Heroes and Commanders for the Landsknechte

After or better said, during, assembling the Landsknechts for the different reviews (Pikemen, Missile Troops and Zweihänders), I tried to get a bit more out of the kit, as with the three boxes, I only got one command sprue.

The bitz come from the old command upgrades for the Empire plastic infantry, the drum is from the Soldiers of the Empire box (with swords and halberds) and the banner is from the Crossbowmen Regiment.

As for the heroes, I got myself the codes that were formerly Indiegogo campaign exclusive, so there is Götz von Berlichingen & Georg von Frundsberg and Maximillian (young and old). To my taste, the sculpts by Paul Hicks catch the historic characters in a great way, Götz von Berlichingen to the right looks a lot like the lithography in the Baden-Württemberg Landesmedienzentrum, as does von Frundsberg. Maximillian HRE is kept in the way of the artwork by Peter Paul Rubens, the miniature showing the old Maximillian looks like a mixture of the portrait by Albrecht Dürer and the battle armour of Maximillian II.

Mixed with a couple of blisters, I combined a couple of hero bases for the yet unnamed project. As these are not heroic scale or riding huge horses and such, you have to fill the bases otherwise. I bundled the priest from the civic duty blister with the Doppelsöldner as his bodyguard from the Landsknecht command advancing blister, Maximillian got a regular Landsknecht standing with Pike as a banner bearer as companion, the old Maximillian is accompanied by a Herold from the civic duty blister, von Frundsberg has a drummer by his side from the command blister and von Berlichingen another banner bearer taken from the standing Landsknecht blister. All of them lovely sculpts by Paul Hicks. I guess I'll get myself the Landsknecht command standing as further support.

The weird thing is, that the Georg von Frundsberg sculpt is a conversion of one of the miniatures from the Landsknecht command advancing. Just with a different head and weapon.

I mentioned my critic on the halberd wielding Doppelsöldner and tried a different approach by using Perry Miniatures pole arms. Would have to add the puffy sleeves to make it complete, but that's working quite good. Tried using the bits from the old Empire kit, but the arms are just a bit to big, they are just slightly to beefy to work. About sculpting the sleeves, Stuarts Workbench has some great inspiration on his blog, German / Swiss Cavalry and French Infantry. I am still a bit sad, that we didn't get any of the advancing poses from the old Pro Gloria indiegogo campaign.

I went to town with a cutter on the Doppelsöldner with Zweihänder, repurposed a sword wielding pair of arms from the Perry sprues and replaced the sword with a Zweihänder for the bearded guy in the front without helmet. As for the one on the right to him, I used the arms from the cavalry sprue and cut the pair at the elbow for a slightly different pose.

Have to take a look into my old Empire ressources and the Uniforms & Heraldry of the Empire book for some ideas on the paint jobs. I do not want to paint them that different as the landsknechts actually were, more of a coherent colour scheme through at least the units.