Milanese Banners c1500

I tried to source Milanese flags for my Condotta, but found it a bit of a challenge. So in the end I hunted around the sources, and spent the day applying paint; not only to figures, but also some banners. Example:

So here they are:

Please feel free to download for your own use. Right click and select 'save link as'.

Baueda Camps and Guns

Baggage & Good In(Tent)ions...

As regular followers of this blog (are there any?) would know, I'm building up a c 1500 Milanese Condotta army for use with DBMM2.

One of the things I thought would be nice is to try and make the bases a little more scenic. So if in doubt, go to Baueda. They make great products, Claudio is a really good guy to deal with, the pricing is good, and service is fast. The only problem is..   I went to their site to order some gabions, (you know, baskets filled with dirt), to put on my artillery bases, and ended up with another 5 packets of stuff I just had to have...

Gabions, pots and sacks, camp-fire set and tents.

I ordered these little beauties on 5 August and they arrived from Europe on 27 August, which is pretty good going. From what I can tell, at least 8 days of that was good old 'Aussie' Post.

For good measure Claudio threw in free samples from the Hostis range. (Thanks Claudio!)This seems to be a foot Goth, (he will have to be painted with white skin, black clothing and lipstick..) a mounted Goth, and three poses of Norman foot, which seem to be dismounted knights.

These haven't yet been cleaned up but look like very nice castings, with nice undercut detail and should paint up very nicely. The dismounted knights would do very nicely for the First Crusade too, when many were forced to fight on foot after the loss of their horses.

I have checked the Baueda website, and I can't see these precise figures under any of their existing ranges, so I am guessing they form an extension to the Norman range, and the Goths a new variety of scruffy Germanics.

A word of warning though; these figures are genuine 15mm and will look very undersized compared to some of the heroic specimens out there. If anyone is genuinely interested, just comment, and I will put some Essex Normans and Lancashire Goths up for comparison.

Preparation

I like to drill out the tops of the tents (as you can see below I have three varieties - 15MDV, 15MDV-b and 15RNS).

This will allow me to add large banners to the tents, which just makes everything look better. For the parsimonious, not gluing the banners in will allow you to have interchangeable flags/banners for every army. If you do this though, make sure you keep the tent colours pretty generic.  

Pin Vice works out....

Next step, simple wood-glue (PVA) onto pre-cut bases (Olympian Games). Once on their bases I will add various shields, bags, boxes to add interest and variety to the scene, then undercoat with cheap spray car-primer white. Camp Guard figures get painted separately and added when basing is done.

And here's the real reason the Baueda order went in, in the first place, late 15th or early 16th century field artillery, behind gabions. 

As you can see in the background, you get a a sheet of 16 gabions, and these are easily clipped/broken out of the sheet. The guns will be painted separately, as will the five crew and various cannon-balls, and sacks and boxes from Baudea set LGS2.  They should look suitably busy, colourful and varied.

Take Three

So I had a paint disaster. After undercoating half the mounted in black. I changed my mind and went white. Spray cans, same brand, same type. And it just bubbled horribly. So three days of paint stripping  (yuck). I'm now back to where I started. Of course all lances etc. had to be replaced, so maybe 5 hours all up. Boo!

Italian Condotta - Army-Building

So over the years, as if by accident I have managed to acquire a fair amount of lead that would be suitable for Italian Condotta.

First it was winning a DBA sized Mirliton army, then picking up bits and pieces to pad it out - initially I intended to do a Venice in Greece style army for DBMM, with very small numbers of Knights, but supported by lots of Light Horse. Some of it got painted (badly, in a hurry), but most of it just sort of hung around in various stages of undercoat or raw lead.

When I went to build my Wallachian army, many of the figures intended for the Stradiots got cannibalised for Wallachian and allied Light Horse - then I was given another Mirliton DBA Condotta box. I started looking at various armies for something that caught my fancy, but other people at the club had, or were intending to build Florence, Venice and so on. Cesare Borgia's Papal Army looked interesting, but the heraldry didn't inspire. I thought about the Northern League, but I don't much like the idea of a red cross on a white background.. dull.

Ah-hah.. what's this imperial eagle quartered on a snake eating a man.. excellent. Sforza, and the DBMM list for Milan has plenty of fun options, including the options of Romagnol mercenary pike, Swiss Allies, Landsknechts and even city militia pike. So lots of colour, heraldry, and the luckless Ludovico Sforza as the commander. Ideal for the Battle of Novara, 8 April 1500.

 A quick lead audit later, and I would only need to add some additional Knight to make the minimums, plus if I wanted a Swiss Ally, those too would have to be on the purchase schedule. The old lead would have to be stripped of course. But now they are all ready to go under the brush.

The observant will note the patina remaining after paint stripping using oven cleaner.
 
By the time I am finished I will have (elements):
3 Italian Generals
2 household knights
10 condotta knights
7 mounted crossbowmen
2 artillery pieces
8 Romagnol mercenary pike
3 double based city militia bow/spear
4 Italian swordsmen
4 city militia pikemen
8 handgunners
18 Swiss pike
6 Swiss handgunners

So then it will just be a matter of deciding which ones to use in a game as this is a lot more than the standard 400AP worth we normally game with.