Billmen WIP

Still in my WOTR phase, I ordered some Front Rank Billmen from eBay. I was really impressed when they arrived. The detail is excellent and the scale fits in nicely with the other ranges. The abundance of kettle helms makes me think this unit is formed of old garrison troops from France.

Being from eBay, there were a couple of damaged figures in the bag. These were fun to convert into more Billmen. The guy above was missing his crossbow, now he carries a bill instead and fits right in.

Eight figures done, six in the morning and two more at night. This is one base, so needs the same again to finish the unit. It's always good to create 'cherry's on the cake' to get you through painting the unit. The base above, it was looking forward to converting the broken figures. The second base will contain the officers and standard bearer, these should help get me through the rank and file painting.

This billman had lost his bill in the post, now he sports a large axe in the rear ranks.

Being made up of ex soldiers from France, there is less livery colours than the other units.

For speed, I'm using a lot of ink washes of base coats of paint. This works really well for the jacks and padded armour.
 

I also ordered some Billmen from Alternativeminiatures1 from eBay. These too are lovely figures. They are meant for slightly earlier in history but I think they work for garrison troops. 

When it came to prepping these figures, I went for the xenethol highlight technique. The first layer is a black followed by a grey from an above angle.

The two conversions get ready for some paint.

These Front Rank miniatures are very nice. They help to add even more variety to the WOTR pool.

This quick shading hack works well for Contrast paints and colour washes.

Update: Sunday morning sees the arrival of a few more billman.

Another crossbow converted into a billman.

Here are the army lists in using to create the forces.

Lord Hastings' Archers

The mud is applied with some grass and tufts. I added some more mud over the grass so I didn't lose that muddy field look.

I also went around with the Tamiya weathering brush and put a few dirty smudges on elbows and knees. This worked well on weathering up the paper standard too.

It not wise to stand next to a standard in an arrow storm.

 

While I was at Warfare 2024 I had the chance to visit the Athena miniatures stool and meet it's creator, Otto. When I look at the latest archer bases my eye instantly goes to the Athena sculpts. So I wanted to pick up a few more.

To my suprise, Otto knew who I was and had also heard of this blog. In fact he knew quite a lot about me and loved my cartoons. When I started to praise his archer figures he told me he was an longbow archer himself and had posed for the sculptor with the bow. This explains the excellent realistic poses that capture the high powered weapons better than any other company. It's the high angle draw with the contorted bodies that stand out in the massed ranks.

Excuse the blurry shot, when I started to take pictures of some different sorts of arrow, he told me he made them. Otto's knowledge of medieval archery really shows in his miniatures.

I will be ordering more I think once I have painted what I have.

Towton

 

Archer Retinue for Lord Hastings

Hopefully I can paint this standard for another unit. I have one more archer and bill unit to go, before Hastings' Battle is complete.

Lord Hastings receives more support today in the form of a unit of archers. There was meant to be eight to a base but a couple more were pressing ganged at the last moment.

The commander takes advice from a veteran.

The figures are a mix of Athena, Foundry, Perry and Forlorn Hope miniatures.

Most of the armour is painted using Vallejo's gun metal, but there are a few painted with the Chrome paint too.

An officer keeps an eye on the firing line.

Update: The Vallejo mud is now applied. I was so eager to get the mud on, I forgot the archer arrows. These are a great little extra that the Perry's have included in their plastic sets.

These 'ammo' arrows are great for adding detail to a base. I added four to the two bases and stuck them Infront of archers without quivers.

I also added my brush bristle arrows too to give the sense of a battle.

Learning lessons from the previous bases, I sprinkled some mixed herbs and grass into the wet mud and pushed them in. I think this gives the impression of a trodden field a little better than before.

I did find that as the mud dries it does shrink down and reveal some of the higher bases. These bases can be covered with grass flock later.

The odd polearm was cut up and pushed into the mud.

Lord Hastings by Graham Turner.