Army Royal
Henry VIII's 1513 invasion of France.
Monday, 12 May 2025
Landsknecht Arquebusiers
Monday, 31 March 2025
Scots Highland Archers
The ranks of the Scots Army continue to grow with this latest addition. Some Highland bows to act as skirmishers and protect the flanks of the pikes for the Scots armies of Flodden and Linlithgow.
They're equally useful in their own right for the raiding and feuding that took place in the highlands and isles and as mercenary 'Redshanks'* for service in Ireland.
*Scots seasonal mercenaries from the Highlands and Isles known in Ireland as New Scots (as opposed to earlier settled Galloglass in Ireland) and Redshanks so called because of their bare legs.
All figures are from Antediluvian Miniatures and painted without any further conversion.
Easy sculpts to paint but they did need quite a bit of cleaning up and a couple were lost to a misaligned mould / spin sadly but hopefully that was a one off as i'd like to get some more. The Galloglass in this range are good too.
I opted for a mix of light and heavier armoured figures to represent highlanders and caterans (similar to Irish Kern), and initially thought to base them as heavy and light bases but during the painting they started to look better when mixed together;
Sunday, 23 February 2025
Maximilian Imperial Light Cavalry, part 2
Monday, 27 January 2025
Maximilian Imperial light cavalry
Another slow burning project come to fruition.
Last year I set about studying French Gendarmes in the search for some source material and generally to educate myself a bit more on their appearance and composition. This perhaps inevitably, led me on an avenue as to the same for that of cavalry from the Holy Roman Empire.
For my collection in particular this is something which is sadly lacking and given that Henry VIII hired mercenary light and heavy cavalry from a willing Maximilian I thought it was about time I got myself some.
As is quite often the case the seed was planted with a single image, this piece by Durer depicting a light / medium cavalryman.
Given that heavy cavalry are very well represented in the available figures out there I rather predictably set about making life hard for myself and set the challenge of creating some light / medium cavalry.
Most helpfully there are some very clear depictions of light cavalry in the triumphal procession, here are some examples that I found particularly inspiring.
I set about attempting to interpret the various elements above using the Perry Miniatures light cavalry plastics with green stuff and various bits added to bring them into the early sixteenth century.
This is an approach I have used in the past with this set in the creation of demi lancers and mounted archers for my early Tudor army. This however was pushing that sculpting bar a little higher and I really enjoyed the challenge.
Here are the figures prior to painting so the sculpted additions and bits of added kit are easy to spot.