Showing posts with label Venetians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Venetians. Show all posts

Thursday, 8 October 2020

Venetian Spearmen II

 

There was a lot of interest in my last Venetian post, so I thought I'd show a second WIP shot.

All of the minis are finished and based. The eight new minis (painted by Shaun McTague) are mostly on the right, but I mixed some in with the original minis, and vice versa. Similarly, I included some of the shields with Ian's Venetian transfers on each base- this helps the unit to look homogenous. I'm very pleased with the amount of variation in the clothing, colours and shield designs in the unit. It looks pleasingly non-uniform.

Just need to grout and flock the base- might take a week or two to get around to that as I want to do a batch of units together for flocking.

Tuesday, 6 October 2020

Venetian spearmen

 

Recently, I've been busy modelling things but failing to post pictures, so here is an image of a unit of Venetian spearmen that I'm currently working on. I'm retouching and expanding my old 17-man unit to a 25 man unit on a 19cm frontage for the 20cm grid. All the minis are Perry plastics, with a few light conversions. The shields are pavises* decorated with Venetian lion transfers designed by my talented chum Ian Notter. I made up rather too many of these, and plan to use up the spares on a unit of crossbowmen. The background colour is "Venetian Red", which is pretty much a brown, in my books!


*If I was starting afresh, I'd give the unit oval shields like the one carried by the halberdier.

Thursday, 7 May 2020

Knights of Terra Firma II


Here's my second unit of Venetian knights. These are a repaint, re-base and  and expansion of an earlier unit (below); they look all the better for it. They were too drab, before. There's a WIP shot, here.  On the painting tray, I have the figures required to add a second rank- I'll be using units of 18 knights and cousilliers on a 20cm grid. I find myself drifting towards modelling the battle of Fornovo.


In other news, I'm recruiting players for an online TtS! tournament, called Midsummer Madness, starting next week. If you'd like to join in, please drop me an email at the address above and to the left. It'll be a blast!

Monday, 13 April 2020

Venetian knights II


I've started to prepare a second unit of Venetian knights. I'm cannibalising a unit I based last year- I plan to repaint 5 of the 6 models (they weren't originally painted by me, and need some TLC), and I will add four new ones, painted from scratch, to give me a larger unit of 9. Later, I will add coustilliers to both units, which will then each become 18 strong.

I'm trying something new here- I've sprayed the horse armour and knights aluminium (a trick from Mr Imrie). I've painted the unarmoured parts of the horses and will add the armour after they are finished, which should save time and be less fiddly.  Hopefully these will take around a week to do.

In other news, some Burgundian knights are on the way from France. 


And finally, the garden is looking stunning; it is currently a mass of blossom! Yesterday I couldn't hear any traffic, at all, over the noise of the bees in the crab apple tree. Such a delight in tough times.


Thursday, 5 March 2020

Knights of Terra Firma


Here are some more minis for my Italian Wars; these are Venetian men-at-arms. Unusually, I painted these myself (well, I partially repainted some older minis and added some new ones) so they are a little rough around the edges, but acceptable. I decided to give them a Venetian red theme with some golden yellow details. For some reason, the bases came out particularly well.

At the moment, I'm pushing hard to finish the many elephants and scythed chariots for a huge Salute game. Post Salute, when I have more free time, I plan to add a second rank of coustilliers to complete a unit of 18 figures, and, later, I will add a second unit of 18. I also need several more Venetian infantry units.


The middle flag is one of Pete's excellent flags from eBay, and the left flag is an image I found on the 'net. 

These were painted a month or so back, and saw action at the Godendag and Chalgrove To the Strongest! events, where they performed well. This is the first time I've had a chance to photograph and post them. 

Monday, 10 February 2020

TtS! Welsh Opens at Godendag


On Saturday, with Storm Ciara looming ominously overhead, a hardy band of TtS!ers travelled to Cardiff for the one-day Godendag tournament at Firestorm Games.

I will apologise in advance for the partial nature of the photos, I only managed to take pics of my armies and my opponents. Above is my completed Later Condottieri army (Venetian) that I'll also be taking to Chalgrove in 2 weeks. 12 units, 6 heroes and the camp. It's on my new fleece mat from Geek Villain, and very nice it was to play on, too.


Above are some of my new "Venetian" knights; I went with a red and gold colour scheme and one of Pete's super flags, from eBay. Below are some of my mounted crossbows, with a Bande Nere banner.



Above, Milanese knights, painted by Lionel Bechara, and below, the raw Venetian spearmen who typically guard my camp.


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Above, part of a new unit of Stradiots, painted by Shaun Watson.


