From SimonG: Vague History and Dodgy Heraldry - 15mm Crusaders (45 points)

Continuing my 15mm Khurasan Miniatures Cathar Crusade project my submission this week is three Impetus bases for the Crusader side -- one of mounted knights and two of skirmisher crossbowmen.

One of the nice things with working at 15mm is that you still have the larger Impetus bases on which you can get a good number of figures, but the overal size of the bases is more manageable (in this case all on an 80mm frontage, with depth between 30 and 60mm)

The crossbow figures came without strings so despite already having cleaned up and undercoated them I decided at the last minute that I had to add them -- not too much work as the bows are small and quite easy to work with but a delay I could have done without. I painted the two units in rather generic livery, one of course with crusader crosses (the white is a base coat of Corax White, then a coat of Apothecary White Contrast, then layer white scar). 

With only four poses it takes some work to try and manage variation but I think these came out nicely.

The second unit in a simple green and red with crusader badges on the left chest.

My mounted unit was supposed to be Vicomte Bertrand, illegitimate son of Raymond VI of Toulouse and hence half brother of our Cathar hero Raymond VII -- unfortunately I discovered the problems of relying on the first internet source you come to for history -- as I've researched further (at least par Sumption) Vicomte Bertrand defended Toulouse in 1211 for his father and was ransomed by Simon de Montfort -- as many switched sides perhaps at some later point he allied with the Crusaders but for the moment I may have him on the wrong side (I could simply have swapped the base edging from Blue to Red to change him back to the defenders but then am left with the problem of the two obvious crusaders with him, doh!)

A bigger problem is with the heraldry as the Cathar cross on the flag should be gules and or not sable -- my bad as after printing this I forgot to overpaint and then took the figure reference from the flag -- oh the errors we make when rushing for the challenge!)

The heraldry on the other figures is all made up so luckily there cannot be too many errors there as long as I follow heraldric rules! Anyway, despite all these snafus I'm still pleased with the unit and with the dappled grey in particular -- hope you like them too!

No bonus points claimed this week so a simple 12x 15mm infantry and five mounted for another 44 points. See you again next week with some more legionaries!

Sylvain: You continue to impress me week after week with your amazing brush work at this small but mighty 15mm scale. I also like the ground work on your bases, it looks very realistic. The games you are preparing will certainly be spectacular. I will add 1 point for the banner to round up your points to 45. Nicely executed!