From GregB: Onward to Orleans! (20 points)

"Forward! God has shown me the way..."

As the Challenge clock ticks down I continue to make best efforts at clearing the painting desk at home. While I do not quite match the fervour of the "squirrel duel" participants here in the Challenge, I usually have multiple projects in multiple scales "on the go" at the same time, some of which lurk around the painting table for long periods. The Hundred Years War in 28mm is one such project, and as the conclusion of this edition of the AHPC looms, I thought it would be nice to get a few figures from this period finished.

Jean de Dunois directs the defence of Orleans - while his half-brother sits in England as a captive.

This was inspired mostly by the "Resistance" theme round, for which I painted the wonderful 28mm sculpt of "Joan of Arc" from the Perry Miniatures range. That particular pack includes two other figures: Jean de Dunois, the "Bastard of Orleans", and Étienne de Vignolles, a.k.a. "La Hire". With Joan painted, I thought it would only make sense to paint the two companion figures. Both of The Bastard and La Hire were prominent in French efforts to defend the city of Orleans, which began in late 1428 and was miraculously lifted in 1429 via a series of battles where Joan of Arc played an inspiring role. It was the famous turning point of a famous conflict. 

Sculpted heraldry right on the figure - very, very helpful when it comes to painting!!

I understand that Jean du Dunois was certainly a tough character, but his nickname arose from his semi-legitimate origins as much as from his disposition. When the time came to defend Orleans, the other male family leaders were either dead or captives of the English following the disastrous defeat at Agincourt. He was the only left, so he had to step up. Dunois led the defence of the city and, following the lifting of the siege, helped see the Dauphin crowned in Reims and take the fight to the English and their Burgundian allies. 

Soldiers of the King of England, you will face the wrath of God!

La Hire (pronounced "La EEeer") was another hard man - in fact, I believe this nickname has some kind of alignment with "the ire" or "the wrath" of God. Sounds like a guy you would not want to confront lightly, especially if he has armour and a sword. La Hire was a prominent figure in Joan of Arc's miraculous run through the historic turning point of the Hundred Years War at Orleans and on to Reims - although he could not save her from the matyrdom which awaited her...

"For the Dauphin!"

The heraldry on these two characters is sculpted right on to the figure - that is something that I really like! I hoped I found the right set of colours for the heraldry for each one but...oh well...he at least they looks like they are in charge. 

Finally, I need to add more mounted knights and men-at-arms for my French, so I thought I would do a couple to accompany these commanders. I...really don't have a lot of confidence that I am taking the right approach to painting these kinds of guys. I'm trying to figure out the right way to represent the full-on knights versus guys who are "only" men-at-arms. On the plus side the multi-part plastic kits for the period from Perry Miniatures give you a LOT of options to work with. So I have tried to represent Knights with more complete armour, lowered visors, chain-mail on the horses etc. while the men-at-arms have less armour, or maybe only a bascinet...

A mounted man-at-arms from the Bastard's retinue.

I thought one of the men-at-arms should come from the Bastard's own retinue, so I tried to hand-paint the coat of arms for Orleans on his small shield.

The Maid of Orleans leads the French to glory! God wills it!

I wanted to crowd all of the Knights I have completed to date into a big group shot, so I have done that here! There are all sorts of mounted figures in the group photo, but only six mounted 28mm figures count for this post. I reckon I will need at least another 12 or so mounted knights/men-at-arms for my French collection (or, at least, the initial part), something I intend to work away at over the spring and into the summer - and I expect this project will surely be in my project pile by the time of AHPC XVII...

 

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Sylvain: I see 2x 28mm mounted figures in this post, so I adjusted the points to "20". Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

You are a gentleman and a scholar. Your post deserves to be called "educational" for its historical information. And the models are just sumptuous with their ornate armour. Bravissimo!

 

 

 

EdwardG: Sprint finish points bomb (376pts)

Hej hej all,

Thank you all for the kind comments on my previous post. Having been languishing in the doldrums for this Challenge I resolved to at least have a go at attacking my points target in the final week and a bit. 

Thanks to some long work meetings and a kind wife who indulged a few later nights of me painting. I think, if my maths is correct, that I've made it, and a little over. Be that as it may I'm slightly sad I wasn't on this kind of form for more of the challenge! The dent into the 28mm lead/plastic pile is noticeable, but there are still nearly 5x really useful boxes full to go! 😀 

But, enough waffle. I concentrated on first getting my basic English Saga force painted and then branched out to the Scots, via some mercenary troops. I managed the English and a fair number of Scots (32 remaining for the full schilitron!)

First up on the photos is Sir Thomas Grey, English Captain and all around sold soldiery chap (with a nice and simple heraldry, and a flag from Flags of War!). The Grey family had a handy run of about 4 generations of solid soldiers, fighting in all the wars versus Scots and Frenchmen in the period. They eventually made it to the ranks of the Earls under Henry V, with a large number of French estates, but seem to have lost it all in the 1450s and 60s.

Supported by his tried and true men-at-arms, and household knights.

And supporting him are his band of merry Archers. All of whom are wearing an unnatural uniform coat...but give me a chance, I painted them all in about 6hrs! 

His opponent from over the Wall, a place they call Scotland... is a deer stalking highlander with a mixture of close combat clansmen and pike armed yeomen. All energised into a combat frenzy by the sweet melody of the pipes! 

