Bannockburn Schiltrons - Finished!!!

Finally the last two are finished !! 80 bods in total to cover the ca. 4000 at a ratio of 1;50
Bods used from the following sets (with a lot of conversions)
Military Order Warriors
Foot Military Order Knights
Army of Joan d'Arc
Medieval Britain
Army of Henry V
Scottish Army of Robert Bruce
The Scottish Army of Wallace
Scottish Schiltron
Medieval Crossbowmen
Medieval Levy (1)
Medieval Levy (2)
Shaab with Crusader Crew

Thomas Randolph´s Shiltron

Robert the Bruce´s Shiltron.

A couple more "group shots"

Only a few more "wee folk" , some more English archers and welsh spearmen and then a bit of scenery to do!

18th Century Sailors/Pirates

The HaT British Marines and Sailors drafted in as either Bodstonian Naval Crew or members of Capn Jack Dore´s band of Pirates. Thanks to Peter (Peter´s Cave) for kindly sending me these. :-D
The marines I´ll get finished later, I have to invent a colour scheme for thier uniforms first.

The set suffers from a bit of flash but seeing as they are made using the harder type of plastic, removing it is easy.

Guncrew poses. The Bod on the far left is pulling a lanyard (?)

Hand to hand Fighting poses

A 24 and a 32 pdr

Here they are with other salty dog associates aboard the Daniels Pride, stolen from the Bodston Harbour in the spring of 1728.

Spartacus Uprising - Linear-B

The one complaint about this set...only one female. Hopefully there will be a couple more in the next set. There´s a bit of Flash and a couple of the bods have some mold lines which need removing but it´s not a lot and easily dealt with.
All 13 poses together..14 bods in total with the double pose.

The pair in the middle is very reminiscent of the pose in the Scottish Army of Wallace set.

The bod on the left is collecting stones for ammo but the bod on the right has done the sensible thing. Why get arm ache throwing hand sized Stones when a pebble will do?

There´s a lot of bods with Gladiator style equipment, just under a third of them have some sort of Gladiator kit. As a rag-tag army,  a lot of them would have whatever weaponary and armour they could lay thier Hands on and Gladiator Equipment would have been pretty uncommon. Still, as far as I´m concerned it´s fine. The shields are a bit "odd" Why the square one? Did Gladiators at the time have square ones (73 B.C) or did they have them later on to reflect the roman Equipment of the time?

One thing not Mentioned on PSR, the bod in the middle, Spartacus himself ? As far as the pose and clobber goes,  he looks very similar to the Kirk Douglas Version.

 

And of course, the inevitable end of the Spartacus revolt.
There´s a couple of small Problems with the crucified bod.

1. The pegs to hold him on are way to big for the holes so it´s best to cut them off and glue him.

2. The ropes which would have been used to  hold him up are missing. Imagine what would happen if a Person was nailed up like that. The weight of his unsupported body  would simply rip the nails out of his Hands. Also..did they actually put the nails through the Hands? Apparently not, it was through the wrists. The nails were inserted just above the wrist, between the two bones of the forearm or driven through the wrist, in a space between four carpal bones. Apparently there have been experiments done (who did this or took part I can´t imagine) to prove that nailing through the Palms was possible but they were supported by ropes as well.

..

 I don't visit or comment on your blogs half as much as I should like; and I visit less than half of  your blogs half as much as you deserve.

The reason..that 4 letter word, WORK. At the moment a lot of hours (averaging 60 a week) and a lot of travel to and from work (400 miles plus a week) Better than no work..the real world needs paying for and something has to give..and at the moment it´s the Hobby. Hopefully I´ll get a Routine set up and keep going but at the present time, and the work load looks to increase drastically, my productivity in the Hobby world is reduced to a slow burn :-(

Why don´t the maths ever add up?

No work..loads of time for painting..no Money to buy bods etc

Work...no time for Painting but money to buy bods!

Medieval street fight

Someone didn´t give way and tempers were raised, a knife drawn and blood spillt. Another set of medievals from the master sculptor Alex.

I´m not sure what the green effect is on the one on the left.....camera playing up probably.

The male could be rolling up his sleeves to prepare for fight but I went for him holding a cut.

"what´s behind my back?"

As always, the faces are really something.

Stephen Langton.

The List of participants present at the  Magna Carta sighning -   Barons, Bishops and Abbots,  continues with Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury,
One of his Brothers, Simon Langton, I´ve already painted up HERE.

Tholos

A Tholos -  Quote;


"A tholos (sometimes tholus, from Ancient Greek θόλος) is an ancient Roman feature found in the macellum. It is a round structure, usually built upon a couple of steps (a podium), with a ring of columns supporting a domed roof. It has been suggested that the tholos, well provided with water and drains, was where fish were sold, although other uses for the central tholos have been suggested, such as the place where official weights and measures were held for reference or as shrines to the gods of the market place. Some macella had a water fountain or water feature in the centre of their courtyard instead of a tholos structure."

