From IainW: Great Italian Wars 28mm mounted crossbowmen (88 Points)

The big aim of this challenge ( apart from a big push on terrain) was to paint up some light cavalry units for the Great Italian Wars, so I have painted command bases, pike blocks, artillery and wagons, none of which I really need (I now have 3'0" of artillery pieces for the Italian wars lined up side by side!). So finally I have a unit of mounted crossbowmen finished! Most of these are Hinchcliffe figures with Perry head swaps, which I think works pretty well, the change of heads help because they are all in the same pose, still I quite like them, which is good as I have two more units primed up! There is also an unknown ebay purchased mounted crossbow man, the flag bearer is an old glory spare and the slightly anachronistic Henry VIII type chap (who I am using as the unit proprietor as it were) is a Hinchcliffe one piece moulding.

The colour scheme is inspired by Simon Miller's recent Italian army over on his Big Bat Cave blog. We seem to be going through a phase of warlord Pike and Shotte games (ECW campaign at the moment) and I'd like to have a go with the Italian wars, but we will no doubt go back to To the Strongest as we really enjoyed that ruleset too.

I hope to add some more troops in the last phase of the challenge, this should take me past 500, halfway to my rather optimistic total and so half of what I achieved last time out (who knew painting renaissance figures takes longer than WWII Soviets?!), still I'm happy with what I have painted with eleven days to go, so eight X 28mm mounted figures is 80 points?

All the best Iain

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Lovely work Iain. The Hinchcliffe figures and head swaps provide a wonderful, distinct unit. I also like the deeper Warmaster-like basing you've done for them (are all your cavalry mounted like this, or just the lighter detachments?).

3' of artillery pieces, eh? Really? Shouldn't this be 91.44 cm, Mr. Oh-We-Use-Metric-in-the-UK? ;P

Another 88 points for your Challenge tally (including a few extra for the conversion work). I look forward to seeing your final entries for this year's outing. 

Curt