Tuesday 2 February 2016

From Curt - Two Mercenary Forces Spanning 500 years - 1503 / 2003 (87 Points)

Once again, Tuesday's Troupe are joined by Captain Snowlord. I really don't know why, but he seems to prefer us to the rest...


Ever since the beginning of America's recent involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, I've had a fascination regarding the debate surrounding Private Military Contractors (PMCs). 

I've read several books and journal articles on the subject and my own opinion is varied, but generally negative. On one hand I understand the shell game governments play when hiring military contractors. The use of PMCs allows governments to reduce their official military footprint while still providing themselves with a substantial force to utilize in a variety of situations. Nonetheless, the fact remains that PMCs are not soldiers of a nation state, but rather are beholden to their companies first, to their contracts second and everything else follows in varying degrees of importance. In many instances this pecking order has ended in tragedy, underlying the morally nebulous, and violent, world they work in

Of course, the most famous of these companies is Blackwater Worldwide which was created and owned by ex-SEAL, Erik Prince. I recently finished Prince's autobiography, 'Civilian Warriors' which puts forward his personal perspective on the PMC industry, and the media frenzy whichbesieged his company. While I am sympathetic to several aspects of his story, I did find it bemusing how Prince bobs and weaves with his argument that Private Military Contractors should not be equated with the pejorative term: 'Mercenary'.  Rather Prince believes that he and his industry should be considered no different than the 'dashing' soldiers-for-hire and privateers of history, much like Lafayette and James De Wolf. Soldiers-for-hire? Privateers? Mercenaries? To me, Prince is splitting hairs. All of these are cut from the same cloth. It's true that being defined as a mercenary currently denies a host of rights, both on and off the battlefield, but let's face it, for all intensive purposes PMC's ARE mercenaries - just the same as the Condottieri were in late medieval Italy and David Stirling's WatchGuardInternational was in the 1960s. The only difference is that PMCs of today have a corporate sophistication that a 16th century condottieri would find mind boggling.

Anyway, enough about all that. Let's talk about toy solders. :) What I have here are two mercenary groups which span 500 years, one from 1503 and the other from 2003.



First up are several contemporary contractors, or 'operators' in a mix of civilian and military gear. These are 28mm figures from Eureka Miniatures, sculpted by the very talented Kosta Heristanidis. I really like these models. They're well cast and have a great sense of animation. The other thing I really appreciate is that their weapons are slightly upscaled, giving them more of a presence (and sturdiness) that is lacking from some other modern ranges.


I've kept the palette fairly muted, only introducing a pop of colour here and there with cap, t-shirts and optics. Pretty straightforward stuff.


But iyou want colour, we have it in spades with these Swiss mercenaries from the canton of Bern.  


First up is a command stand featuring a huge (no, really, I mean HUGE) brown bear. Bern has a bear as part of its heraldry, and apparently in one of the period manuscripts there is one depicted in battle, mauling some poor French sod. Being that it is a big wild animal I thought I'd add a doughty halberdier to help keep the beast moving in the right direction. The canton's banner is from Pete's Flags. It's a beautiful piece of work, being printed on tight-weave fabric, but I inadvertently rubbed away some of the inkjet transfer when I was working with it so I had to retouch a good bit of it with brush and paint. Nonetheless, I still quite like it and look forward to using more of his flags in the future.


This halberd unit started it's service last year as group of twelve figures. At the time I chose to base them in threes on 40mm round basesthinking we'd use them primarily for skirmishing rules such as 'Lion Rampant'. 


As things often turn out, we found that while 'Lion Rampant' was good fun, we actually preferred 'Pike and Shotte' for our Italian Wars fixSubsequently, I found that the original twelve figures were a bit too weedy to be a respectable unit for P&S, so I decided to re-base the lot and add another four figures to bring it more up to snuff.


After my experiment with Simon's (aka BigRedBat) excellent irregular-edged bases for my crossbowmen, I decided to ask the good folks over at Warbases to make me a whole mob of them in various sizes. The singlbase shown here is roughly 180mm x 60mm, which is more than enough room to accommodate my existing 4 bases of halberdiers plus a few new additions. (I decided to be lazy and just glue them on the new base and shape the groundwork around them.)


Three new recuits for the unit...


 ...and this red-helmeted horn player (hornist?) was conscripted at the 11th hour to add a bit more mass and colour.




And here is a group shot of the redux halberdier, my recent crossbowmen and the 'Bear of Bern' command stand.


As for points, we have eight modern day contractors for 40 points, four new Swiss halberdiers for 20 and a Swiss command stand for 25 (I'm counting the bear as a single foot figure), so that should put me at 85 points. Pretty paltry against the Big Guns, but not bad for a slow painter like myself. 

Thanks so much for persevering through this inordinately long post - I hope you all have a great week!

Soldiers of fortune, dogs of war, friends & associates of Maggie Thatcher's son (oops, better check that last one with the laywers...).
What a great post, combining mercenaries from 1503 and 2003. Beautiful work as always Curt - your standard of painting more than makes up for the slowness of production. I've added a couple of points as I thought it was unfair to score that huge, scary ursid as a mere 28mm foot figure.

