A friend of mine is putting together a late C15th/early C16th Venetian army in 28mm for fighting Impetus battles. I decided to oppose him with a Milanese army. I already had the makings of a couple of Swiss pike blocks, so I started with those.



I then had a go at a base of Milanese light infantry.



I then tried out some plastic Perry knights for the Famiglia Ducale. This is how they started.



Finally, here they are based up with some Old Glory gensdarmes standing in for the moment. Next up will be halberd skirmish support for the Swiss.

Very nicely done and very impressive.

Some beautiful bits of detailing.

Brilliant

Thanks guys. This is quite a big project and I may have to put the 10mm on the back burner for a couple of months. Now lets go and see what Auntie Beeb has made of Jamaica Inn.

Love renaissance armies.

Renaissance Italy is certainly colourful in terms of their armies . Great job BTW.

Love 'em !
Cheers - Phil

Now I'm working on a base of Swiss halberdiers for one of the pike blocks. I base 5 (4 shown) on a skirmish base which has impetus. these are GW plastic figures bought several years ago when these were the only hard plastic figures available and were still reasonably priced. I have given them a sort of uniform of cantonal colours to differentiate them from Landsknechts, using the Foundry Paint System, Bavarian Blue, which I also used on some of the Artizan pikemen shown in the earlier photo. I also base infantry on pennies for painting and then base the pennies directly to my Impetus bases.



Not being a competition gamer I have gone with the club doctrine of using 100mm frontage for 28mm multiple base games. We now have a number of armies based up in this way with which we play Dux Bellorum, Impetus and the club's own rule set DB Big.

Everyone (including me) yields to the temptation to put Swiss in cantonal colours.

Bloody hell, they're nice

Italian Wars stuff is always so colourful. We've done some in 15mm and I'm tempted to join in, the big pike blocks for Impetus really grabbed me. However, as I just sold off almost all my 15mm I've resisted!

But that tempts me to 28mm despite a lack of opponents

Italian wars were my first Pendraken armies too (with a handful of Irregular Miniatures).

I just like the look of massed unit bases, with loads of pike cramming on behind with the "dopplesoldners" or command (or more pike!) in the front en masse. Using a deep unit base you can also set the figures at the back and have the lowered pikes extending forwards to the front base edge so you can line them up against the enemy without tangling up, or breaking pikes in transit etc

Quote from: toxicpixie on 22 April 2014, 12:37:20 PM
I just like the look of massed unit bases, with loads of pike cramming on behind with the "dopplesoldners" or command (or more pike!) in the front en masse. Using a deep unit base you can also set the figures at the back and have the lowered pikes extending forwards to the front base edge so you can line them up against the enemy without tangling up, or breaking pikes in transit etc

Yes that's what I went for with the second block; there are mainly Old Glory Swiss but with a few Foundry Swiss with levelled pikes pushing through from the back.

Really like those DP, keep up the greatness.
Will

Each time I see this I get seriously tempted to not buy anymore odd bits of ACW for our off and on Fire & Fury games and go for the odd BA of 10mm landsknectes for a slow foray into Italian Wars...

Go for it. The 10mm ones are really nice figures, although personally I think the late medieval knights make much better gendarmes unless you plan to fight post- 1550.

You rate the LAN codes then?

I'm always a bit put off by no piccies, and from what I can google it looked like the LAN pike code was a single pose. Quite a nice one, but a single pose nonetheless!

Any suggestions from the gallery for other codes to mix in with the Landsknechts proper? Or if they're multiple poses... 

ELM 1 mtd. knights on barded horses - 3 poses
ELM 9 pikemen are fully armoured with kneeling front rank and standing rear rank
ELM 23 mtd crossbow - useful figure for Italians, French or Swiss
ELM 28 mtd knights on unbarded horses - 3 poses and really nice figures - suitable for up to Pavia
ELM 38 mtd generals are two different armoured figures
ER 10 European pikeman - 2 or 3 poses and excellent for French, Italian, Spanish
EL 10 Stradiot - perfectly useable for early C16th as well.

Certainly is plenty of stuff in there for replicating most troop types of the Italian Wars.

LAN pikes are 2 poses, one in slashed clothing and floppy hat, the other is in what looks like mail, with a sort of fez style hat.



This pike block has lots of LAN code pikes in the middle ranks. Front rank are armoured pikes.
The ones in Morions are from the Elizabethan range, the ones in 'flat caps' crop up in a couple of packs - including the medieval pikes.

Remembered I had a bare metal photo of LAN1 pikes