JTinQT - Week Seven - Landsknechts

Dear All

Hope everyone is well?

Happy to make more substantive post this week with 12 new figures. After doing some Swiss thought only fair to have a look at my Landsknechts. Using the same mainly Old Glory 28mm painted this front base of pike up as the "Black Band" who fought for the French at Marignano and Pavia. At Pavia they were fighting against the Imperial Landsknechts. As the name suggests the key point is mainly black clothing.

There are a couple of Games Workshop double-handers mixed in, an Artisan I think,and see if you can name the company for the fifer?

The fifer is a figure from the 1980's - QTModels I think, based in Yorkshire. Anyway a key feature was you could mix and match heads - very cutting edge for the 1980's. These figures are based for Basic Impetus wargames rules and need to get on now and finish the back rank base.

Cheers Jez

AdamC: USS Chesapeake

Here is the USS Chesapeake one of the first US Navy ships built in what would become the Norfolk Navy Yard (called Gossport at the time). Originally she was planned as a 44 gun frigate at Washington’s requests (he wanted one of the big ships built in Virginia) budget and supply issues had her rerated as a 38 gun frigate.

 

Sometimes Chesapeake was rated as a 36 gun frigate and seems to have been the smallest of the original Six frigates.

Her stern is quite handsome.  Chesapeake had one capture in the Quasi-war taking the Le Jeune Creole (16 guns) after a chasse lasing 50 hours!  That was probably both epic and boring.

The huge eagle of figure head is also quite striking she makes a beautiful ship. Chesapeake active during the Barbary war but is most famous for her actions relating to the War of 1812. She had the misfortune to be involved on the receiving end of the Chesapeake-Leopard affair taking fire unawares from a British 4th Rate and then submitting to having her crew mustered as if she were a British merchant. 

Chesapeake made a cruise in 1812 but only captured some 5 British merchants and she did not have any opportunity to engage a ship of equal force. In 1813 she sailed out of Boston under the command of Captain Lawrence to challenge the HMS Shannon to combat. Lawrence had every opportunity to avoid combat and slip away as a raider but chose not to.

He also refused to maneuver for advantage while closing with the Shannon and chose to fight Nelson's in Nelson's fashion and "Lay your ship close alongside the enemy." As everyone knows the Shannon won the battle (though not without some hard knocks) and Lawrence expired with the words "Don't give up the ship." He uttered these words as the ship was being given up and I have always been puzzled by hero worship that Surrounds Lawrence. He is of the Heroic captains you can take in Black seas but Isaac Hull and others who won battles are ignored. English writers probably like him because he was brave and got defeated in a satisfactory manner.

From TamsinP: 28mm Wars Of The Roses Currours and Commanders

For what will be my final post for this project on here, I present the last (for now*) elements of my Wars of the Roses army.

The ADLG list allows up to two bases of "Currours" (heavy cavalry), and that is what I painted up (I know - Shock! Horror! Tamsin didn't paint more bases than the list allows!). I also painted up six command stands - three foot, three mounted - which will allow me to field two standard or three smaller armies. But on with the pics!


Currours:

Commanders:

For those who are wondering, in the seven weeks since I started this project I have painted 36 mounted and 202 foot figures. If this had been for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, that would be 1370 points without any bonuses - just short of what my pre-bonus points total for what I painted over thirteen weeks for AHPC X!

As several people had requested, I took some group shots of the completed army. Here's one of everything - I've put more on my own blog.

All figures are 28mm plastics from Perry Miniatures.



* "for now": there are lots of optional troops which can be added in future - artillery, Scots, Welsh and Irish troops, mercenary pikemen, crossbowmen and handgunners. I can foresee the collection growing large enough for me to field three or maybe even four standard-sized ADLG armies, so I will need more command stands. And baggage camps

From TimG - 1/285 Scud TEL

Just finished two of these GHQ monsters.  Most of us will associate Scuds with the 1991 Gulf War but they’ve been around in various forms since the late 1950s. The Soviet designation for the missile is 8K14 and the TEL (transported/erector/launcher) vehicle is a MAZ-543. I recently discovered that MAZ still exists and continues to churn out heavy trucks in Minsk (Belarus).
I appreciate that opportunities to field a system with a range of 700km may be limited, but that’s no reason not to have one. Or two.
And yes, the missile should be the same green as the TEL but where would be the fun in that?

From DaveD 88s - 30 points

Finally managed to grab some hobby time this week. Again working on my 15mm Germans . Of course any WW2 German Army is incomplete without the ubiquitous 88s so here are a couple .

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 StuartL - Here Be Dragon (singular).

As penance for failing to post anything last week, I have managed to get a second submission ready for this week. As the title of the post implies, I have painted a dragon. I prepped the model for the winter challenge, but couldn't find time to work it in to my plan for Challenge Island, so it has been sat in my to do pile demanding some attention for nearly 6 months now.

As any fan of Dungeons and Dragons well knows, evil dragons come in various colours (red, green, black etc.) while good dragons are a variety of different hues of metal. A while ago I painted a red dragon, so this time I figured I would do one of the good guys and eventually settled on a Brass dragon. (The fur on the spine is bronze and the thick line of scales running down the flanks is gold).

The model was initially painted in an orange-ish brown colour. The wings were quickly drybrushed and the teeth and claws painted, then everything got a wash of brown. After that, all of the scales were painted, one by one. It took a while, but I feel the overall effect was pretty good.

And just to provide a sense of scale, here is a 28mm mini alongside. The dragon measures 10" long from nose to tail and the raised wings reach over 6" off the ground. I have heavily backed all of the Reaper Bones kickstarters, simply because there are so many cool minis like this one and they are incredibly cheap. I believe that this dragon was priced at US$15 during a previous kickstarter. While some of the mold lines are a bit difficult to remove and the material is a bit bendy at times, the big pieces like dragons, demons and giants are fantastic value for money.

For unofficial scoring, I'm going to add 20 points for this fine specimen. Even though it's a huge mini, there weren't that many technical bits, just a lot of simple brushwork. This puts my tally up to 779.5 points.