Foot knights and some 1/72nd scale.

As promised I have taken some photographs of the completed foot knights for the War of the Roses armies. They sport non of the faction colours and so can be placed with whichever faction is required for a particular battle. There are seven units of six men, plus a couple of spare. This has come about as I have used the four fully armoured command figures from the two boxes of WotR infantry to make more units. I still have two or three more boxes of the infantry as well a one more box of foot knights so should end up with 16 or 17 units of foot knights in total, more than enough for my needs.

I have put in a few banners from the various box sets, they may or may not be relevant to the War of the Roses, but if I like the flag, then it gets used!

Quite a formidable looking force.

I also had a sort through my painted 1/72nd scale figures, as you know from previous blog entries, I have a ton of unpainted figures in this scale, all of which I intend to paint up over the coming year. Some of the figures can be used for different rule sets as they are all single based, when I first returned to the hobby, and didn't realise there were other scales now available, or even considered war gaming, I just put the minis on pennies. I have added some photographs of some Crusader figures, they could be used with Hail Caesar, L'art de la Guerre or even Saga.

A host of mounted knights and men at arms.

Certainly a good starting point for a future army.

I also have a large number of Feudal Japanese in 1/72, these came from the board game by Zvezda and Richard Borg entitled 'Samurai Battles.' It has a board and terrain tiles etc. as well a good quantity of 1/72nd scale figures by Zvezda, so they are of a good quality. They come with bases that are used in the game as movement trays, but they can just as easily be detached and used for other rule sets.

Here are just a few of the units I have painted up. The archers in the foreground have some rather large arrows on their base, the idea being, that each time they fire an arrow is removed. A neat way of showing when they are out of arrows!

I think there is a lot of potential games to be had with these figures and their colleagues still stored in boxes.

More thoughts on Stock.

After yesterday's blog entry, I actually rooted out a few bits and pieces, both to show you and also to remind myself just what was lurking, untouched and unloved in the storage boxes. Even I was amazed at just how many boxes of figures and also kits, sat there waiting to be discovered.

The 28 mm Romans from the two box sets are mostly still on the sprues but I did find that I had actually painted up about 20 legionaries as opposed to the half a dozen I thought I had done. A few are shown in the following two photographs.

They really are lovely sculpts and should really be seeing some action on the table top. With close to 300 figures  Roman, Celt and Ancient Briton, all to be painted, that is a project that will be tackled sooner rather than later, too long have they sat idle. All the painted figures are mounted on one penny pieces, I may continue that trend and simply put them on movement trays. The Hail Caesar or even the L'Art De La Guerre rules should do nicely.

My attention then turned to the 1/72nd scale figures that had been squirreled away, many have been painted and based, but far more sat ignored. One of my first finds was a kit for a castle and also a second kit for a fortress. Both by the same manufacturer and they were bought to be built as a larger castle, parts from the fortress being used to enlarge the castle kit. Lovely artwork on the box by MiniArt.

The kit itself is still sealed in a poly bag, unopened in the five or six years I have owned it.!

The instruction sheet is also still in the box.

The smaller fortress kit, which was and still is, intended to enlarge the castle. The extra walls and possibly the towers put to use.

Once again still sealed in its poly bag.

This was bought to be built and used in a Hundred Years War period or could also make an appearance as a Crusader castle in the Holy Land. An MDF base and some foam board is a must for this project.

In a couple of plastic tubs are some of the unpainted figures, a mixture of Hundred Years War and Napoleonics in this case.

Crusaders and Saracens as well as elephants and more Hundred Years War figures await.

 
In a second box lurk more figures, again a good mix of periods to have a crack at in here.

A real treasure chest of goodies and there are also a couple of cardboard boxes not shown, that are also full of 1/72nd scale treasures. Including Greeks, Persians, AWI British and Continentals, more Naps and even a couple of kits for assaulting the castle, namely a catapult and a battering ram!

Actually seeing and handling all this goodness has rekindled my desire to actually paint them all up and see them' do their stuff on the table top. I think you will agree, I don't NEED any more new shiny things for at least a year!