46 comments:

  1. Curt , you are obviously enjoying have more time to paint... Cracking work

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    1. You're absolutely right Dave - you folks are a godsend, for sure, and I thank you all for allowing some more time to work on my own projects.

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  2. Lovely work especially the modern PMC's, will have to read his book!

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    1. Thanks Fran. Prince is a bit of a whiner but its still a worthwhile read to get another viewpoint on the matter.

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  3. Fabulous work all round! Basing is top of the drawer as always. I've never put much thought into PMC's but I think you're completely right to call them mercenaries. That said your mercenaries, from days gone by and more modern, do definitely look as if they knew their business.

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  4. Big up for anybody that brings a bear to a fight. Beautiful work again

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    1. I know! I'd drop everyting, turn around and leg-it if I saw that bugger coming towards me.

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  5. Very nice work.

    Look out for Pikeman's Lement that is coming out this year (Lion Rampent for the Pike and shot era)

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    1. That's right, I'll have to pick up a copy when that's released.

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  6. Love it! The banner, the bear (!), the novel basing, plus a some beefy modern mercs. Really inspiring stuff!

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    1. Thanks John, I'm delighted you like them.

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  7. While all nice, the command stand is great. That's an army centerpiece if I ever saw one.

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    1. He is a bit of a impressive brute isn't he. Thanks Aaron dropping in Aaron!

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  8. Awesome looking work Curt, especially the basing on the irregular shaped base. Looks like they are still square enough to line up well on the table as well, so hopefully best of both worlds.

    Very good stuff!

    Don't get to focused on Modern though, you are welcome to work on more 100 years war stuff :-)

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    1. Thanks Byron. I do have a few more modern things in the queue but nothing compared to the nuke you dropped in the 'Epic Fail' round! We'll see what I can come up with.

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  9. Simply wonderful stuff Curt. Your command stand is my favourite of the lot I think but it wasn't any easy choice! Can't wait to see more.

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    1. Thanks Millsy, I'm trying to channel your excellent ECW work. I'll see if I can get something on tap for one of your upcoming Thursday 'down under' sessions.

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  10. That is another display in how to do it. Continue to really like the new basing style

    Ian

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  11. Great job dude. Totally agree re: the size of modern weapons - the true magic of the sculptor it to make the weapons look great while being great for gaming...

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    1. Indeed, its one of the things the GW/Forge World folks have down pat.

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  12. fabulous paintwork and basing! congratulations Curt!

    I don't drink but the bear seems to be very good in Canada:-)

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    1. Thanks Gilles. This is a close as I want to get to a bear like that...

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  13. Another cracking entry Curt! Basing is really excellent and that bear looks absolutely vicious!

    Christopher

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    1. Yeah, he's a brute to be sure. Thanks for dropping by Christopher!

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  14. How awesome! That bear is a great point of interest to have in an army. so cool. Really very nice work. cheers

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    1. Thanks Brendon. Yeah, I don't think there will be any, 'And which one is the Swiss command again?'

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  15. Wow, that base, or is that a movement tray for the Swiss? How are you getting those ragged bases, and how well do they work for gaming?

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    1. Thanks Robert! Yup, it's a big single base. I got a sample from Simon (BigRedBat) and then had the folks from Warbases replicate the ragged edge design.

      We use this stuff for Black Powder/Pike & Shotte where you really don't have to worry about how you base your troops (units are simply rated as either Small/Regular/Large). You just need to mark the hits with a dice or casualty figure and bob's your uncle. I'm also thinking of using these with Simon's 'To The Strongest' when his Renaissance variant comes out.

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  16. Love the Swiss especially Bruno the bruin Curt. The modern mercs are great too, just not my thing. I am looking forward to seeing your Swiss in table again.

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    1. Thanks very much Pete, much appreciated. I too look forward to our next scenario.

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  17. the ability to arrange your miniatures so that they looked like soldiers on the battlefield, not tin soldiers on the shelf amazing

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    1. Thanks Alex. A useless skill, gained from countless playing with Airfix models in the sandbox. :)

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  18. Gentle Ben's gone rogue!

    Love those Swiss, Curt, great work!

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  19. Great work Curt! Those irregular bases really work very nicely. Certainly much better than straight edges! Might just have to steal the idea!

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    1. Thanks Samuli. Yeah, I really like the bases. They don't work for all applications but they really sing for certain mass-unit game systems.

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  20. I go off the boards for some work stuff and Curt drops this mighty Points bomb of Grizzly Adams proportions (RIP Dan Haggerty). Amazing stuff and very well done.Perhaps it's the either the hope or dread of more of my astonishingly obfuscated stats that is powering this improved production level.

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    1. More like a points squib, but thanks for your comments Miles (and your inspiring stats.

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  21. Disgustingly nice. Love the groundwork and the irregular base.

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    1. Thanks Barks, I like the irregular shapes as well.

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