War of three Kingdoms 8 cuirassiers

 Here we have 8 cuirassiers to give me a  unit in Pike and Shot/ To the strongest for the War of three Kingdoms, which is a less Anglo centric name for the English civil war and it  also dates from the 17th century. 

Like the Pike and Shot rules these figures are from Warlord games, most of them are from the cuirassiers box set ,which are metal figures and plastic horses,  as you get 12 figures and my units are 8, I've added a plastic figure, cut off his left arm and repurposed one of the spare metal right arms and given him a spare right arm to finish him off and make up the numbers.  

I've gone for a  mix of metal and blackened armour and a variety of buff,I'm kind of looking forward to doing a unit in a uniform soon , that might be easier!

The flag is from the box set and is meant to be Essex's unit of cuirassiers at Edgehill,there's a lot of chat about cuirassiers in this war and there only being one unit Heselrig but I'm not convinced you can absolutely prove it so I'm going to do another unit for the Royalists!

I've given them more of a  primary red sash,mid way between orange and scarlet so I  can use them for either side, or change the flag and use them in the thirty years war! Still nothing Napoleonic but it's only January and I'm wading through 24 more gendarmes, focus, they're a great band aren't they?

All the best Iain 

Great Italian wars 46 Fast and dirty gendarmes!

 We have here 24 x gendarmes for the great Italian wars, three units of eight, it's just that two were painted earlier, in fact they've been cluttering up the paint desk for something like eight years! They're metal Perry war of the Roses command figures. The rest are all Perry plastic with the addition of spare Steel fist heads from their gendarmes set.

I've painted up two units as Spanish gendarmes which were less heavily armed than their Italian and French counterparts, the Perry set is for the War of the Roses and goes up to the end of the 15th century, the Great Italian wars starts at the end of the 15th century, they might be a bit old fashioned but in the  words of Rod Stewart, I don't mind, they wear it well!

The other unit I will be using as French and I have given them a French flag I did in a previous challenge, those gendarmes are currently flying Papal/Venetian flags in two of my To the strongest  armies, I wanted to be able to field four armies on my two tables but I have a dearth of gendarmes, hence these 24 gentlemen,  I have a further 24 moving on to the painting table, gosh this laser focus on Napoleonics is going well don't you think? 

I've changed techniques on these chaps,previously I would prime black, dry brush white and then paint with washes, giving me a kind of highlighting.  In an effort to increase speed and productivity I have continued to prime in black and then wet brushed the colours on using the black as shadow,  I think it's worked alright, I'm calling them good enough!

The Spanish flags are by Pete's flags, they're ace!

So a unit of Steel fist gendarmes and two units of plastic pound shop gendarmes  have now hit the painting desk, more French gendarmes (they need a lot!) to come!

The barded horses are warlords plastic English civil war horses with their heads replaced by Perry's ,first post of 2021, that's 220 points,charge!

All the best Iain