Saturday, October 24, 2015

Project Greatswords: Part 2

So more than one year after I began my project to build a unit of greatswords with alternative miniatures, I'm finally done. Well, mostly done.  I still need to add a standard bearer and musician, but that's for another project.  The unit is now 18 strong and ready to be varnished for protection.

As I mentioned before I really never liked the GW greatswords in any of their incarnations.  And once the "new" Empire army book came out for 6th edition, the Reiksguard Knights on Foot disappeared forever from the army list.

After lots of hunting, I settled on a collection of figs from various manufacturers: some dismounted men-at-arms from Front Rank miniatures Hundred Years War range, men-at-arms from Wargames Foundry War of the Roses line, and some dismounted nobles from Steel Fist miniatures 15th Century Nobles line.  As the unit champ, I lucked out with a single fig from Wargames Foundry that was included free with my order of some other stuff.  Score!

This link will show some of the work-in-progress shots, as well as the variety of sizes I was dealing with.  For the most part, everything was compatible. But the Foundry figs were from the mid-80s and noticeably smaller.  I boosted them up by mounting them on pennies before basing them. Not the greatest result, but those guys were mainly to fill out the unit cheaply.

Once I get the standard bearer and musician dilemma sorted out my plan is to rank these guys up 5 wide, 4 deep.   The background of the unit is the personal guard of Baron Edmund "The Absent".  They bear his colors of blue and yellow.  To represent this, I alternated the colors of the sword scabbards.  Some guys have yellow, some blue.  The champion has the blue and yellow feathers, and the Captain , Dieter Krup usually joins the unit in battle (also blue and yellow). 

Here's some pics of the final results.



Unit champ with feathers was the free Foundry fig!

My favorite fig out of the whole group is easily the Steel Fist guy in the center of the below pic with the holly leaves on top of his helmet.