Friday 9 October 2020

Swiss Army Complete

 

A couple of Steel Fist heroes, backed up by Perry German knights supported by Connoisseur coustilliers  

Although I finished the Swiss pike way back in March, putting the finishing touches to the army seems to have taken ages.

Granted there have been other projects taking over, such as the Landsknechts, Gendarmes, a couple of WW2 commissions, not to mention a strange diversion into 1/35th WW2 plus a ton of basing for a regular client. All in all, its been a very busy year.  

The pike line
So I'm thrilled to have finished this army. I've added a lot of little touches, which all add up in terms of time and the overall numbers. Extra stuff over the 6 pike blocks include 2 x 36 man units of halberdiers, crossbowmen, hand-gunners, German Knights, coustilliers to support them, mounted crossbowmen, a host of generals and individual hero figures for To The Strongest, plus 3 little camp scenes with associated tents, labourers, priests etc

Halberds and horse hang about the rear
I have really enjoyed painting and creating this army, its been a lot of fun, and I'm a bit sad to have finished it. In fact, I'd happily do it all over again, so if anyone wants to offer me a considerable wad of cash for this army I'll do another one! 
Camp scene, manure and prayers
The figures for this army were probably about 25% Perry plastic, backed up with similar quantities of Perry metals and Wargames Foundry figures, the rest being made up by Steel Fist and Connoisseur Miniatures. I used a lot of the Plastic mercenary set, which was mixed up with the Bill/Bow box, plus some Foot MAA, and both the WOTR cavalry boxes. All of those involved mixing up all the different heads and adding in quite a lot of the excellent metal Swiss heads from Perry and the amazing heads from Steel Fist, I also had a careful look at the SF landsknecht figures and used a few of the plainer models as Swiss once I'd changed the heads. Likewise the Connoisseur figures, once they had new Perry heads they scrubbed up very nicely, particularly the coustlliers. Steel Fist also do some lovely separate metal plumes which came in very handy.  
Uri command and heroes
The flags came from Pete's Flags on e-bay with the balance from Flags of War, both of whom I can't recommend highly enough. They really set an army like this off (I think I counted over 50 flags!).  Wire pikes came from Northstar and tufts from all sorts of suppliers
Steel Fist miniatures lead the halberdiers
The camp bits were fun to do. I made them up because I thought they would look nice, and because they are a requirement for To The Strongest! rules. The tents are resin models from Magista Militum, and most of the figures are from the various Perry metal camp follower sets set off with a couple of MDF kit wagons I had.

Perry foot captains
Anyway, there's a Swiss army.
 I've had a couple of games with it, and I was even going to enter a tournament with it for the first time in my life, but I'm pretty sure Covid is going to put paid to that I'm afraid. Not to worry, it will get plenty of use.

Perry crossbows with Foundry handgunners