Great Italian wars 33 stradiots

Final light cavalry unit,another old glory unit, you have to stick the hands on before you drill them out! Still nice figures in the end and fun to paint.

So that's the end eight stradiots in the service of Florence,I've failed to complete Florence in 1500 but its a work in progress! Thanks a lot to Curt and to my fellow minions,it's been great fun! Oh and points 8x10 + flag 1 total 81.
All the best Iain

Great Italian wars 32 jinnetts and Maximilian

Another unit of light cavalry,this time it is a unit of jinnetts or genitors, Spanish light cavalry armed with javelins and  leather shields in the distinctive heart shape.
These are old glory figures,I know people comment on perry figures having a lot of flash but I have to say there was an awful lot to do cleaning these chaps up, drilling out hands etc and on this side of the pond they are no longer quite so economical,they're not far off the same price for cavalry. That said I do like them,  they are characterful and lively and are a pleasure to paint up. The flag is a medieval Catalan flag which might be slightly anachronistic but I think works well enough and to me close enough is good enough!

So another light cavalry unit done. Next up my Curtgeld,which isn't an orc but is instead an elderly Maximilian from Warlord games. You'd have to say most of the Rennaisance princes acted in an abominabal manner,absolute power, unbridled ambition,no check to their excess is lets face it not a recepie for a stable human.

Points wise 8x 28mm mounted figures plus flag, 28mm figure plus Curtgeld, 80+1+5+20, so 106 points.

All the best Iain

Great Italian wars 31 Mounted crossbow men

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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