Painted 15mm Figures for L'Art de la Guerre
Medieval Scots, 15mm
This is not a subtle army - lots of poor quality pikemen, but it had successfully caused me a lot of problems in The Worlds in Belgium in 2016 so I had long fancied creating one myself.
I had also rebased a lot of Museum Miniatures Medieval pikemen to FoGR basing (40x20mm) a year earlier, cramming more than the regulation number of figures on a base for a mass effect, and this had also inspired me to see what a whole army of them might look like
ADLG Basing - Pikemen can be based as three ranks of "traditional" 15mm deep pikes in ADLG, but they can also be crammed onto a 40x40 base - the defaulst size (in 15mm) for most of the troop types in the game. This 40x40 size I think looks way cooler than three ranks of 15mm deep elements, but see what you think for yourself.
Here the Pikemen are combined with some dismounted Knights - a very tough troop type who give the Scots a tad more resilience against enemy high quality foot - especially those with 2HCW, who can do great damage to Pikemen in ADLG.
The army also gets a smattering of Longbowmen, who when interspsed with the Pikemen can keep enemy skirmishers at bay before being left behind as the Pikemen advance and slide across to form an inpenetrable line of spearpoints as they get nearer the enemy.
The Museum figures don't mix all that well with other manufacturers on the same base IMO, so this shows all 4 types of Pike and Spearman all together, including some with pavise-style shields. These have no in-game significance, but help make the army look a little more, well, Scottish.
A Small Pike Keil
Some Essex generic Medieval Javelinmen out front to deflect enemy shooting. 40k gamers may recognise some of the shield patterns...
This flag is really for the Low Countries version of the army, when the Scottish pavises are sent to the rear or left at home. The Knighst are Donnington new Era 100YW vintage troops, great little figures, and the Longbowmen are from Old Glory's Medieval imprint
Jammed together in a mass it is hard to imagine that there are only 5 poses in the entire line of Pikemen - and one of them is the Paviser figure.
I bought some of the 45 degree spearmen for a little more variety, and then wondered for a while how to base them up - in the end I settled for creating a few knots of 3 spearmen with angled spears on the front ranks of the Pike blocks. This seemed to make more sense visually than having either a whole front rank of identically posed men, or even just scattering them in the front rank. Most of the three's are set up in a 2-1 formation wit a single second rank chap lunging over the first two.
The army also gets some cheap Horde elements to bulk it out - by the time the enemy has broken through the army has either won or lost already
Here is the army from above, allowing you to get a good view of the "more than 3 ranks" effect of tightly pasked pike blocks.
They are based as amixture of 40x40 and 40x20 elements, with the 40x20's mounted on metal sabots and held together with magnabase.
This is comfortably more than a 200AP army, which is a good thing as otherwise it would fill the table. The archers, knights and LF were based before the pikemen, who are based with glued-on sand tinted with Rustins wood stain for a more consistent colour.
The backdrop is a model Railway display from Peco, mounted on foamboard. I shoudl have used different, or less glue as it has bubbled up annoyingly.
The close-up shows what a rough and ready paint job this actually is, but with the massed effect it is surprisingly effective at tabletop ranges
From directly overhead the 4-or-so ranks on each base, and the single/double based elements are eaisly visible
Here they are in better light, showing the knots of three 45 degree men and, if you look carefully, the very limited number of other poses.
This rather bold brown is not my normal current spear colour, but the original core of this army was 36 DBM bases of Low Countries pikemen who were rebased, and they dated back to when Miniature Paints Chesnut Brown was my default spear colour - so the more recent additions needed to match
Not all of the units have levelled spears
To make them a small bit less uniform I have also added brass "reinforcing" strips to the tops of some of the helmets. This might be historically inaccurate, but it does break up the monotony of a lot of silver helmets a bit - and that's the view I will have of them most of the time
I do need to tidy up the edges of the basing too at some point...
Nasty close up showing the classic drybrush quickly over black udercoat approach and it's limitations when blown up to larger than life size.
The non-metal bits have all been washed with Peat Brown ink
The Pavises bosses I pained bronze - again just for added visual interest
And here is a single, 4-rank unit of Pikemen for L'Art de la Guerre!
That's the end - so why not go back to the Links Page and find some more stuff to browses?