Here's my new fleece mat from Geek Villain. Saturday was the first time I played on it, and I was  very taken with it! It has a soft, slightly furry surface and a an intense green, which matched my hills very nicely. Has a nifty TtS! logo, too.  :-)


Above and below, Game 1, vs. Phil Sweeting. Phil had a Komnenon Byzantine army, very pretty! Unluckily for Phil, his Varangian Guard, with a general and army standard perished in very short order to some unlucky saves, yielding 7 victory medals, and it was a shorter gamer than it should have been.



Above and below, game 2 vs. Tony Horobin. Tony had a Marian Roman army, deployed very wide across the table. I slammed into it several times, but wasn't able to kill enough units to achieve a decisive victory.



Game 3 vs. Connor Truby. Connor had a splendid Carthaginian army, mostly Victrix, with super hand-painted shields. Out-scouting him, I was able to mostly avoid his left wing and clobber his right centre. Below, his right wing cavalry attacked my camp, which was valiantly and ably defended by my spearmen, in orbis, with the spiritual assistance of  my new cardinal.



....with two decisive victories, I found myself playing in the final against Peter Ryding. Peter is a formidable (and charming) player. He out-scouted me, out-deployed me and then dismembered my army from the right. It was very elegant; I could see he was much more familiar with his army than I was, with mine. A very enjoyable game, though, despite my loss! The highlight form me was using a stratagem in the last turn to ride one of his generals off the table, together with it's unit, which gained me seven VPs in total- four more than I deserved! This is the fourth successive final I've played in (Roll Call, Knight Fever, Glasgow and now Godendag), and the fourth time I've lost!



Above and below, the prizes; Roger Calderbank took the annual dead sheep award....



...and Peter, above, presented by Ty with the victor's laurels, with Tim Thompson (not shown) second, Sid Bennett third and me fourth.


Finally here's the group photo. It was a super day, I hope to be back next year!

Friday, 7 February 2020

Venetians to Godendag!


Here's my slightly revised Condottieri army for Godendag in Cardiff, tomorrow, and, later, for Chalgrove. I'll take proper pictures next week. It's a lethal 50/50 blend of extra heavy knights and light troops. The similar army I took around the tournaments, last year, did very well and I have a lot of confidence in this one! It's 90% plastic, so mercifully light, which is just as well as I'm getting the train.

If you are in South Wales and at a loose end tomorrow, pop in to Firestorm and say hello!

Thursday, 21 February 2019

Knights to Chalgrove!



Last night, I finally managed to finish the basing of my army for Chalgrove, the To The Strongest! World Championship, on Saturday. I've photographed all eleven units.

Above are the Famiglia Ducale Elmeti, the household of the Duke of Milan. All minis are Perrys, the above were by painted myself and Lionel Béchara, with the flags from Pete's flags on eBay. N.b. all photos will enlarge if clicked.


Here are some Italian later knights, again by Lionel, who did superb barber-shop lances.All the bases are my famous magnetic wobbly-edged BatBases.


More later knights, again from Lionel. I gave these deeper bases to protect the lances.


Above, yet more later knights, painted by Richard Hampson-Smith. The standards are for the Bande Nere; I suspect that there may not have been many (or even any) such knights, but the standards are too good not to use.


Here is Giovanni delle Bande Nere, himself, with the last (fifth) unit of later knights. Interestingly it appears that the famous black bands may only have been so-named after his untimely, cannon ball-related demise.


Mounted crossbowmen ex Richard. The various lights will likely screen the advance of the knights.


More mounted crossbowmen, ex Richard.


Even more mounted crossbowmen, ex Richard.


Metal light infantry crossbowmen, from a chap in Sweden. 


Plastic crossbowmen, ex-Richard.


Formed crossbowmen; again re-touched and re-based minis, originally painted by Richard. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with these, yet; possibly a refused flank for the knights.


My favourite unit- Venetian spearmen painted by Richard Hampson-Smith, Shaun McTague and myself. These are raw, and likely to be used to garrison the camp. I'm aware that I need to separate the tails on the flag.


Above is the army list; it's not an especially subtle army but should do well-enough in a dead-on clash. As the army is entirely newly-painted, and I've not had time to play a game since November, I am not especially optimistic about my own prospects, but I aim to have fun!

Finally, here's a bonus unit, of Bande Nere pikemen. Unfortunately I didn't have enough points to use them, this time, but I plan to add supporting arquebusiers, post-Salute. I love the grim look of them.


So there we are, all done!

Can I take this opportunity to wish safe journeys to all forty-odd players who are attending the tournament, especially the brave Belgians and Howard who is coming down from the Scottish Isles! May none of your cards be Aces (except when playing me, that is.  ;-)  ).