18th Century Female riding Side saddle.

If you can´t buy it..re-create it. There is, only one  Female side saddle riding bod,   who could possible be converted to make one that fits to the  18th century and that is the Maid Marion from the Airfix Robin Hood set.
Rather than buy a complete set, I found her in a pick n´Mix bin at the Heiden exhibition. Not the best cast either. The horse was missing half  the rear left leg and  there was lots of Flash.
The decoration on the horse had to be removed, the thickness of the reins reduced, Marion´s feet needed adding (missing in the original ) head replaced and hair remodelled.
It was a test..which although has worked to an acceptable standard, I´m not 100% pleased with it, so I will get another Marion and repeat the whole process using a better looking  head.
She will become Hanna Turset in the land of Bodstonia.

Hanna on a Woodland ride. Head swop using one from the Airfix Washingtons Army set

In an attempt to reduce any background shadow cast by Hanna onto the background, and to give a bit of depth I curved the background around her like this;

Percy, Lacey and Blundeville

Three more Magna carta Barons using the battle set from Valdemar

Richard de Percy, (b. 1170 -  d.1244), 5th Baron Percy. Another of those who ended up being excommunicated by Pope innocent III. His full history HERE

Ranulph de Blundeville (b.ca 1172 - d.1232) 6th Earl of Chester and 1st Earl of lincoln, ( Fourth Creation ) Viscount of Avranches (Normandy). Also known as de Blondeville. His full history HERE

John (Jean) de Lacey (Lacie, Laci)  (b.1192 -  d. 1240) 2nd Earl of Lincoln ( Fourth Creation) 8th Baron of Halton and 5th Lord of Bowland. His full history HERE.
His daughter, Maud de Lacy, Countess of Gloucester, was one very interesting 13th century character. In 27 year period she was in court for various lawsuits and litigations no less than 77 times!

Simon Langton and John FitzRobert

Simon Langton, Archbishop of york  and John FitzRobert, lord of Warkworth and Clavering, another two of the suretees to  Magna carter 1215.
Both from a battle set, kindly sent to me by Jens from Valdemar Miniatures.

Simon Langton, (b,unknown, died 1248)
He was the Archbishop of york for a very short period,long enough to witness the Magna carter.  He gained the titel in june of 1215 and lost it in august of the same year.  Pope Innocent III anulled it acting upon a request from King John of England.  Langton then went over to Louis VIII of france, acting as Louis´s advisor during the invasion of england in 1215 ( busy year) For joining up with Louis he was excommunicated. He´s quite a character, leading a pretty active life and it´s well worth reading up on his life.

John FitzRobert. (b. ca. 1190 - d.1240)

Described as Lord of  Warkworth Castle. On the Early Blazon site, his livery is portrayed as the one I´ve painted but on searching the web I´ve found THIS version which is apparently blazon of Eustace de Burgh

To be honest I´m sticking with the Early Blazon site´s connection...and I like the colours whoever´s they are :-D.

 
Hello to Robbie from the Independant wargames Group blog. A lovely looking blog with loads of great wargames. The battle field vignettes are really worth a look at.
If anyone is interested in ships...model ones that is, then have a look at the Dusek Ship Kits site. A bit pricey but they are made from real wood and they are very lovely models.

And........

Banner of the Holy wounds

Standard bearer from Robert Aske´s army during the Pilgrimage of grace , a catholic rebellion in england from 1536 -1537. They were two revolts which have been given the name Pilgrimage of grace, one in Lincoln and the other at York, but the York one (some 13-14 days after the lincoln one)was the actual Pilgrimage of grace.
This is completely ignored in the TV series  "The Tudors" but seeing as the series has more historical mistakes per hour than any other I can think of,  why not let them make another. I like how Wiki describes The Tudors as " historical fiction".   They should have swopped fiction for fantasy ..I mean, which script writer came up the the idea of Pope Paul III trying to assasinate of Anne Boleyn before her coronation? In the style of  Commodus from Gladiator, "my history´s a little hazy, but didn´t Paul III get elected AFTER her coronation?"  
The flag he carries is the Banner of the holy wounds.

