Medieval Smithy and Barn

A nice suprise:-D
This pair of buildings turned up on my door step on monday kindly sent by Thorsten Burgdorf. Brand new in the range of buildings and they are available  HERE.

The Smithy Comes with a couple of extra pieces, the fireplace (?) with bellows, a couple of sacks and a plunging trough. There was also a tiny bucket but I lost it :-( but I´ve added a Barrel :-D

The woodwork effects look excellent, especially the wattle on the gable Ends of the barn.

Entirely made from resin,  easy to construct and paint, they have the same dimensions as the other Medieval houses (or other era houses) from the same range, which means all the bits and pieces, walls, gable ends, etc can be mixed and matched.

A blast from the past.

Some very very old airfix (and a couple of others) from way way back in the days of Humbrol enamel paints and when the choice of bods made converting them a necessity. 

A drawing pin stuck into the bod..a shield. The archer has got some legs from an Airfic ACW confederate bod.

EEK!! That gloss paint!!! Sunglasses on!..Bavarian  and Nassau grenadiers

This little lot is about half what remains of my napoleonic bods, most of the cavalry and a lot of the cannons have "dissapeared" along with t two farm houses .........and hundreds of tanks, planes and 1000´s of infantry......... without counting hundreds of 1/32nd bods and thier vehicles etc. 

They used to have regimental Standards and were attached to strips of cardboard from Old cereal packets. 

Superman in his scratchbuilt war taxi.

Austrian cuirassiers Regt. Nr 8 (pt 3)

Nearly there. 200 done and dusted for the Croeburn dio..only another 50 or so to go........:-D

Medieval carriage (update)

Finally the carriage can have a "crew" added.
The bods are from the Strelets Crusaders on the march set.
Carriages for transporting people didn´t come into use until after the medieval period but seeing as virtually every medieval film, even those that claim to be historically correct (the Tudors series to name but one) I think my bods are allowed thier comforts as well.

Rude passenger and the crew, The rude passenger has an unfortunate piece of plastic across his left eye.

Two female passengers.

The foot rest had to be made a bit thiker as it proved impossible to set the seat lower to accomodate their legs.

Drinking and driving

The rude passenger having a good old "dig" in his beak

Mrs Miggins is telling the rude passenger what she thinks of his pastime

gg

Bannockburn Project (Pt1)

The start of two medieval armies. The plan is to use mainly Strelets/linear-b bods and build both the english and scottish armies before the 24th of June 2015, the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.

The mounted Knights and welsh archers might prove a bit of a Problem but at least it´s one project I´ve got every chance of bringing to a close and on time :-D

How many bods will be painted? If I take the lowest number of troops that anyone reckons were there, 5000 for the Scottish side and 14,000 for the English, divide by 100 then 50 and 140. Doesn´t Sound a lot. eh? Ideas??

Bods used so far;

Foot Military Order Knights

Military Order Warriors

Medieval Levy 1

Medieval Levy 2

The result of the last couple of days, 13 Scottish and 7 English

The English troops are so far, getting a "uniform" colour scheme.....

...the scottish troops a more "General" mixed look.

The shields. I´m certainly not going to paint every Lion and Leopard on every shield so.....

Find the Patterns on the web (watch out for Copyright) copy and paste. The shields are 1.2 - 1.3 cms tall and 0.98 -1 cms wide. The flags I make 2.3 cms high and 2.6 cms wide.

Find a woodgrain pattern, copy, paste, reduce to "scale", copy and repeat until a full sheet is created.

Glue the front and back to a thin pece of card.........

.let dry, cut out, colour the cut edges with a felt tip and "shape" over a Piece of dowel or pen. To glue to the bods I use Pattex 100.  It´s thicker than most superglues, has no thinners and it drys a bit like Silicon, which gives a slightly flexible final bond which is good when the bods get dropped or knocked.

 

Wars of the Roses Scottish Troops (RedBox)

10 bods in the set...and to be honest, a LOT of flash! On 2 of the  4 sprues in the set I got some of the bods were surrounded with Flash. Over at PSR they seem to have got one of the good sprues (Here)
Still, when the Flash is  removed there´s some quite nice bods buried in it. A lot of them are quite generic looking and fit well alongside  other WotR´s bods.

The whole mob with conversions together. The Tartan. I made it up as I went along and any similarity to a real pattern is purely coincidental.

Missile bods.

Infantry. The one on the right..A Gallowglass?

The other figs, with conversions

The rather large halberd replaced with a pike

I wouldn´t want to be on the recieving end of that chopper...that´s if the guy could have actually lifted it.

The pikes that come attached to the bods are pretty thick and useless, so they got replaced. Why manufacturers still insist on creating poses with the pikes attached is beyond me. Easier would surely be just have the bod with ring Hands that a pike could be fitted to?

Now the last bod, the musician.
Bagpipes seem to have been used way back in human history and I´ve found a couple of references to them being used in warfare but nothing really definate. They turn up in Medieval manuscripts as far back as the 12th century (a collection of manuscripts with Bagpipes in them HERE)

Here  is the Sound of a reconstructed set  of a medieval  German Bagpipes called  "Hummelchen" (Little bee)  It has some similarity  to the "modern" sound of a set of Bagpipes.

The main Problem with the piper is that he hasn´t got the mouthpiece to blow the bag up!! Mind you, as can be seen in the pic above (the two pipers) the mouthpieces could be quite small so maybe it´s hidden against his chest.

Spartacus Uprising - Defeat ( Linear-b)

 

 

Spartacus   finally lost the Third Servile war and was killed at the battle of the Siler river and  the Retribution taken upon his remaining  followers was swift and terrible!!!

The whole set together.

Crixus getting a kick.
"The little vascal has spivit!"
"Has what, sir?" 
 "Spivit.!"
"Yes, he did, sir"
"No, no, spivit! Sort of...bombavdo, a touch of devving-do"
The Lictor is a good addition, the Fasces showing the power to excecute...

Forming an orderly line waiting for punishment (Roman officer from the  Construction set.)
"Crucifixtion?"
"yes"
"Good...out of the door, line on the left, one cross each"

The Roman soldier can have the whip removed and replaced with a rope as part of a construction Team or onboard a ship.

"You don't have to do this! You don't have to take orders!"
" I like orders!"

 

This Scene from the 1960 film, Spartacus. This scene   captures the  powerfull and  menacing look of a Roman Legion. 

HaT El Cid Moorish Command

The set contains 3 sprues. each sprue  with 3  foot and 3 mounted bods (Two horses and one mule). Not really a lot of vareity pose wise but they are nice looking bods and a good Addition to the El Cid Range. A slight oversight in the set..the mounted horn blower doesn´t have any stirrups.

The Drum mounted on a donkey is a really nice Piece.

Even though there´s so few poses, there is still scope for conversions, especially using bods from the other sets in the series.

The horn Player in the middle has new legs from the bod from the Almoravid set.  The Horn Player on the far left (bottom half from the Standard bearer)  will become a new member of Ben Yusuf´s Black Guards.

The final conversion..the  Standard bearer on foot now becomes a mounted Standard bearer. .

My one real complaint about the set is the Standard bearer. The Hand that holds the Standard is open which then means the pole of the  Standard needs glueing to the Hand, not a very permanent solution so I welded them on. A ring Hand would have been a far better solution.

And some very good News for fans of  1/72nd Medievals..Linear-b is planning to release sets of Tudor period bods!!!!!  The masters look excellent and can, along with a new set of Zombie Pirates, be seen HERE