Medieval Scottish Light Cavalry (RedBox)

Another set with a slightly odd titel as  this lot could be, due to the Equipment, members of any countries army as well as the scottish.
As with all of the RedBox medieval  mounted bod sets (to date) 12 bods in 6 poses and 12 nags in 2 poses.
The Review at PSR HERE

Medieval Gunpowder Castle Artillery

Bit of a mixed titel but seeing as one of the guns seem to be fixed as if mounted permanently on a wall,  it sort of fits all the possible uses the set could be used for, both in defence or seige of a Castle or also, in the case of the handgonners, field warfare.
Made by Ultima Ratio, this is a very nice set. 4 sprues each with 6 bods, a pavise and stand alone Cannon. Flash is virtually non-existant. The Bod Holding the 4 barrelled Handgonne has a bit of excess plastic between his Body and the weapon´s handle but it doesn´t affect the Overall look.
Me, I give it 10/10,  simply for the Quality of the sculpts and the subject matter.

Handgonnes
The Pavise has the message "In Vino Veritas" (In Wine, Truth) on it and a priestly looking type praying to a wine goblet. I´ve done a bit of searching around but found no Pavise with the Slogan on it so maybe it´s an Joke on the part of the scupltor.
The gunner holds a flaming brand to ignite the gun. A slow match or a heated iron would be more accurate but the brand is ok..

The Guns.
I´ve seen examples of them in print but I can´t remember where. They look  late medieval  or Renaissance.
Anyways..only one bod per gun? Surely the one with the enormous bipod gun wouldn´t be able to aim and fire the Thing?
OOB, the bipod is flat along the gun  so  it Needs warming up in hot water and twisting into a realistic Position..hardly any work at all.
The large gun on the stand would more than likely be a fixed weapon on a Castle wall but I´ve made it into a field weapon.
Again..the gunner has a brand

Cannon Ball Masons.
One is Holding a shot measuring board. The holes are numbered from top to bottom I-IV. Why four hole sizes? Possibly the availabe guns come in 4 calibres? Why he´s Holding an axe I´ve no idea.
The bod kneeling has a lot of chipping ahead of him if he wants the shot to fit even hole number IV.

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Medieval Scottish Heavy Cavalry (RedBox)

A quick break from painting the 1329 Project bods
12 bods in 6 poses, 12 nags in two poses.
Only a little  bit of Flash to deal with and that mainly on the nags, which is in contrast to the set PSR have reviewed, so as with the Hobelars I painted from RedBox, it depends on which set you get.

PSR reckons that the bods armour and kit is ok for the period, the usual complaint (one which I entirely agree with) about the set having only two nag poses and that the nags are very well armoured, too much armour in fact for all the riders to have such a heavily armoured mount but this  has already been covered on previous Reviews on  RedBox WotR heavy cavalry sets.
I´ll have to think about using some of the spare riders and mix then with some nags from other sets..the Zvezda French Knights for example...but when I have the time.

 The titel of the set is a bit odd. Why have the first two sets labelled as Men -At- Arms and this set is "heavy cavalry". Surely they are, like the previous two "heavy cavalry" sets,  also mounted Men -at- Arms?

As with the previous RedBox  European Mounted Men-at-Arms and the Mounted Men-at-Arms sets, these will end up as part of Richard III´s Body guards...hence all the armour on the nags, which, TBH, I like the look of.

A bit of an odd pose..waving a two handed sword about whilst mounted?

Medieval Raiding party

Another bunch of bods for the 1329 dio..this time an older Valdemar set called VR 008 Plunder. As far as I know, the set isn´t produced anymore.
10 bods and two porkers. 

A couple of Close ups

"Oh!..so that´s where Geoffrey went to" 

Medieval Guards on Duty (2)

Another 4 sets of Valdemar VA127 "Medieval Guards on duty"  for the 1329 dio.
With this lot that makes 47 guards ..(one in the First Batch lost a Hand)

Three got  Pavisen, scratchmade  like in  THIS post.

One set is painted up "Freestyle". The axe and crossbow from the spares box. The sets Come with crossbows, they are ok but a bit small for the bod to lean on one.

Medieval Drinking contest.

A combination of two sets, Valdemar´s  Medieval Guards Resting and Knights drinking.

Medieval double axle Transport wagon

Another two wagons for the Teutonic Order 1329 dio, also made by Fredericus Rex as part of their Greenline range.

8 pieces all made Entirely of resin.
The one at the back is missing a tiny Piece. Unfortunately I´d tipped the parts out of the Blister box onto my Workspace and I didn´t notice that a bit had  broken off until I´d started painting and by then it was lost.
Note to self;
Spread out and Check parts using a clear Surface and tidy up the Workspace on a regular basis so as to have a better overview.

As with the two  Kobelwagen, the "falling tongues" have been left unfixed for Transportation

Happy New Year 2018

Happy New year!

