Landsknecht Pike II

Further to my previous post I'm now experiencing the dizzy heights of some nice consistent 2-3 hour windows of relative peace which when I'm not hurriedly trying to make things look like we haven't been burgled occasionally allows for a bit of painting, horray!

Here we have phase 2 of the front rank of my slowly growing pike block, you can view the nucleus of the idea in phase 1 here.

In a nutshell, I have elected to base a double rank of landsknechts with pikes at the ready on a 120 x 60mm base, this enables me to really pack them in tight to give a sense of the claustrophobic moment just prior to impact with pikes and halberds bristling. The long base also contains most of the length of the pike which makes for ease of storage, imaginative basing and minimises upon wargaming entanglement with other units.

This notion was furthered with the units of standing pike which I recently re-based, and here's the effect I have long strived to achieve;

The banners are tightly ensconced within a protective wall of pike. My intention is to have the same number again to make a large pike square of roughly 100 figures. How long this will take is another matter but I'm happy to have got this far with a nice cohesive unit.

The other idea behind this approach was that the attacking units have no flags (though some individuals have imperialist field signs) so they could interchange with other units of standing pike which could have Imperialist, French or Swiss flags.

Here are some close ups of the latest unit;

Not sure when my next post will be but we're back in business, here's a final action shot by way of thanks for bearing with me over the last month;

Bye for now.

Stuart.