp or a castle. The knights themselves were awful so I sold them.

WW1 French Artillery

I wasn't very happy when I bought the Hat WW1 French Artillery and I sold all but one sprue. However when I came to assemble the First to Fight version I realised I needed a guide so I assembled the Hat version. Here it is, my sole piece of WW1 French equipment and maybe the beginnings of a Corps d'Observation d'Andrevie

I notice when studying the pictures that some of the paint has not taken to the horrible soft hat plastic, I'll now have to sort it!

Thanks Santa

A reasonable selection of gifts this year

The sailors will be used to crew some Renaissance galleys, so scratch building those will be one of my projects for next year.

A small hole in the stash

Merry Christmas to one and all. I've managed to complete a couple of First to Fight kits before the festivities. The Praga RV truck is for my Romanians and the Panzer III has be painted up as a very early war version with the brown camouflage stripes



Hopefully I should get the rest of my schedule for December completed bafore the end of the month so keep watching

Medieval wagons

A slight pause in output as I had an unexpected trip to a funeral in London. I've had some fun with the Strelets Norman Train as one of the parts went missing for the small wagon so I had to construct a new sub-frame. I think it's better than the original. The larger wagon also needed some work to get the front wheels levelled up correctly. Appropriate stowage was added then some passengers.

My approach to heraldry

A short note in response to some comments about how I do heraldry on my figures. There are three components that need a different degree of attention. Shields if flat are easy to paint, Body livery is trickier as they can be obscured, but because of the small size an impressionist style can be sufficient. The caparison is often the biggest challenge as it is so obvious so needs a lot of care.

I tend to follow a number of approaches

Ideally if it is moulded on the figures I just undercoat black like the armour and then dry-brush silver at the same time. This has the effect of highlighting what needs to be painted. I then paint the raised surfaces and then colour in the lower. This works well with white/yellow objects on backer backgrounds. An example of this approach is the Zvezda Black Prince.


It's more tricky with colours reversed as it can hide the emblems unless I take a lot more effort filling in the background. The recent Charles d'Albret figure (on the left) was done this way.


The complex heraldry on a caparison was solved by printing a paper flag out that has been distorted to the correct size. This usually takes several attempts. I needed to ensure the receiving surface was as smooth as possible and also cut the paper along joins so it can be applied to curved surfaces. I did this for Charles the Bold and his brother


If the heraldry not critical (related to a particular commander, etc) I just pick whatever is easy to execute, I'm better with geometric objects rather than animals.

As a more general note I use a slightly stronger pair of glasses (2.0 rather than 1.5) when painting this level of detail as recommended by my optician.

A gentle stroll to the Senate

Figures from Strelets Roman Transport 4


I didn't use the passengers for the Basterna but kept them for some future project. The two mule drivers for the basterna came from the Strelets Ancient Christians.

More French men at Arms

My fifth and final batch of Men at Arms is more normal with all the figures having surcoats, etc. When I talked before about the Perry resins blocks I was really contrasting the basic all armour style of painting as different from this.

More Medieval Commanders

A more mixed bag of commanders from various sources

From L to R they are

• Edward III (Strelets figures)
• Henry V (Italeri)
• Robert the Bruce (Strelets)
• Papal envoy (Strelets plus remaining Valdemar bishop as standard bearer)

The dismounted figure of Edward III is from the Italeri HYW English set.

French Commanders

I used the Italeri French HYW set to provide the bulk of the figures for my commanders. I also decided to depict them dismounted as well.

For L to R they are

• Jean Le Maingre dit Boucicaut
• Charles d'Albret, Connétable de Franc with Guillaume Martel, the bearer of the Oriflamme at Agincourt
• Jeanne D'Arc with her bodyguard Jean D'Aulon
• Charles D'Orleans

More English and French Medievals

Some English Archers and Billmen plus a unit of Genoese Crossbowmen

The Genoese Crossbowmen are mainly the figures from the Italeri HYW French set, whereas the English are a mix of suitable figures from various sets. The few odd vignettes are from the Strelets Army of Henry V set.

A few pictures from Recon 2016

The last show of the year for me was at Pudsey, Leeds. Due to a late change we re-ran the Chesterfield 1266 game again (it's still the anniversary year)


The Harrogate club's Salerno landing game was quite impressive






There was a good turn out of assorted participation games but very little eye candy except for this Dragon Rampant game.

At least I managed to clear some of my surplus from the stash on the B&B and restrained myself to just buying a cheap pack of the Zvezda Medieval Field Artillery.

On the workbench - December 2016

A bit behind on my plans for November and the focus now is to complete as much as possible of the various odds and sods lying around my workbench. Hopefully I'll get my Plastic Soldier Company kickstarter in time for Christmas. progress against various overdue tasks is noted below

• Medieval (mainly HYW) Commanders - progressing well, almost at the basing stage
• Medieval English bill and bowmen - a unit of each about to be based
• Medieval French dismounted Men at Arms - another unit also ready for basing
• Genoese Crossbowmen - nearly finished painting
• Norman train - just started painting as I found a significant part missing from one of the wagons.
• Roman Transport - half way through painting
• WW2 Romanian artillery using the Fire to Fight 75mm guns as the basis with the Hat Romanian gunners.
• Then if the kickstarter hasn't arrived start on some of the kits in the backlog!