Medieval Peasants (conversions)

From the Zvezda Medieval Peasant Army set. 

The "heavy" and "light" cavalry have already been posted here, but the silly sod whose "caught" an arrow is new.

Arm swops, body half swops and a "marker"

A lucky peasant who has got himself a crossbow!!

Mad axeman Magee, one whose had enough and is leaving and the standard bearer carrying the flag of the Bandshuh movement  (1493-1517)

One bod...6 Jobs

The Airfix Robin Hood set...I love it...there seems to be a mass of things to get out of it. A head swop here, a weapon swop there...and bingo..peasant becomes footsoldier.

The basic pose..

Stick swop, and now he´s the old boy of the villiage

Stick swop, twist of the neck and an arm added, now he´s capn Hornblower

Stick swop, head swop (Redbox Hussite artillery) and now he´s king of the slingers

Head swop (Revel english knights)bit of greenstuff and now he´s a guncrew member

The last reincarnation. Hand swop, head swop, sheath and shield added..

Hello to Matt from In The Grand Manner blog, in the main newline design napoleonics and a few little gems like this one Peter of Dreux.

Burgundian Command

I finally got back to doing a couple more Burgundians.

It looks like the face has silver on it...it hasn´t, it´s my bad photography to blame :-D

I´ve no evidence (pictorial) that they carried drums like this into battle, but drums are mentioned in medieval armies after the crusades.
There´s a story that the skin from  Jan Žižka was used to make  drums, so that he could forever lead his soldiers into battle.

Medieval Seige machines...1

The 1st half of the seige park finished!! :-D

The Ram

Roof added

I´ve made the roof removable so the crew can be seen

Being pushed into position

The Catapult

The seige park workers deployed to operate the catapult

A Testudo

I know this has another name but it escapes me at the moment. This was made from the second Ram in the Miniart Rams set.

Being pushed by the busy bods from the seige park

Mobile wheeled walls ( Mantlets)

From Zvezda.  The shield patterns I´ve added to give a bit of colour.

In Action with two bods from Orions Medieval seige troops set.

The Crew

A line up of the crew. Orion, Miniart and Zvezda.

Hello to Luca from Peana di piombo blog. He says he´s passionate about Ancient wargaming...and after looking at his blog, I´ll agree with him. :-D

Ancient Musicians

These have been created by Leonardo Torricini of Phersu Miniatures. A great looking set which would look great adorning ancient life scenes and I can see a use for some of them in a military role.
The set will be released soon in resin :-D

A good selection of interchangeable instruments allowing for more variety

The last two rows have, IMHO, an extra role in the ranks of quite a few early ancient military formations.

Hello to wardy-la from Gjallarhorn blog. Gjallarhorn ?? I´ll use wardy-la´s words to explain this great sounding word,
In Norse mythology, Gjallarhorn (Old Norse "yelling horn" or "the loud sounding horn") is a horn associated with the god Heimdallr and the wise being Mímir. This blog is to record the progress of a Viking / Saxon campaign we are hoping to run in the near future.
There´s also another great word on this new blog,  Strandhögg...but you´ll have to look for yourself to read the explanation for that one ;-D

Medieval Staff slingers

This should have been posted yesterday but due to the "Friday the 13th" crash it wasn´t.
Anyway all seems ok now..:-D
Staff  or stave slings...fustibalus
There arent that many slingers as far as medieval models go, as far as I know there´s only one in 1/72nd scale, a bod from the Zvezda medieval peasant army  set and he´s a Hand slinger using a so called "shepards sling".
After a bit of research I know that there are NO medieval staff slingers represented in 1/72nd or any other scale come to that, although this seems to have been quite a common and effective weapon, with a massive range and deadly effect.

This shows english sailors using a staff sling to launch what appears to be a "bomb" device

Picture of a Trebuchet and a Staff sling. Apparently the staff slings were used a lot for defending castles. These were shorter, about 3 feet (1m) long and could hurl rocks as big as your head !!!

The bods are from the zvezda peasant set. I used them because  they were going spare and the poses offered the best opportunity without masses of conversion.
They are using the "field" staff sling, with 5 - 6 foot long poles. (1.7 - 2m)

Miniart French Knights with ladder

So...after the friday the 13th crash it appears as if the promised reinstatement of posts did not occur, so here it is again.
The ladder and the knights come from the Miniart set French foot soldiers with Rams which is odd, because they have a set called French  knights with Assault ladders but no bods to carry them.

And if this dissapears again...I´m changing from Google

Burgundian Crossbowmen

The next installment in the slowly growing Burgundian army....knights and cavalry to be done.

Zvezda Catapult and Miniart Batteringram

The Zvezda Catapult is a very nice bit of kit, a bit on the big side  for 1/72nd but a great looking thing to have on the battlefield. Easy to build and paint, all it needed was the addition of a rope and finished.

When I first saw this on PSR I thought "YUK!!" and when I bought the set  (I only wanted the ladders and a couple of the bods) I still thought "YUK!" when I looked at it on the sprue. Anyway, I got a bit bored so just for fun,  it got built and painted up. Turns out it doesn´t look that bad, apart from the fact that there is no roof, but that will get sorted soon.

Oh, and the wheels came from the Redbox Hussite Artillery set.

Hello to BigMike. Mike has a blog about quiting smoking called Today I quit Smoking.  His headline phrase is "Quitting sucks, not quitting would suck more" I´m going to follow his progress...being a smoker myself, maybe it will give me the nudge to quit.

Zvezda Medieval Peasant Army

"The Peasants are Revolting!!"  I really like this set...a lot of conversion potential. The one thing that is a bit annoying is the "command" group (second pic down) Really good figures, especially the one holding the flaming torch, but as usual with Zvezda...only one of each pose. PSR review here

Hello to El Quinto Destino from E5D Blog . He runs 3 blogs, this one, a combined blog,  Nucel Art, The end is Near. shows wonderfull sculpts, videos on how to sculpt and paint. Well worth a browse through all three blogs.

Airfix Foriegn Legion

How many times has this set defended fort Sahara in the last 40 years and more since the type one set was released in 1962 ?? MARCH OR DIE!!!!!!!

Burgundian Arquebusiers

A mix of bods from Orion´s medieval seige troops, and a bod from Revell´s / Accurate´s Hundred years war english Men-at-arms. Pavisen made as I´ve shown earlier Here.