Great Italian wars 37 landsknecht pikemen

Here we have the balance of plastic warlord/ pro Gloria plastic landsknechts mixed with Perry plastic mercenaries and a leavening of metal foundry and Artizan landsknechts plus the remainder of my one Kickstarter experience,some Steel fist dismounted men at arms, and there is also a foundry conquistador drummer in with everybody else.
The first batch of these figures I painted up as some Romagla pike during the painting challenge, this batch have been painted for more universal use.
The large pike block has been given some French flags, they're from a variety of sources and certainly aren't up to Pete's flags quality but they're good enough!
The smaller pike block has some Imperial flags.

That's 52 more figures that if I was being brutally honest I don't really need,but to be honest I really enjoyed pottering along with these while I was mostly building and painting terrain,by their varied nature they take a while to complete but great fun!
Next up, probably more terrain, plenty of figures undercoated but nothing nearly finished.
All the best Iain

A short post about basing and some storage

FMB asked me about my basing so here is a little step by step,I enjoy reading about other people's working methods so even though it's not rocket science I thought I'd post how I do it.

I base my Pikemen on 45mm x 45mm 3mm MDF that I have cut up from some left over backs of kitchen cupboards I have acquired over the years,I cut them on a crosscut saw so they are pretty square.,I give them a coat of dilute PVA and then cover them in sharp sand, the bits of white are cat litter which I think are a nice size for stones in this scale. After the sand I give it a coat of emulsion paint, pretty pale( it's also the colour I use for dry brushing stone buildings) and then a wash of dilute burnt umber ink. Once that's dry I dab on some straight PVA and coat with some blended turf. Works for me,I haven't gone for tufts yet,I think I'm too tight!
In other news I got hold of some Billy bookcase doors, so after a bit of reorganization I cleared some bookshelves but realized I needed A : more shelves and B: more holes for the shelves to have their supports inserted into. A redundant wardrobe supplied the material for the shelves which I skillsawed down to the required size and then drilled out some more holes.

You can see my Italian wars collection on the shelves, I've added my British civil war,War of the Roses and tucked the recently completed church down the bottom. What next? Some Pikemen once they're flagged!

All the best Iain