Swiss Medium Cavalry

While I hate -really hate- painting horses I do, however, love the appearance of a mounted unit.
Quite the conundrum, if I say so myself. Especially since I think of one day assembling a cavalry only army like Scythians, Sarmatians, Parthians and the likes...

I started on this quite a while ago, somewhere in November. But I needed this unit ready for this friday's game, so finally bit the bullet and pulled through in time. They're medium cavalry or mounted serjeants for Lion Rampant. All plastic Perry's from both light cavalry and mounted men at arms boxes.

The flag is a French banner from one of the booklets of one of the plastic Perry kits. Luckily I have access to a free color-photocopier at work and made some copies of all those booklets on thick drawing paper.

Kinda looks like he has a double chin.

This friday my Swiss will have their first taste of battle. Let us hope that Gott is with his little Solothurners this Freitag. They will participate in a couple of small 500 point games of Kings of War. Here is the force in all its glory.

The army list for those interested:

Pike Block Regiment + Blessing of the Gods @ 160 points
Pole-arms Block Regiment @ 100 points
Mounted Serjeants Troop @ 105 points
Cannon @ 85 points
Army Standard Bearer @ 50 points

For a total of an even 500 points

Milites Votadinorum I

Here is my starting army based and ready to be undercoated, just waiting 'till the weather clears up to start spraying. Two groups of warriors on foot and one mounted.
Milites Votadinorum or Milwyr Y Guotodin (if my Welsh is good enough).

Next are some pics of the new light cavalry command figures released on this Salute. The figure on the right is for the highlight, he holds his spear with both hands without a shield. He can be a descendant of the Sarmatian auxiliaries who were stationed in Brittania in times long past. The flagbearer will get a spear instead too, so will the hornblower is his free hand. The leader comes with a choice of sword and spear hands.

RB20 Light Cavalry Command

Ultimately these will be backed up with levy units and additional warriors and elites.
For levies north of Hadrian's Wall I chose the new Picts of Curteys Miniatures that came out on Salute this year. All that needed changing were theur Pictish shields for some nice round Sub-Roman ones.

Here are some pics of the new unpainted figures along with a comparison shot between different manufacturers.

Pict01 High King

Pict03 Command 1 standing

Pict05 Warriors standing with spears 1

Pict06 Warrios standing with spears 2 (cloaks)

All in all I'm mighty pleased with these figures. You can see a clear evolution in sculpting from their little bit older Arthrian foot troops to the figures presented here. Also, almost no flash whatsoever! Big plus.
I hope they will continue their Pictish range, because I need skirmishers looking like my levies; and hopefully there'll also be some armoured Picts in the future.

Progress on Dux

I have joined the Dux Brittaniarum campaign in the club and started out as a minor player; giving me time to paint up my forces. As a minor player I have solely my Tribune, a champion and three groups of milites; of which one can be changed into a four man cavalry unit.

My Lord character is Tribune Postumus Flavius Dago. A young man, short in appearance yet a master of arms in training and an exile to boot. He is commander of the garrison in Trimontium, deep in Votadini territory.

Seeing as I'm situated north of Hadrian's Wall I have opted to change the look of my army to a more British and less Romanised one. For this I bought the new Pictish troops from Curteys along with armoured Arthurian soldiers and the new cavalry command. Mixed together I think they'll look like a convincing Gododdin force. Additional inspiration was taken from here.

My Tribune is painted up backed by his Labarumbearer and shieldbearer, a general just screams 'scenic base' to me.

Just need to finish basing and adding transfers to both the, now extant, shield and Labarum. I'm going with transfers from Veni Vidi Vici; simple, elegant and to the point.

 These are two nobles for my army, although I can only use one for now as my champion. They are Horsa and Hengist from Wargames Foundry and I like their Saxon look, it'll bring a nice diverse touch to the army.
The shield was painted by the technique I lifted from here.

 These troops I painted for the British so far will become the core of my Saxon army instead. They're still waiting for spears and shieldtransfers, that's what you get when you have to make do with a monthly gaming allowance :-(
Also I screwed up with a varnish spray which turned out to be glossy, still have to give them a matte coat and hope they come out alright. Apart from that I really like these oldschool figure from Newline Designs. I have six more of them on the painting bench, of which two are converted to hold Draco-standards, twelve armoured Saxons  and one noble.
One of these days they will be bulked out with the Saxon females from Elite Wargames and Models to get some nice variety in this barbarian mix.