And then supporting whomever has just promised the larger pay packet, a bunch of axe happy Irish mercenaries. They began the challenge being painted yellow, but I lost the will to continue after base coating them. Coming back to them a few months later I went to recover the paint job and "start" with a black undercoat. I liked the under coat much more than the original paint scheme, so they became black coated Irish, rather than the "traditional" mustard yellow that is shown in the pictures of Irish of the period. 

A final addition were finished at lunchtime today. I found these chaps, undercoated from a previous Challenge, in a misc minis box and felt inspired having painted their 28mm Irish cousins. I belive they are Essex minis of a generic axemen/halbardier type. 

All of this effort equals points...at least that's the hope! 

English = 42 x 28mm foot = 42 x 5pts = 210pts

Scottish = 22 x 28mm foot = 22 x 5pts = 110pts

Irish = 8 x 28mm foot = 8 x 5pts = 40pts

15mm axemen = 8 x 15mm foot = 8 x 2pts = 16pts

Total = 376pts

Grand total = 74 + 376 = 450pts!! Phew! 

So long all and thanks for all the fish! Looking forward to seeing you all next year! 

Best, 

Ed 😀

What a paint bomb Edward, loving this.  Lord Grey is wonderful and I live his huge retinue of archers in their red livery.  It may not be strictly historical but it works and gives unit cohesion.  But most of all I love those Scots with their wild Irish merch.  Well done all around.

PeterD 

From DaveS - Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War (55pts)

I've now finished my final unit for the French Hundred Years War army for Basic Impetus.  This consisted of the mounted Men at Arms.  These are again made from the Perry Plastics, but using the less armoured horses and riders, in order to try and differentiate between them and the Nobles.

With these, I also experimented with making banners.  I debated several methods, before finally going with kitchen foil.

I glued 2 layers of the foil togehter, before undercoating it, and then painting the banner.  This was then cut out, before wrapping around the pole and gluing together.  They were then "crinkled" to give them some life and shaded.  Each banner is thus made of 4 layers of the "extra strong" foil.  They seem like they will be durable enough for the job.

Above is the final army.  Currently only the cavalry have banners, but there are figures amongst the spearmen who would be suitable for banners, should I decide that I want to add them in the future.  The whole lot is going to have magnetic sheet attached to the base, so that it can be fixed to magnetic sheets on the bottom of a Really Useful Box.

The new models today give me another 5x28mm Cavalry, for another 50 points.

Congratulations on finishing this army! It looks spectacularly intimidating and represents great effort in knocking it over in just a few weeks.

I've heard of using lead sheet or wine bottle labels for banners back in the day, but your quad-thickness banner looks really good. Have +5 bonus banner points!

Barks

From DaveS - The Cream of French Nobility - Death Star - 120 points

The french army is nearly finished.  When I was looking at the next planet in the challenge, I came next to the Deathstar.  Now, when I think of the French Knights, they seem perfect for the theme of Hubris.  Since I needed to paint some anyway, they seemed like the perfect way to continue my journey.

Without delay, I present the unit of French Noble Cavalry.

Like the rest of the army, these are made from the Perry Plastic boxes.  The cream of the army, these were, like most of the Perry models, really fun to assemble and paint.

I have also painted a unit of "Brigans", light infantry with Long Spears.  These are, again Perry plastics

In total, this comes to 

5x28mm Cavalry =50pts

10x28mm Infantry  =50pts

Death Star Challenge Points =20pts

Total of 120 points.

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Wonderful work Dave! 'Hubris' and French cavalry (of pretty much any period!) seem to go hand-in-hand. Good one!

- Curt

From DaveS - Yet More HYW French - 100pts

The last few days have seen more progress on the HYW French army.

One of the quirks of the Basic Impetus 2 System is that it has "fixed" army lists, with a very few options provided to change it up.  This means that there is very little variety in terms of which models are used.

This army has all been built from Perry Plastics, mainly the Agincourt Cavalry and French Army boxes.  The slight downside to this, is that there are no archers in either of these.  This means that in order to make the archers that the fixed list required, I have had to buy a box of "English Army" plastics, in order to actually make the french.  This was.... odd.  Despite this, the models themselves went together really easily, and painted up quickly and with no real hassles.

The other unit was the Heavy Infantry.  How heavy is not really clear from the army list, and I initiallt built these using the men at arms figures from the French Army box.  Unfortunately, reading the list again, I realised that these were supposed to be armed with "Long Spears", and that the Men at Arms were better used as the foot versions of the Cavalry, which can be used.  Therefore, I built a second unit, this time using the armoured bodies and spear arms.

Finally, I took the opportunity of having the models out for basing to get a photo of the whole army so far.

Missing from this are the Noble Cavalry, Men At Arms Cavalry, and another unit of spearmen.

The list also requires a skirmisher unit of Bretons with javelins.  I'm still struggling to find models to use for these, and may just take the option to exchange the unit for an initiative re-roll.

This post is made of 8 archers and 12 Spearmen, for 20 28mm models, at 100pts.

Having taken much less time on this army than anticipated, I've started looking at the army lists from the rulebook to see what I might want to build next (given that I really like the fixed, defined forces that can be "finished").  I think that I have decided on an early 16th Century Florence force, which will give me the chance to make use of the Warlord "Landsknect" models, as well us many of the leftover Perry plastics that I have from this project.

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Dave, wonderful work on these French spearmen, and English, er... French archers? I dunno, maybe put a fews baguettes or a croque m'sieur in there somewhere for safe measure. I also like the Army-as-it-is (or as you say 'finished') group shot.  Well done.

16th century Florence next? Oh, yes please!

- Curt