mrtn's Thirty Years of War

[mrtn]

I finally received my first box of Imperial Infantry this Monday, and spent quite a bit of the following day painting these:





I'm pretty happy with them. The placement of the pikemen on the multi base may not be accurate, but it should be easier to game with, if I ever get to do that.

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Nice pikemen to ravage Germany and bring the loot back to the cold north .

[miciobello]

nice models and nice neat paint job, but which minis are those? thank you

[mrtn]

Nice pikemen to ravage Germany and bring the loot back to the cold north .

Thanks. Actually, these are Imperials, so they'd probably bring the loot back to the warm south.

nice models and nice neat paint job, but which minis are those? thank you

Thank you. These are from Warlord Games, their Thirty Years War Imperial Infantry.

[emperorpenguin]

I have unpainted Warlord TYW stuff myself so very interested in your plog.

May I ask why you chose that colour scheme? Seems more typically Swedish. I know uniforms were varied/not really uniform at this point but the colour choice seems unusual for Imperials.

[sigur]

I was just about to ask the same thing.

Anyhow, I'll keep a close look at this plog. I think we chatted about TYW in a thread concerning the topic in the Historicals section. Do you have a ruleset yet (and if it's Pike&Shotte, please let me know what you think about it) or do you stick to making the models until you got an opponent to play against and then decide on a ruleset?

[mrtn]

That's not a uniform. Sure, I'll keep the coat for most of them, but the trousers will change, the musketeers I'm painting now have green and grey trousers. I chose the coat colour because I wanted to know if I could get Iyanden Darksun to look good. I'm quite knowledgeable about the war in general, but not when it comes to uniforms and different tactics and weaponry. So at least some of it I'll make up as I go along. I have my eyes on Pike & Shotte, but haven't bought it yet. We'll see if I can entice any of my friends to play first. If nothing else I can always paint for the sake of painting.

[sigur]

Sounds great!

And fair enough about the "uniforms". There's tons of leeway on this anyway when it comes to this period. It was just that the combination of colours struck me as looking very swedish, that's all. But maybe I'm just spoilt by the Swedish national colours and the artwork on the Warlord Games swedes boxes. I think that there are a few excellent books published by Osprey about the uniforms on the imperial side and the swedes in the TYW.

This Sunday I'll take a trip to the Viennese Army Museum. They got quite a lot of 17th century stuff there and I plan to soak up as much info as possible on uniforms and tactics and so on.

Can't wait to see the first unit shots of your models! (isn't it always like that with people - you show them the first handful of finished models and they start asking for unit pictures. )

[mrtn]

Oh, it's not that I don't see what you mean, and I did think "hm, will this look like Swedes? Bah, who cares!" before I painted the blue-grey hose. But some other colours of hose should make it all look less uniform. I have to figure out what to do with the free bodies, the Warlord sprues are different in that they don't include too many arms but rather it's the reverse, you get three more bodies compared to the number of pikes you get. There are extra arms on the command sprue, so one of the armoured bodies got turned into some kind of officer with a pistol and sword. Have to figure out what to do with the rest, one idea is to put the flute arms on a standing-still musketman, and put that guy's musket on one of the leaning-forward pikemen.

What a coincidence, I've been thinking about revisiting the Armémuseum in Stockholm. They've got loads of stuff there, lots of loot from the TYW. In fact their collections feature in quite a few of the Osprey books on the period. Worth a visit for anyone that happen to visit the town.

[sigur]

That's interesting. I guess that's not too bad because all the bodies come in one piece so it may be good for variety.

I saw a few pictures and such from the stockholm museum in documentaries about the TYW. They got (along with tons of other things of course) Gustav Adolph's last horse taxidermised at Stockholm Armémuseum, don't they?

[PsychosisPC]

I don't know a lot about this period, but you did a nice job on the minis.

[mrtn]

I saw a few pictures and such from the stockholm museum in documentaries about the TYW. They got (along with tons of other things of course) Gustav Adolph's last horse taxidermised at Stockholm Armémuseum, don't they?

Documentaries as in TV shows? Would those be available?
They've got his horse somewhere, but I think it may be at Livrustkammaren (the royal armoury).

I don't know a lot about this period, but you did a nice job on the minis.

Thank you.

Here is batch number two. Since there are more pike bodies than pikes in the box I converted one of the armoured bodies into some kind of sergeant/captain/boss/whatever they're called. You'll also see some more colour variation.

[Gargobot]

Nice painting so far. I just realized I've played way too much Warhammer, as these bases look super weird to me.
Well anyway, what's your verdict on these minis? I'm kinda interested in the general quality of Warlord Games minis.

[juicytomatoes]

was led here by your surreptitious post in your fantasy plog.

These first few minis are looking good. What's next?

