From SimonG: "The English Are Coming!" HYW Longbowmen

For my first couple of stands in the English army it had of course to be longbowmen. These are Front Rank miniatures with more of their great facial expressions and crisp detail.

Bow strings and arrows were added by me, you quickly realise that the sculptors haven't always located the bows in anything like realistic positions (especially those with bow held loosely at the side) and the draw is all over the place -- I'll try to remember to fix that on the next lot, of course this is something you can do with metal miniatures but not with plastic where you're stuck with the fixed draw in the original design.

Given we've only got a couple of weeks left I'm not sure what to do next -- I think it would be nice to return to terrain and finish off the remaining two squares I have, then perhaps one stand of mounted archers to round things off -- onwards and upwards!

From SimonG: HYW Nobles plus the full Army!

My last posting for the French HYW army -- a final stand of mounted noble men at arms -- in this case Raoul de Gaucourt, Captain of Orleans. There is also a final banner bearer with the standard of Orleans flown at the battle of Patay -- he can be added to a command stand with the Bd of Orleans that I completed earlier.

The figures are all Perry (a mix of plastic and metal). de Gaucort himself is actually repurposed from the Comte de Brabant from the Agincourt French mounted set.

And here's what it all looks like at once -- five months painting, 37 stands and 202 figures in total -- now on to Les Anglais!

From SimonG: Latest HYW Men At Arms

Continuing to wrap up my French 1420s army here are two stands of Front Rank men at arms.

These are well cast, chunky, characterful and attractive miniatures but a restricted range of poses. You cannot mix them on the same stand as Perrys (which are much slighter in build) but alongside them on the table they are fine.

The heraldry is all fantasy but freehand (so these are not meant to be any specific individuals). The dolphin 🐬 (if that's what it is) is my favourite!

I've got one more stand of mounted MAA plus a lone banner bearer and then the French are done and it's on to the English. For the latter with all their white armour I think I'll go a little lighter on the grimy wash -- all of the French have ended up rather mucky looking (as one would after a few hours fighting in a muddy field!) so it will be nice to emphasise the contrast. On the English side the archers will all be dirty and rough!

From PeterD SYW Auvergne Regiment in 28mm

Bad photo but i shows the full regiment ready for battle.

It's been a while since I've posted.  I've been very busy with the  end of semester for the last few weeks and I was sick as a dog all last weekend.  Today is the first Saturday in May and the wonderful day when I wake up and check what course prep I have for the week to come and then realize that there isn't any as I have no classes until after Labour Day!

I did use a couple of evenings each week to get some rehab painting in and finished up the 24 man French Auvergne Regiment from my Seven Years War  project.  As noted in prior posts I tend to do my foot regiments in units of 24, finished in three batches of eight.  Often I have two or three batches underway at once at different stages of progress.  This year I've been saving up my work until I have the full unit.  I then base them at the same time and post the full unit.

I only took pictures from the front but the white on the back of the bases are unit tables including the name a a jpg of the Ordonnance colour to help keep organization straight.  Crusader NCO is second from the right.

Figures are mostly Crusader with Front Rank figures being used for the officer and standard bearers.  I find the the Crusader packs have enough subtle variation in marching pose to give cohesion without being monopose.  I included 4 grenadiers and a few with coats without turn backs to add variety.  Of course the grenadiers are over represented, bu the caps look nice.  I like the Crusader drummers and the sergeant with partizan (long pokey stick) but I'm not a huge fan of the Crusader officers so sub in the Front Rank figures.  There is a size difference between ranges but it seems to work.

I normally manage to get better variety on the my bases but these guys all seem distracted by something off screen on our right.  I really like the grenadier drummer casting.

When you do a "French" Infantry regiment for King Louis' army, you're got a limited choice of facing colours mostly blue, red or none on grey uniforms to choose from (foreign regiments let you add blue or red coats).  At least it's not the snooze fest of Napoleonic French or Russian where every damn unit wears the same damn facings.  So the chance to do a regiment with Violet facings makes for more variety on table.  Plus Auvergne had some chops to stand on, notably a piquet company saved the day at Clostercamp by alerting the army to the Erbprinz' dawn attack.

The two middle figures are Front Rank and they fit in with the rankers just fine.  The chap on the right has left his coat unbuttoned.  The Ordonnance is black and violet quarters but they look alike in the lighting.

The flags were "borrowed" from the wonderful work of David over at Not By Appointment.  A quick download, resizing and real life cut and paste was all that was required

From SimonG: More HYW Knights with a Herb Twist

While this one took a bit longer than anticipated - maybe I'm getting a bit ambitious in what I'm trying to take on now, it'll be good when I can switch on to masses of single colour English archers!

Anyway this stand (again in Impetus basing) is for Teodoro da Valperga and his companions. de Valperga was an Italian independent Captain who was present at Orleans and Patay. Most interesting is his coat of arms which comprises a hemp plant!

The knights are all Perry plastics as are three of the horses. The last horses (with the caparison) is from Front Rank.

I'm quite pleased with how these came out including the Croix de Lorraine on the guy in Blue and experimenting with an edging pen to outline details like the white cross on the guy in red.

One more stand of French knights to go but before then I have a couple of stands of billmen to complete and with that and a couple of stands of men at arms my French army will be finished.

From SimonG: HYW Wagon Train

Well for my next offering the first of what will ultimately be two wagon trains. This setup is intended to be stationary and representing a loading/unloading situation. It seems the foreman and the driver aren't exactly getting along 😆

The wagons, mules and contents are Front Rank while the figures are all Wargames Foundry. I think it came together nicely and also tried out a focus stacker for the first time for some of the pictures which gives you a lot more ease in photography at high detail close in settings.

Focus Stacker Output 1

Focus Stacker Output 2

The wagon driver is a modest conversion to drill out a hole for the two leads which are simple polyamide thread coated in superglue -- given more time I'd have made better attachments on the mules, I need a source of tiny rings for tying things off too!

Next up some more mounted knights, that Hemp guy I mentioned in another thread 😏

From SimonG: HYW Terrain and Civilians

My first stab at making terrain. Concerned about storage but wanting something that looks good I decided to go for the Sally 4th Terra-Formers modular system. This can work out as pretty expensive (at least £10 per piece completed) and time consuming but I think so far the results look good. I've done two pieces -- a cottage enclosed by a wattle fence and a medium sized hill. Unfortunately I've now run out of raw materials (paint and filler) so I'm not sure I can work on any more but ultimately there will be 30 of these 12" square pieces allowing for a variety of table layouts. I've also scaled things like the fence so that they work for 15mm as well as I'm inclined to give this size a try in a future project. On order are trees so I can do a forest with a pull out centre to allow a unit to be located in the forest.

The cottage is a simple Tabletop Workshop plastic kit -- odd how I can do fine detail work on a 28mm figure but working on a house it all goes sloppy! The fence is simply cocktail sticks interwoven with strips of thick paper then coated in PVA and roughly painted -- a little time consuming but looks pretty good I think. Only trick is supergluing at start and end and making the strips as long as you can so as to avoid need for double posts at the ends.

The farmer and his wife and children are Wargames Foundry/Perry and came out nicely. The other bases that predate the AHQC are mostly Front Rank, with a stand of Perry pavisiers and a modified Perry Jehanne (modified to hold a standard which was home printed from this source)

Next up is a baggage train with a mix of Front Rank and WGF/Perry.