But my lord, we shall need a great many wee little men!

Well, needless to say, it will be required for a wargame project to have a great many small men under arms, so as that we can, well, play wargames with them.

Poorly trained pike in a loose block from Italy or France. A mix of Pendraken and GW figures, but mostly Pen.

This has all started as a Italian Wars project, but I plan to expand things to cover the 15^th century Italian Condotta period and eventually, the later 14^th century as well with the great bands of adventurers who spilled off from the down periods of the Hundred Year War.

Pendraken Horse, but some of the riders torsos are from GW Empire Crossbows

In any event, these small men must be procured from 10mm miniature manufacturers and it only stands to reason that my findings as to the particulars of the wares of said humble merchants be laid privy to here within:

Kallistra

I don’t own any Kallistra figures as they are not even close to 10mm. We might say ‘they’re about 13mm to the eyes, and you know, people are all different sizes, so….’. Generally I could go with this reasoning, I’m no purist, but the Kallistra stuff is just way too far off for me to accept.

"Sure I feel a bit inadequete, but at least our flanks are secure..."

This picture is swiped off of an eBay auction and shows two packs of WOR Kallistra pike sandwiching a pack of Games Workshop Warmaster Empire halberdiers. I think the picture pretty well tells the story there, so no need to elaborate other than to say it’s quite a pity as they would otherwise be great as they have all kinds of interesting figures. But basically, if you want to use Kallistra, best to use just these figures rather than to try and mix them (fantasy excluded). On the other hand, I would expect the horses could mix with the Games Workshop Empire stuff.

Moving on then….

Magister Militum

While they are a bit spendy, the MM/Chariot lines are very nice. They have just now released a set of medieval figures which, as stated on The Miniatures Page by, uhm, the Magister Militum Guy, will ultimately get to include the 15^th century. One note I would make is that MM are rather small figures in general and not to everyone’s taste. Personally, I love ’em, but some complain about the horses, which are admittedly small and the big heads on the boys. None of this is a problem by me as I find it all quite charming.

"We were painted by Andy Mac, who were YOU painted by? Yeah, I thought so!

One other point of note about the MM stuff that you wouldn’t know until you own some is that they are extremely sturdy and use a real tough grade of metal (adamantium core I’d wager). They are probably the strongest singly based 10mm figures that you’ll find and even tiny protruding bits that look very vulnerable are unlikely to break. So they’ve got that going for them.

Anyway, highly recommended and I eagerly await the rest of the ‘Age of Knights’ line which will hopefully be out by the end of the year or so. I think they won’t let the release slip far behind the ‘Warmaster Medieval’ supplement, so as soon as that’s out, I think we can bank on MM Marshaling up the feudal levee for us as well.

Well, how about….NEXT!

Old Glory

Well, I don’t have any of these yet, but there appear to be a lot of gems in the Late Medieval line. I think the Cavalry will be way too big to mix with my other stuff (though I’ll likely get some of the Knights eventually and mix them with a few GW Bretonnians to form some 14^th century heavy cavalry). As far as Infantry, I expect that they will be a little bit bigger than MM and Pen, but I bet they will be able to mix anyway so long as were not too pedantic about things. But lots of good stuff with single based hand gunners, Pikemen, Pavise spears and crossbows and so on.

'Crab walk? What, do I look like a break dancer?'

I’m eager to check these fellows out and have high hopes. The single basing and the ‘add wire pike’ options score lots of points with me. I’ll definitely be getting these guys from Great Hall Games, who are great to order from and now carry the trifecta of Old Glory, Magister Militum and pendraken, which is impossible to beat.

Pendraken

Pendraken is the mother load as far as lines in this period. They have a very extensive number of Renaissance figures as well as the integral European Late Medieval line without which this whole project would be impossible. The thing with Pendraken is that they’ve been in business since 92′ or so and not all the figures are sculpted by the same person or to the same quality level. So better to mention the lines individually here then:

European Late Medieval

Ok, this is your bread and butter. It was seemingly built with the War of the Roses in mind and was then expanded into other stuff such as the Hussites and what have you. But rest assured, it’s all nice and late 15^th century kind of stuff.

Quality? Very good in general. The horses will not be to everyone’s taste as some are a bit weedy and the figures are a bit slight and fragile. But the proportions are excellent and the detailing is often real good. I would suggest that the sculptor went for a ‘lots of little folds and details’ kind of approach which is arguable as to effect in this scale, but still, theres lots of good points to recommend these figures. The best thing I would have to say is the plate mail, which is fantastic. I mean really, they just nailed it with the plate.

These are conversions of Pendraken horse

All the figures can be seen on the Great Hall Miniatures site from my links section. Good number of poses and rather dynamic. I’ll mention more about the cavalry in a later update as I had mixed reactions to these at the start but now love ’em.

Early 16^th Century Scots and English

This is a really good line, about like the ELM stuff, probably sculpted by the same guy as it’s in the same style. I will say though that the Demilancer is a bad figure (not to be confused with the Elizabethan one which looks real good in the pics). I only have a few figures from this line and I’m starting to get shaky on exactly which ones those are, but I know that they’re good.

