An Update

The final batch of Landsknecht have been varnished and tomorrow they will be fixed to their bases. Completing them was an arduous task but between painting sessions, I had time to contemplate further the idea of a campaign.  This would-be put-on hold and in its place will come a series of historical scenarios, similar to ones made for the dark age period. I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent researching the latter half of the 15^th century and found many interesting battles that begged to be fought out on the game board. 

From my last post I demonstrated how the collection could be stretched to cover many other nations than what I had originally painted. From the photo you will see production is already underway and more are planned in the coming weeks. These will cover the lesser-known conflicts, such as Portugal’s bid for independence from Spain, the final battles of Teutonic Order with Poland and the rebellion in Flanders and Liége against Burgundian hegemony. Conflicts within the Holy Roman Empire are also on the board. 

 

Have a happy holiday season.

Stretching the collection

This past July I began refurbishing the Late Medieval collection and parcelling out completed elements into DBA armies. The first efforts produced the Scots Common, Tudor English, Danish Union, Swedish, Italian Condotta, French Ordonnance, Medieval German and Free Canton, all have been posted here with photos.

I enjoy the standard DBA game and more so when doubling the number of elements to make a single command. The look of the game is much improved and it better simulates the dynamics of battle such as depth of deployment and placement of reserves. The French Ordonnance and Medieval German collections are two such armies and subsequent orders to Legio Heroica produced the Later Polish and Hungarian.

Reading more about the late medieval early Renaissance whetted the appetite for more armies, but rather than spend more time painting additional figures I looked to alternative solutions to “stretch the collection”.

An old post at TMP (The Miniatures Page) from James Roach of Olicanalad’s Games presented an excellent option (see link below). Briefly, flags, banners and gonfalons are removable which allows generic looking troops types to switch allegiance. German knights in wedge formation can be Imperial knights or of the Teutonic Order, Swiss and Landsknecht pikemen have extra flags to denote their employer being either France, Germany or Spain) and longbowmen can now be seen among the ranks representing England, Picardy or Burgundy.

The flags are drawn to three different sizes, the largest for generals, gonfalons for cavalry and smaller flags for foot troops. Below is one example being the Early Burgundian (Philip the Good) displaying removable flags on mounted and foot elements. 

Thank you, James, for the tip. “Top Tip – flags," James Roach, blogger of Olicanalad’s Games.

 Early Burgundian 

The Later Hungarian

 DBA IV/43c represents the army of Janos Hunyadi and his son, Matthias Corvinus dating 1307 to 1526. All the figures are Legio Heroica and only the light horse archers required some minor conversion with Milliput for their headgear. I enjoyed the look of the Dithmarschen with their mix of late medieval and feudal figures, I decided to do the same for the Hungarian infantry.

Flags are common types found on the internet but I selected those with a reg and white theme to reduce the amount of time as drawing them take quite an amount of time.