This one´s a bit too big for the new Forum and way to big for the original one (Now a Macellum) which has a water Feature anyway, so it might end up either as a feature on it´s own, or..if I ever get it together, as a centre Piece for a bigger Macellum.

The pillars. Not exactly the effect I was looking for, neat and tidy, but it ended up looking having a bit more of a "used" look.
The Problem with pillars is getting them all the exact same length, especially with Long section like the New Forum. Get one or two a bit too short or longer than the others and it warps the roofing.

The bits and pices needed. A Kebab stick, set square,some corrugated biscuit paper, PVA and some A4 paper.

Simply mark off the A4 paper in strips of the required height and glue to the Kebab sticks, leaving a bit at the end so it can be attached to the flooring / Overhead construction. The set square is used to check wether the paper Strip is at a right angle to the Kebab stick. Get it at a slight out of true angle and when it´s rolled up it gets longer than required.

Simply smear some PVA along the paper and roll it up. Cut some corrugated to the required width and glue on. Paint and Cut off the rest of the Kebab stick.  I´ve now realised I should have cut the corrugated paper into 1cm strips to give the effect that the pillars are made out of sections...but "ya live un learn"  :-)

For those who haven´t seen it...this 1/35th scale dio, a Workshop with a scrapyard is well worth a look. Try and spot the human skull :-)

Forum Romanum Mk II

The old Forum wasn´t quite forummy enough..it lacked a Basilica, so a bigger one has been built. No red paintwork on the pillars..the town was starting to look to much like RTW.

Rear side. Normally, around the courtyard there would have been Shops, but I´ve used a single wall as adding two walls for the Shops would have meant expanding the area of the whole Thing and it would have put the whole town out of `Balance`.

The pillars. Paper and toothpicks ;-).

 

The whole town so far, 19 of the panned 40 buildings. The original Forum, which will now become a "Macellum". It´s a bit too small to add a Tholos....so maybe I´ll convert it into a housing block or stables and build a new Macelum.

 

 

Veritas vos liberabit

My entry for  a "competition" over at the  Valdemars forum

The rules for entry were;

- Only knights allowed -  hospitallers, at least one hospitaller present - Check!

- At least one holy symbol represented, relic, banner, cross, half moon' - Check!

- At least one Valdemar figure - Check!

- At least one animal - Check!

- Needs to be a new Piece of work to take part - Check!

On his travels to the holy land a hospitaller Comes across a wayside cross.

He stops, and as he prays, Dobbin takes a wayside Snack.

Both the Hospitaller and Dobbin are Valdemar. Dobbin came without a saddle so one had to be made. Got it all base painted but it just didn´t look right....no stirrups!!! Remove saddle, recreate with stirrups (very thin plastic Card) add saddle again.

The helmet is from the Caeser Dismounted Crusaders set.

The crucifix is from the Valdemar Tax collectors set and was carefully sliced out of the sedan chair. Not carefully enough...It broke into 4 parts, the right side of the cross shot off into "never to be seen again land" so that had to be reconstructed. The cross it´s attached to is made from high density styrofoam. The moss is tiny bits of old rubber foam.

Veritas vos liberabit ? A variant of Veritas liberabit vos (the truth shall set you free) and was used by the   Knights Hospitaller during the crusades. 

Turcopoles - Strelets.

Or "turcoples", "turcopoli" or "turcopoliers".

As noted at PSR, the set lacks any Lance carrying bods but I plan on adding some using bods from the Mounted Crusaders in Oriental Dress and Military Order Sergeants sets.

A common error, not just by strelets but a few manufacturers, the arrow is laid on the wrong side of the bow stave. In a lot of cases this can be corrected but with these it proved impossible. I´ll most probably get the set again and convert some into mounted crossbowmen.

One or two of the nags from the set I swopped with nags from other sets..this one (below) is from the Roman Cavalry on the March set. 

The Standard. On the box art it Shows a Dragon type of Standard but seeing as they would have been part of a crusader army and attached to a Military order, they would more than likely carried a cross or whatever. I didn´t want to Limit them to one order or other, after a bit of searching I found THIS on the Dansk Figursspilsforening site.  It´s a flag from a Danish Family called Vingad Pil. It suggests, with the wings, mounted archers. All I´ve done is add the swallow tails.

The Standard bearer is from the Military order Sergeants set.

Another roman house

The good thing about Roman buildings..there´s so many different types based on a similar design! :-D  This one could be a pair of merchants residences..not quite rich enough for a town house/Villa but not so poor that they have to live in an insula.

A "clever" bit of construction was required to get the centre Support constructed

Front entrance

Rear.