It's a Dead Man's Party

 Here are all the infantry casualty counters I need for the next time I run my Tczew/Dirschau game. Models are my own. I need to cast a few more for the next batch which will cover cavalry and gun crew.

 

The little dice receptacles are just paper, I didn't want to worry too much about exact fit, the paper has some flex so it was easier to manage than hard plastic or whatever.

Making a Cossack

 So after making the casualties, I sculpted and cast a hooded minion for my pulp gaming. He turned out pretty well, and it occurred to me that the long robe would be a decent base for a Cossack figure. I started with a real basic design inspired by a decorative figure from a Beauplan map.

 

 

 

This one has a Gripping Beast head and an old Wargames Factory right hand and gun. I am working on sculpting some weapon hands and heads of my own, but realistically I am going to be using a lot of real bitz because they look better. Even so, these homemade miniatures are not going to be front-rankers, but with my long-term plans I'll eventually need hundreds of Cossack infantry, so they don't all need to be professional quality. Besides the heads and weapon hands, I've also made some variants of this body for, uh, variety, iteratively from this one like how this one was iterated from the minion.

I did notice my painting is even worse here than my normal standard, so I have since bought a pair of reading glasses. Hooray for being 40!

I have a box of Wargames Atlantic generic horsies on the way, once I have those I'll start working on Tatars, Polish noble levy, and pancerny, all of which I want in bulk.

Early Medieval Commanders

 Well I finished the commanders but my table isn't clean enough for an army shot. I've got a Viking chieftain as well as the two Frankish leaders. All three are Gripping Beast metals.

As a bonus, here's a size comparison with a typical GB plastic, and an action shot.

Almost the rest of the Franks

 Here's the remaining units for my Carolingian army, done except that I might do a second pass on some of the shields. All I have left for them is a mounted warlord and a priest. I'll post a full army pic once I have those characters ready.

Carolingian Franks

 A third army, or at least the start of it, to scrap with my Slavs and Vikings. Pretty much just Gripping Beast plastics mixed up, with a few metal Franks and warlord Celt heads. The highlight is the shields, made of upholstery tacks and press-molded greenstuff bosses, which admittedly mostly came out more "spike" than "sugarloaf". 

many musketeers

 36 plastic musketeers here, all from Warlord Games, with a bunch of Warlord's metal helmets and a handful of their metal swinefeathers. The swinefeathers don't fit that naturally with the figures, I had to get creative (even greenstuffing a couple right hands) to use them in minis that aren't actively firing.

More for Primavera Occulta

 A slight break from the Novara project, in that neither Spanish swordsmen nor Italian bowmen fought in that specific battle, and whatever angels or demons may have participated presumably did so in disguise.

But anyway, I'm expanding my playtest rules to account for a larger variety of spirits and hirelings, which these will represent. The historical figures are TAG (one has a Warlord head), and the more fantastical ones are Reaper I think.

Swiss Infantry for Novara

 Here are all the Swiss infantry I need for the battle of Novara. This is very nearly the entire Swiss/Milanese force; all it's missing are a unit of heavy cavalry and a small cannon + crew, and of course the flags and commanders.

Halberdiers for the Swiss

 Here's the unit of halberdiers I need for Novara. Many of these are Warlord/Perry plastic mashups like I've been posting for a while now, but there's also four Assault Group minis, one Old Glory figure, and even a Games Workshop head. Probably more heavily armored than they need to be, but I like the look.

Crowds of Crossbowmen

I've been able to get a decent amount of painting done over my holiday break, even if I haven't been particularly inspired to blog the past month or so. But here's a bunch of crossbowmen! They are a mix of Warlord and Perry plastics, and Old Glory metals. In Novara the crossbowmen were Gascons and Navarrese, but since they are on the same side as the Landsknechts I let some of them have poofy sleeves for variety. You can also see some of the terrain I've been building from Tabletop Scenics.

Renaissance Occultism Skirmish Ruleset Concept

 Years ago, I bought a tabletop RPG that uses Tarot cards as its primary resolution mechanic. This inspired me to buy a deck of them, and also to start reading about their history. I was delighted to learn that their documented origins (if not the cartomancy traditions that grew up around them) go back to the Italian Wars, a period that already interested me for other reasons.