Another addition to my crecy flags collection, the Standard bearer for Bernard VI de Moreuil,  one of the french knights who fought at Crecy

Hello to John and Carvin' Joe

El Cid Almoravid Infantry (HaT)

Finally started work on the Infantry for the Moor army. This lot are th HaT Almoravid infantry with a few conversions.
The flag I got from Tom´s Toy soldiers Blog which he made himself and kindly put up HERE  for everyone to use. Apparently the writing on the flag means "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger" or sometimes translated as 'There is no god but god, and Muhammad is His prophet"
The writing on the shields is completely made up and hopefully doesn´t actually mean anything..

The archers. Nice looking bods but there could have been a few more poses

The conversions. Nothing spectacular, ranging from just swopping a spear for a lance or an arm swop. So far it´s raised the 16 available poses to 22
Hopefully the El Cid Andalusian Infantry set will allow more conversion and the possibility of cross coversion between both sets.
The original pose is on the right of each pic.

WotR´s Levy Halbardiers (Billmen)

Another group of WotR´s period Perry bods, this time the same as the archers, and the Pikes,  no defined household livery colour scheme, I´m still practising.

 

Next lot, crossbows and Arquebusiers,  I´ll make up as Burgundians.

WotR´s Levy Pikes

Another batch of the Perry WotR´s bods, this time Pikes. As with the Archers they don´t have any specific Livery..but this time they are all wearing the same colour combination. Wether it actually fits to any historical Livery colours I don´t know, I just went for a colour combination I liked.

Taken Prisoner!!

What did William de Huntingfield have at the end of his lance? Two of Saladin´s warriors.
Ok..I haven´t found any evidence that a Huntingfield took part in a crusade but the two bods came with the Valdemar set so they have to make an appearance.

I´m not the worlds best dio creator so I´ve used these two to make up a casualty marker (for whenever I get around to making a Medieval Arabic army)

Medieval Business men (2)

The second set of medieval business men from the hands of Erik Trauner. The 1st one can be seen HERE
Not yet based, a suitable situation has to be found.

A lowly priest.

Two middleclass types..traders?

Two upperclass types...landowners?

Lovely sculpted  bods..and their faces are really excellent too.

Hello to number 500 follower, David Dale :-D

Medieval English Standard Bearers..Crecy

Two not so commonly used standards (I haven´t seen them among many wargames armies)from the battle of Crecy 1346, taken from the excellent site Dansk Figursspilsforening .
The flags are of Sir John de Botetourt and Thomas de Hatfield, Bishop of Durham
Both bods are from the Zvezda English knights of the 100 yrs war set, the one with the Thomas Hatfield standard is a conversion using one of the foot, his nag is from the Zvezda French Knights set.

The Zvezda horses are among the best horse sculpts in 1/72nd..real fun to paint.

To those who still have the captcha thingy on...please get rid of it and put either the moderation mode on or just allow the post to be posted without a captcha.
Reasons;
1. About 60% of the captchas are  impossible to read and it takes at least a couple of re-loads  or 2-3 failed attempts to post a message. It never did and never will stop the determined human spammers getting thier adverts or dumb comments posted.
2. Even with captchas, tossers going under the name of Anonymous can post thier trashy cowardly little messages or adverts on long "forgotton" posts and the job of removing them (as your blog gets bigger) becomes virtually impossible. With the moderation mode on, you get to see where and what these filth are posting and remove it :-D

Mixed conversions

I thought I´d done everything possible with the Caeser orcs set but no!!!
I got a tip at the  Bennos Forum about a possible conversion...an orc drummer. Then I thought, they need a medic, but one with a red cross bag would look stupid so I converted one into a Shaman.

The drum is made from an old felt tip pen top with a bit of material added and held on with a bit of copperwire. The drum sticks are pin heads.
The Shaman´s cloak..toilet paper (what else?), his bull head from the Orion Gladiators set, the bulls head staff from HaT´s Carthaginian command set and the head from er?..a strelets set...(forgotten :-D)

Now two of the Linear-b bods converted into dice players. The bottom halves are from the Roman Tavern set as is the one leaning on the table.
The other top half, the bod with his arms held out is one of the "3" hidden figs from the Roman Port set

The   little Roman island "Scalpere Aedificare" has had an underground tavern added