Further Work In Progress: Pendraken Musketeers

I'm close to finishing the painting on my first unit of 24 Royalist English Civil War Musketeers for “Pike & Shotte” by “Warlord Games”. Consisting of a mixture of 10mm models from "Pendraken Miniatures" codes EC3 Musketeers, Cap and EC14 Musketeers, Hat, this foot battle line is proving rather ‘tough going’ though as a result my difficulty in painting the ‘forward firing’ pose models.

In addition I'm being distracted with my 30mm models (see http://fantorical.blogspot.co.uk/).  

Work In Progress: Pendraken Musketeers

I've started painting the first of two units of 24 Royalist English Civil War Musketeers for my planned games of “Pike & Shotte” by “Warlord Games”. These models are based upon the usual 20mm x 30mm green plastic stands I use for all my 10mm infantry. I plan for these ‘two wings of shot’ to be made up of a mix of 10mm models from "Pendraken Miniatures" codes EC3 Musketeers, Cap and EC14 Musketeers, Hat. In addition I'll be using the lovely models from their code EC5 Foot Command to represent the Foot Battle line’s officers, drummers and standard-bearers. I don't though plan to have them actually carry any flags. 

As with the company’s Pikemen, all the models are going to be predominantly painted using “Vallejo” Heavy Red and Heavy Ochre; the colours of the King's Lifeguard. So once complete these ‘Lincolnshire men’ will form the first regiment of the Royalist Battalia of Foot.

I'm certainly happy painting up the Musketeers 'at rest' loading or simply holding their Matchlock Muskets  upright, and have already managed to get a fairly reasonable factory production line painting process going for them. Indeed, with their different head wear breaking up the monotony I believe they're one of my favourite 10mm models to paint. 

Unfortunately I can't say the same for those leant forwards firing their muskets. I spent three nights painting just one of the little fellows (on and off) during the week, and still don't feel entirely happy with the final results. Unlike their fellow Musketeers, I need to concentrate on painting these miniatures one at a time, thus I've turned to some 30mm plastic models (see over at http://fantorical.blogspot.co.uk) to keep me going whilst I wait for their paint to dry. As you can imagine this is making the Foot Battle Lines somewhat slow going, although I have been encouraged in that I only need 9 such models per wing.

English Civil War Royalist Pikemen

These Royalist English Civil War Pikemen are all from "Pendraken Miniatures" code EC1 Armoured Pike and have been painted to represent the King's Lifeguard. They were all initially undercoated with Vallejo Gunmetal Grey and then washed with Black Shade. I then dry brushed their armour, helmets and swords with more Gunmetal Grey. Their coat sleeves and breeches were painted with Heavy Red and washed with Red Shade. Their gloves were picked out with Heavy Ochre and their Pikes, stockings and footwear were painted with Heavy Sienna. All of these areas were washed with Umber Shade. Finally I used Heavy Skintone of their faces before applying a wash of Fleshtone Shade.

As I ultimately plan to use the “Pike & Shotte” rule set by “Warlord Games” for my English Civil War battles I decided to mount these models on a 20mm x 30mm base. With this in mind I’ve decided that a standard sized unit of 10mm Pike should consist of 36 models. As a result I plan to paint up another 18 Pikemen in order to complete the unit, although I plan for one stand to utilise some of the excellent Foot Command models “Pendraken Miniatures” manufacture in order to represent the unit’s leader Captain Robert Levens.

In order to represent an Elite Pike unit for “Pike & Shotte”, I plan for this entire unit of the King's Lifeguard to only consist of the armoured pikemen from code EC1. Hopefully that will make them stand out enough on the battle table.