Landsknecht

Well, if your looking to do 10mm Italian Wars, your going to need a fair few number of Landsknechts. Luckily, Pendraken makes some. Unluckily, they are not very good. How bad are they? Well, I will tell you that I have some, I’m not crazy about them, but I am going to buy some more, so they’re not ‘Cousin IT after a haircut’ kind of ugly. The thing with these is that, they aren’t great, but they look much nicer painted than they do in the tin. I’ll get some pictures up of these before too long for you guys. As to period, I would say they are late, as they are wearing broad brimmed hats, but they don’t jump up and scream “I’m inappropriate for the early stages of the 16^th century, I can’t be used!” or anything.

"I hope Pendraken redoes us, with a' fine n' fancy frocks!"

Anyway, there’s a number of poses here and surprisingly, what works best for Pikemen is not the dedicated Pikemen figure (which is a two pose pack), but rather another figure which I think, MIGHT be the Arquebusier. Don’t quote me on that, I hope someone comments and sets me straight…..

They fit right in painted up. The pikes are wire and the big goofy hands are putty. The other fellows are GW.

The mystery Pendraken landsknecht is the one on the right in the photo above, while the Pen fellow to the left is one of the purpose built Pikemen. The others are Games workshop.

Anyway, basically grubby figures, but they paint up well and do have lots of little extra bits on them that can be painted in a fine lot o’ dandy colors (or not if you don’t feel like it, I would describe them as easy to paint). Overall, not really recommended, but useful, nay necessary, all the same.

Elizabethan

I don’t have any of this line, but they look real nice from the pictures on 10mm world

http://www.10mmworld.com/

They are on my next order list. There are some Morions and obviously the figures are designed for a later period, but I figure with some putty, they’ll be fine and I might leave a few of the Cabasset flat brimmed ones anyway. I have very high expectations for these guys without having seen them yet.

ECW/TYW

Theres some figures in here that might work, I want to get some of the Thirty Year War Armored troopers for later, say 1550’s or so, pistoliers. I have seen the figure and he’s one one of Pendraken’s biggest horses and might be able to be mixed with the GW Empire Pistoliers (very nice too). Also, as I will cover later when I go over the cavalry, there’s lots of nice long riding boots attached to fine chargers that can be snipped at the waist of the rider and turned into appropriate figures with some torso swaps.

Others

Well, there’s some poles, turks, pack mules, wagons, Marlburian 3 Lb’ers, gabbions and a myriad of other stuff that may be useful, but I don’t have experience with it yet so theres not much I can say as to the specifics.

But one thing we must mention when we speak of Pendraken is that the retail price is 3 British pounds, which even with the exchange rate where it is, is EXTREMELY good. And I mean, I dog the Landsknechts a bit, but hey, its a fine set of packs to bulk up the middle of your pike blocks. The price is right and you can get just what you want (see below).

Another thing is that the metal is a bit soft, which makes them more delicate than some, but on the other hand makes it easier to convert and trim than the others too. Just something else to keep in mind.

So, thats the majority of the info here, I’ll get into details on specific figures from the lines as I cover my individual unit types

So, until then…….

Games Workshop’s Warmaster Empire

There are few subjects in Wargaming circles more controversial than the old Workshop. I’m not going to defend them, other than to say I like Rick Priestly’s writing and the Warmaster Empire figures! Woo Hoo, these are real nice. Same as the Pendraken ELM line, I would say 10mm Italian Wars would be impossible without the Empire line. It is great, loads of poses, nice clean lines and surfaces, I mean there’s nothing bad to say other than that theres too many morions and that converting the Halberds into Pikes is a pain.

GW Pistoliers; I lucked out and managed to get some of the origional OOP models in an auction by accident; obviously a bit late for Italian Wars though

However, all of what I have just said has been while I have been thinking of the Infantry, as the Cavalry is another story. Theres only two basic types of Cavalry: Knights and Pistoliers. The pistoliers are real nice, but they are out of scale with the foot by a fair bit. Still, it’s not so bad and now that they’re painted they don’t look too bad next to my Pendraken Cavalry. But the Knights are WAAAAYYYY too big. I mean, they’re nice and all, but they have a few problems which I’ll elaborate on later.

Pendraken in the foreground with Evil Empire figs mouthing off in the back

But the biggest problem with this line is the cost. You can go to GW direct and get a pack for $12. That’s a bit steep though, so we all find ourselves doing the second hand thing and theres a fair number around. But here we waste money another way as it’s very hard to get just what you need on the second hand market without picking up griffon riders or flaggelants or ANOTHER pack of volley ball bored heavy cannon. So, there’s some problems here.

Good troops can require high pay

But I must say they are great figures and I even broke down and ordered five packs of Elite Handgunners directly from GW to spice up the front ranks of my Pike blocks. These come in at $.50 a figure, I don’t regret buying them (in fact I’m very thankful I did as they are no longer available it seems) so you know they must be good!

Some conversion work on these: Barding, Knights right arm and the lance for pistolier

Anyway, we don’t have to love GW in order to love the 10mm Empire line!

And, I think that’s about it for manufacturers. Have I left anything out? Hmmm, I can’t think of anything, so that’s all for today then!