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.