Hello world....more Burgundians anyone?

Well, hello again... I have been making some progress with my Burgundian-Swiss figures recently and so I feel it's incumbument on me to restart a few posts. Frankly I've just gotten out of the habit and there are other pulls on my time. I also hve found the ease of just posting on Facebook, so muchquicker and more immediate - a reflection of our times I guess. Plus the technology on Blogspot seesm to have fallen behind a little. But, those are just excuses aren't they, so let's see if I can keep myself disciplined enough to keep post going on here, as I did really enjoy the process in the past. I wonder how many folk are still looking at blog posts these days?

So, lets start off with what happened to those Burgundian archers in riding boots, which I'd converted in the last post. They travelled to Spain for some painting by the talented Rafa. On return they've been based, on my usual 60mm sqaure that I'm using for this collection. Then I've married them up with the kneeling pikemen that I converted oh so long ago and which I finally go around to painting up myself. I had a problem with these figures, as frankly I've never been completely happy with the conversions that I did - the poses seem to work OK, but my putty-work to add the belts etc could have been better. The legs are largely from Perry kneeling metals and the bodies are a mix of Steel Fist metals and Perry plastics cut down and attached, with hands drilled to accept pikes. But they've sat part-painted on the shelf for ages. Getting the longbowmen back was the motivation I needed to get this unit done - frankly to do one using these poses before someonbe else did them!

So the completed unit represents the drill that was defined by Charles the Bold in his 1473 Ordinances, that the longbowmen should dismount and shoot over the shoulders of pikemen who kneel before them. This makes sense in terms of creating a defensive formation, which makes the best of longbowmen, where the pike play the role of stakes which the English traditionally used with success in the open battlefield. We have no information on whether this drill was used on the battlefield - but it cretes a visually interesting unit and I'm sure whatever rules are used can be tweaked to reflect the potentail impact of this formation.

The horseholders that I did previously also compliment this unit. Ideally I'd like to do another unit, to create a bigger impression on the gaming table, but the priority needs to now move (finally) to Swiss, so I may return one day, we'll see. More anon. Simon.