Venetian Italian Condottieri DBA Army Finished!

After six months of feverishly slaving away (well, not really so much), the Venetians are finally done and scheduled to meet their nemesis, the Milanese cowards, next weekend. The camp element above is made from a Bauda tent and Ral Partha musicians. The horn blower on the extreme left is taken from a period painting and the poor fellow is apparently wearing some sort of fabric cow's head facsimile, horns and all. The Milanese general has already started a long series of cow jokes which the Venetians may never live down.

Blimb view of the camp with plenty of room left for a combat element to occupy if necessary. The mud is modeled with wood putty and the grass is N-scale railroad ballast painted and highlighted. I hated to tuck a figure inside the tent, as he had a nice paint job which is hard to appreciate with him being inside, but I wanted to block the view into the tent so it would not appear empty.

I modeled another element of Artillery for the Venetians to more accurately represent the financial austerity of Venice. They were one of the few, if only, principality to not go in for the extra expense of fancy decorations on their canon.

A closeup of the figure on the left reveals him for what he originally was; one of the troop of musicians. I cut away the drum he was originally holding and turned his drumstick into a slow match holder with the addition of a bit of thin wire.

Venice only gets one element of knights, favoring stradiots and mounted arqubusiers instead, but here are the heavies.

The big feather wearing cheese himself in his blackened armor with gold embellishments.

I believe the figure of the general may be Essex or some other manufacturer, but he had a head transplant from a Ral Partha fugure.

The army arrayed.
1 x General
1x 3Knight
3x2Light Horse
2x2Artillery
2 x4Pike
2x4Shot
2x3Blade
2x4Crossbow
1x2Psiloi

The fearsome view the poor Milanese will have of the approaching Venetians.

More Spanish Terrain Pieces

Spanish Farm House for DBN

I decided it was high time I gave the 95th rifles a Spanish farm to defend. This is several hovels pieces put together to make a BUA/Fortress for DBN.

Here you can see the courtyard with ample space for an element of infantry to defend the town. The tree is made with a German railroad modelling product call sea moss. I simply sprayed it woth adhesive and sprinkled on some turf flock and voila, instant tree. The final product is flexible so I don't know how much handling it can take, though hopefully having it as part of a larger terrain feature will help protect it from breaking.

The exposed brickwork was painted by using a thin white wash which collected in the textured brick and gave the appearance of mortar. I had to be careful not to get the black wash I used for the stucco in the brick work, but I thought the end result was quite good, and more importantly was quite simple.

Looks like a nice place to live, bigger than my house at any rate.

ACW and AWI Distractions

I decided to get my desk cleared off and so have been taking care of some older projects before continuing with the Renaissance Venetians. First up are some Perry 25mm plastic Union Infantry. I was a bit disappointed at first with these, as they are a bit chunkier than I have come to expect from the Perrys, and the detail is not as crisp as I would like. With that said however, I thought they painted up quite well and more importantly, the final product has made me excited to try some more. Now I just need to find a good set of skirmish rules....

To facilitate a more uniform look for the federal troops I only chose figures with the sack coat (at least I think that is what these are called). This was my first foray into the ACW period so I was on a steep learning curve to try and get the uniforms correct. I did some custom cutting as well to maximize the number of troops I could get from the box in a firing line position, converting marching pose to holding a rifle horizontally like the figure above. The officer in the back is holding a pistol from the cavalry set.

A birds eye view of my first Federal company. I have another on the way with shouldered arms, but they will have to wait for the completion of the Venetians - unless I get impatient!

The firing line from Johnny Rebs point of view.

Next up the American War of Independence in 54mm.

I got sucked into the 54mm scale by a demo game at Nashcon by All the King's Men. Though I would like to have purchased their artillery, I ran out of funds, but found this Imex plastic set on sale at my local hobby shop for $8. They were marketed as Americans, but as the uniform was the same for both countries, I simply painted them as British. Above you can see a gunner stripped to his waist coat in the heat of working the guns. I replaced the plastic rammer with a metal rod which I inserted into the sponge and rammer of the plastic original.

Fortunately the Imex set came with the same proportion of 6 crew to one gun that is used in the All the King's Men rule set.

I thought the sculpts of the plastic figures was actually superior to the metal ones, though mold lines in this Imex set were not well placed, hence many a crewman with a mold line down the middle of his face. I have found plastic mold lines very difficult to shave or file well.

The commander. I did some work on the gun with green stuff to make it look more like a Brown Bess musket. It was originally sculpted with a long barrel without a supporting stock, which looked more like a long cavalry carbine. Maybe the sculptor knew AWI weapons better than I, but I could find nothing for the period that looked like it, so I changed it.

Here he is in all of his distinguished commanderly glory. The scabard of his sword was replaced with flattened floral wire which ended up working quite well.

Venetian Culverin

Just finished basing the artillery element for a DBA - RRR or DBA - Hx Venetian army. The Culverin and accessories are by TAG, the crew are customized Ral Partha, and the Gabions were provided by Barry Scarlett of Murray Terrain.

This element is an odd assortment of scales, but they all seem to work with each other. The Ral Partha figures are true 25mm figures. The barrel of the canon is 50mm long which scales to about 11-12 feet in length, making it a large culverin, but by no means the largest that were used in the Renaissance period. The gun is designed for use with 28mm figures, but as artillery in this period was so variable it works quite well. The gabions are really meant for 15 - 20mm figures, but in comparison to the Ral Partha figures they end up scaling out to about 3 feet high, which though not as large as some, seems a reasonable height for gabions on top of a sloping earthwork.

Thanks To The Assault Group!

The Assault Group was nice enough to let me have this marvelous Ottoman Renaissance canon in exchange for a painted sample. This is a truly marvelous piece and I can't wait to show you all the final element. The crew are almost done and I will be mounting it behind some gabions and earthworks, so it should make for an eye catching element.

Thanks again to Pete and the folks at TAG!

More 25mm Ral Partha Condotierri

Above are two elements of pikemen in 3/4 plate. These were simple to paint and a nice break from the more complex slashed sleeves of the crossbow and blade elements. The DBA-Hx rules allow for two pike elements, but the DBR lists only allow pikes for a very brief period, the Venetians relying more on Spanish mercenary sword and buckler men it appears.

A view from the front showing the manly beards of the pikemen.

Probably one of the few home grown units from Venice; the mounted arqubusiers.

Venice was famed for importing stradiots, most notably from Albania. I have seen some nice illustrations of severed heads decorating their saddles, so I suspect they had a fierce reputation. They are listed as light horse, but they functioned in close combat as well, not being afraid to use their long lances.

Venice can have two elements of stradiots. These were some of the few castings my friend Terry did not have in his collection, so I had to order these online. Fortunately the 25mm renaissance line is still being manufactured by Great Endeavors, though they are not advertised as available unless you look really hard! Here's a link:

http://www.greatendeavours.co.uk/colonials/order.php