Another year and another Batch of Bods, nags and accoutrements finished.
Slightly down on 2016´s prodution rate but still not bad.
Approximately 312  bods, 68 nags (with and without Mounted bods) 4 guns, 9 trolls, 4 fire demons, a catapult, a stack of  ACW Terrain, roads, walls, rivers, Bridge etc and an ACW  wargame.
13  English Men-At-Arms 13th-14th Century
14  English Longbowmen                                
80  ACW Union inf                                        
8    McNeill's Rangers                                                        
80 ACW Confederate inf                                
8 "Jayhawkers"                                                                  
8  Crew and 2 ACW guns                                
4  trolls
14  Norman Cavalry                                                            
2  Orc catapults
10 Modern Mounted Amazons                                            
12 Modern Amazons foot                                  
14 Eastern Friendly Indians                                
9   Lewis and Clark                                            
14 Medieval Guards resting                                  
4   Burgundian field artillery                              
10 Dark Alliance orcs                                        
12 Conan and friends                                          
13  Caeser Orcs                                                  
4 Fire Demons Set 1 and Set 2
2 Orc Catapults
War Trolls set 2
4 War Trolls set 3
6 Hobelars  
4 Inquisition                                                                        
14 Bodstonian Dragoons                                          
10 Amazons                                                                
10 Mounted Amazons                                                

What was planned and actually happened.
Continue work on both 1329 Teutonic dio and  the Airfix ACW wargame Project.
Wargame the ACW bods using the rules (with possible mild adaptions) from the Terry Wise book. ..this should actually happen.
Re-Boot Bodstonia. Those  Bodstonians have been getting on without me so it´s about time I had a look at what they are up to

Medievals took a bit of a back seat, the bulk of "production" was Fantasy and Airfix ACW with both subjects taking up over 2/3rds of everything painted or created.
The ACW Project got completed and a game was actually played.
The land of Bodstonia  wasn´t revisited with new Storylines but a lot more (46) Personalities and Populace were created.
A couple more bits and pieces were painted for the Teutonic 1329 dio.
Apart from not creating any new tales for Bodstonia...2017 Targets achieved :-)

Plans for 2018
Produce  more for the 1329 dio.
Get some Story lines done for Bodstonia. I made the effort to read a book (Changes in the Land by William Cronon)  on early Colonist/native American Indian relationships/Interactions,  so it would be a waste not to use the new info  in the plot lines.
Possibly..but I´m still thinking about it, add to the ACW Project using the new Strelets range of ACW bods.

Kobelwagen

Made by Fredericus Rex as part of thier Greenline range of wagons.
Kobelwagen? Well wagen is easy - Wagon. Kobel (or Koben) means stall,  a simple small room made from Planks, usually to hold animals.
Basically   a covered wagon, used principally by women as a means of Transport.

The kit, made from laser cut paper and Balsa and the main Body is resin, Comes with easy to follow instructions,  is easy  to put together and the only glue necessary is PVA.

This pair will end up as part of the Teutonic order 1329 dio. The "falling tongues" haven´t been permanently fixed so they won´t break during Transport.  To make a bit of difference between the the two I´ve left the covering off one.

Hobelars

Horse Boys or Hobelars 
Redbox´s Irish Mounted Troops.

Originally I was going to use other nags, particually for the boss, unpainted they look a bit podgy but after test painting one it turned out looking ok though not quite as elegant looking as an actual Irish Hobby. (The breed is now extinct..so no evidence of actual colours...a good excuse for my choices) Also decisive in using the nags in the set was  the tack,   which is unique to the set. 

PSR´s main complaint was the amount of Flash on the Nags but my set had very Little.  As with other sets I´ve bought the Flash does vary  sometimes from the PSR accounts so I suppose it depends on which box you pick up.

Javelinbods
Apparently the Irish  were one of the few in the medieval period who kept using javelins from horseback

So which mob should this lot represent ? After a bit of looking about (helped by the fact they are mentioned at PSR ) I decided on the Geraldines (Fitzgerald´s) . Chosen over the Butlers mainly due to the fact thier Standard, Argent a Saltire gules,  is easy enough to paint

Basically, if this lot are supposed to be running about in the WotR´s period,..the boss has to be Thomas Fitzgerald, 7th Earl of Kildare. 

For anyone interested I came across THIS site on Medieval Irish Cavalry

A slightly sad note. The two kittens (Bobby and Foxy) will be going tomorrow. They are going to a good home but it pulls the heart strings to see them go :-(

Bodstonian mounted command

As previously mentioned, I thought a complete command Group for a small number of dragoons was a bit over the top so they have ended up as a mounted command Group for the entire Bodstonian army.

The commander of the Bodstonian land Forces (I F**kin` hate painting White nags!! ) Colonel Jeremiah Coleman and his son, captain of the 1st Bodstonian Dragoons, Rupert.

Standard bearer and Drummer
Over at PSR, there´s  a bit of doubt as to wether the Drummer would have used his drum when mounted and should have it stowed. Wether in reality the drum was used when mounted makes no difference to me because in  Bodstonia,  the drum is used both when in the saddle and out.

The flag hasn´t been added as my Printer has run out of toner

Bodstonian Dragoons (Pt 4)

As noted at PSR;

This gives us nine poses, which is quite a good number for a cavalry set of this quality, so we feel quite guilty in pointing out that a figure firing his musket from the saddle would have been a really useful pose (perhaps instead of one of the swordsmen)

Well, that´s easily sorted :-)

Top half of the Standing bod, bottom half of one of the one´s with sword in Hand, a bit of carefull cutting to preserve the Sabre (sorry, sword)  and cartridge box.
Hole drilled through both the legs and Torso.  Both are then joined using second glue and a filed down end of a toothpick which was jammed up through the legs and into the torso.
The other end of the toothpick is then stuck into a cork for ease of handling whilst painting.
When finished, toothpick is cut to length (snipped off so  a half a cm or less is left sticking out under the rider) and the rider stuck to the nag by inserting the short length of toothpick into  a pre-drilled hole in the saddle.


Next..the Command section.