Italian wars 47 Steelfist and plastic pound shop gendarmes

 Twenty four more gendarmes, eight from Steel fist, expensive (£6 each!)but exquisite, they almost painted themselves the detail is so well done ,they're pretty much bang on identical in size with Perry figures which is also helpful. I reverted to my previous technique of prime black,dry brush white to highlight and then paint in washes . They have been finished as French gendarmes as they were the most exuberant in  terms of clothing and accoutrements, my wife and daughter took to referring to all the figures in this  post( I  paint on my lap in the living room while everyone watches TV) as entrants in Rupaul's drag race and I can see their point, they are somewhat over the top, I can see them bursting into " I am what I am" or something similar!

The other sixteen  are based around some boxes of reinforcements for the game Battle Masters that GW did the design for and I think was based in their Old world milieu. I didn't have the game but came across them in a clearance pop up store,some time ago and paid £2 a  box for two boxes of the empire version which contained a mounted general, three knights,  10 archers,five halbardiers, five crossbow men and a cannon with two crew. I  later picked up the chaos box, two mounted chaos knights, two ogres and twenty beastmen for a pound. Luckily, as a bonus, there was an additional sprue of three caparisoned horses in one of the boxes,and there,or in the loft they stayed for 30 years!

 I'd cut the knights lances off to make Scottish Lancers but eventually decided I should try and make something work out of what's left. With the addition of a couple of Essex later medieval knights I picked up with something I actually wanted off of Ebay I was now up to twelve figures and I just needed to scrape together four more figures to  give me two more units for pike and shot, or combined with the Steelfist figures four units for To the strongest!

 I had two Perry plastic knights left over from the last post and then added in a couple of spare warlord pike and shot troopers with headswaps and the addition of trumpets on Perry medieval horses. I also replaced the lost lances with Perry plastic lances. The Battle Masters  figures are a bit smaller than GW warhammer figures, they're more like chunky 28mm which means they mix in pretty well I think,I did have to carve the shields off of them and carve arms ,of course on the chaos warriors, I had to remove the distinctive headgear and add the front face of a  Perry helm and  feathers but I think I've got away with it!

 I have ,because of the preponderance of caparisoned horses ,had to spend a bit more time painting them as they are a bit more toy like I guess and have used Maximilian's triumph prints as reference , strippy lances et all, they've been great fun to paint and they are finished off with a mix of blown up Perry flags or Foundry free download flags,all French.

The plastic figures are on chunkier bases because I had to use some slotta bases,which the horse almost fit, cut down and glued to Perry 45mm x 60mm bases and then fill the gaps with foamboard .

All the best Iain