[juicytomatoes]

was led here by your surreptitious post in your fantasy plog.

These first few minis are looking good. What's next?

[mrtn]

Nice painting so far. I just realized I've played way too much Warhammer, as these bases look super weird to me.
Well anyway, what's your verdict on these minis? I'm kinda interested in the general quality of Warlord Games minis.

Thank you. Personally I find the bases quite similar to Warhammer bases, just see them as unit fillers.
I like the box a lot, you get a truckload of minis for very little money. This box, the Imperial infantry, contains 47 bodies, and I got them at a sale on Maelstrom for about the same amount of money that GW charge for ten ungors in their stores. The fixed heads on bodies means that you might think that there are not a lot of variation, but the loose hats/helmets more or less makes up for that. There's a lot of extra helmets and hats included, with the metal ones in this box I have enough so that I could buy a ECW box next time and still have enough to make them look decidedly Imperial.
The casting/moulding quality is good; a couple of tiny "sink holes" in the models, but mostly in places that doesn't matter too much. The metal modes were of good quality as well.

They are smaller than warhammer models, so a bit trickier to paint, but it works. And by smaller I only mean that they're true scale, they're as tall, just with smaller weapons and such. I think they'd work for a WFB army though, at least if you only use WG models, and especially if you mainly play against non-human adversaries.

was led here by your surreptitious post in your fantasy plog.

These first few minis are looking good. What's next?

Thanks mate. Now I'm painting a couple of pikemen, a couple of musketeers and an ensign (or standard bearer). Using a different coat colour this time, to add to the realism of the unit. Uniforms wasn't standardised until later in history.

[sigur]

Documentaries as in TV shows? Would those be available?
They've got his horse somewhere, but I think it may be at Livrustkammaren (the royal armoury).
...

Oh, that it might be. There are two very good (and long) documentaries up on youtube (also re-running on tv on docu channels every few months) on the topic but I'm afraid they're german productions and not available in English. If you're still interested, try searching "Mit Gottes Segen in die Hölle" (something like "With God's Blessings into Hell") and one simply called "Der Dreißigjährige Krieg" if I remember correctly. Both make heavy use of the recently discovered and very detailled diary by German mercenary Peter Hagendorf as a source.

My trip to the Army Museum was fun but a little disappointing in terms of 17th century. They haven't redone a single bit of that section since ages, the room is really dark and so on but they got some nice pieces there.

Anyhow, I'll get back on the topic of this thread now: Very nice paintjobs. The slight variation in the colours works very well, yet you keep the cohesive look. Really like the look of the officer.

[mrtn]

Oh, that it might be. There are two very good (and long) documentaries up on youtube (also re-running on tv on docu channels every few months) on the topic but I'm afraid they're german productions and not available in English. If you're still interested, try searching "Mit Gottes Segen in die Hölle" (something like "With God's Blessings into Hell") and one simply called "Der Dreißigjährige Krieg" if I remember correctly. Both make heavy use of the recently discovered and very detailled diary by German mercenary Peter Hagendorf as a source.

Oh, that may be a bit tough. The only German I know I learned from listening to music, I doubt that's enough.

My trip to the Army Museum was fun but a little disappointing in terms of 17th century. They haven't redone a single bit of that section since ages, the room is really dark and so on but they got some nice pieces there.

That's sad to hear. The Stockholm Armémuseum was redone quite substantially a few years ago and is now very modern, much more interesting than the Historical Museum, which is more like "Fifty stone axe heads in a row. Next room: bronze axes. "

Anyhow, I'll get back on the topic of this thread now: Very nice paintjobs. The slight variation in the colours works very well, yet you keep the cohesive look. Really like the look of the officer.

Thanks mate.
Here's a conversion, a turned head and bits from the command sprue.

[mrtn]

This next batch got grey coats to make them look less regimented. They'll get static grass later, especially the ones on multibases that still lack neighbours. The old warhammer model is an experiment on if it would be possible to use GW models with the WLG ones. I think the jury is still out here, but I suppose he could hide out in a back rank. I'm fairly happy with the ensign, even if I'm cheating and not using a rolled out flag. He's certainly colourful enough to stand out as an officer.

[Codsticker]

I have to figure out what to do with the free bodies, the Warlord sprues are different in that they don't include too many arms but rather it's the reverse, you get three more bodies compared to the number of pikes you get. There are extra arms on the command sprue, so one of the armoured bodies got turned into some kind of officer with a pistol and sword. Have to figure out what to do with the rest, one idea is to put the flute arms on a standing-still musketman, and put that guy's musket on one of the leaning-forward pikemen.

I may be mis-remebring (I briefly played around with my Pike and Shotte Battalia before puting it aside to finish other projects) but I believe that the plastic Firelocks come with extra arms and muskets.