One thing lead to another, and I started to brainstorm ideas for a Renaissance-era wargame that could incorporate some of the more esoteric aspects of the era's culture. I have now written enough rules for it that I've started to playtest, although it will be some time yet before it is worth sharing.

The current notion is that every warband has a core of four "initiates", inspired by the court cards of the Tarot, who practice, to varying degrees of success, some form of ritual magic. Each warband has a "King", representing a true renaissance man who is either the leader or the chief patron of the occult circle; a "Queen" of high intellectual or spiritual achievement; a "Knight" with fearsome physical prowess; and a "Page" that is a novice type character with room to improve. Reinforced by hirelings and the occasional summoned spirit, they battle other small groups of occultists over the wealth of esoteric texts, alchemical formulae, and ceremonial objects that have accumulated in and about the Italian Peninsula as a result of various historical currents of the final century of the medieval era.

Here are some examples of how I might represent these initiates with miniatures from my Italian Wars project (plus a few from other projects), from left to right in the order described above, followed by a spirit and a couple sample hirelings:

For my own solo playtesting convenience, they are roughly color-coded, but I probably wouldn't do that for the "real thing".

Generally speaking, D12s are used for "mundane" actions and Tarot cards for magical effects. I anticipate the games themselves being fairly quick (am playtesting on a 2ft by 2ft area), with much of the enjoyment coming from the campaign system (probably also Tarot-driven) that links them.

More Renaissance Characters

 Here's some more, these are all Assault Group (except the mace and mace hand are from Perry plastics).

Still messing around with rules stuff on a conceptual, pre-playtesting level, but I think I'm starting to close in on some gameable ideas...

A medley of Renaissance characters

 Been painting up a variety of figures for an Italian-Wars-adjacent mini-project. Spinning off of my Novara (1513) project, I've been toying with an idea for a small-scale skirmish game set in the same era. I don't want to share too much of my planning at this point, but I'm happy to post these miniatures by way of preview.

I've organized them by manufacturer, for no particular reason.

First up are two unconverted Old Glory Landsknechts from their artillery crew set.

Next are some Perry "European Armies" figures, I'm done some modest converting to bring some of them forward a decade or two, but as you've probably noticed by now my sense of period-specificity is impressionistic at best.

Last up for this post are some metals from Warlord Games' landsknecht collection. Lots of character in these. No conversions except for a beard on the herald/town-cryer type character.

Got some TAG minis on the way, then after that I might start talking a bit more about the specifics of the new project...

new Swiss, new apartment

Hey all, pandemic precautions have been less productive than would be expected, on account of moving to a whole new apartment. But I finally unpacked enough to resume hobby activities! Have some freshly-painted Swiss skirmishers:

As before, batchpainting for convenience. The final units will be more varied.

Vikings

Mostly minis I bought when GB first released their plastics, just rebased and touched up in some cases. Army shot only, I might pick out some favorites to highlight later, but honestly this bunch is pretty out-of-the-box.

Now with Flag

The flag is adapted from a wikipedia image of an artifact depicted the thunder god Perun. I was going to add a border, but honestly I kind of like how stark it looks without one...

more slav elites, and the voivode

The elites are a mix of GB plastics much as before, except the lamellar armor is carved directly into the chest of Dark Age plastic figures (ouch!), instead of being taken from the Arab Heavy Cav box like last time. Also, the flag and horn guys are GB metals, the last of the purpose-built metal Slavs I got from GB. I have yet to decide on a flag for the army.

And here's the general for these guys. He's a Gripping Beast Arab, with a Warlord Games Celt head, and some greenstuff fingers and nasal piece. I figure he's an older dude who prefers to let others do the actual fighting these days, which accounts for his relatively relaxed pose and lack of body armor. He should still stand out on account of having the only helmet in the entire army though...

Slav elites and army shot

Here is the final unit of my core Early Slav force, a small group of armored infantry. There are two Gripping Beast metal Slavs, and the rest are kitbashed out of GB plastics.

And with that, my Early Slavs are basically ready to go. I really like how the limited palette approach worked out, they look quite irregular but still visually cohesive and at least moderately intimidating.

(If you're curious about army composition, I literally just looked up the DBA list for Early Slavs and then doubled the figure count. Since that totals to less than 24 pts in Lion Rampant, I then added the "Foot Knight" elite infantry to bring them up to the target.)

Slav skirmish archers

No conversions except minor headswaps...