Generals and Majors

and Matthias Corvinus himself! In keeping with the theme of the Black Army, I painted the King's breastplate black with a glaze over the top. I painted 3 figures per base but after experimenting with the arrangement, I decided it was too crowded and downsized to 2 figures per command base. I also did faces as best I could and eyes on the king.  I don't think I'll be doing that again any time soon...maybe once per army!

 

With that, the Medieval Hungarian army is complete and ready for the tabletop.  I'll order and paint up some cannons so I can port this army into Field of Glory Renaissance.

In celebration of this milestone, I'll extro the Hungarian Army project with one of my favorite musical bits by XTC.

Bad spot for a flat tire!

Hungarian camp is finished and the end of this project is in sight!  I had two early ideas for this camp, neither of which came to fruition. I wanted to do something that fit thematically with a medieval Hungarian army. My first idea was to build an elevated camp that looked like it was situated on a mountain cliff.  I worked over a couple of  pieces of Styrofoam but I could not get it to look proper so I discarded the mountain cliff idea.

For my second idea, I found a wagon and hand gunners in my pile of unpainted figures.  Corvinus' Black Army employed protected battlewagons so I decided to use Green Stuff to turn an ordinary wagon into a protected battle wagon. This required me to build a very thin wooden wall onto one side of the wagon from which the handgunners would have protection while loading and firing. Try as I might, my skills with Green Stuff modelling putty are not sufficient to convert a wagon into a Hussite-like fortress on wheels.

In the process of this failed conversion, I snapped a wheel off of the wagon.  My first inclination was to curse my ineptitude.  My second was to use the busted wagon as the centerpiece of  my camp.  BINGO!!!!

I'm not much of an ideas guy and I mostly follow in the footsteps of painters and hobbyists more talented than I.  This time though, I managed to come up with a good theme for the camp AND I tried something new in painting the tent. I blocked in the base colors. Then I put in ocher wash over the top of it. Then I put the highlights on in thick rivulets so that when they dried, they formed a ridge/shadow to simulate the shadowing on a fabric tent.  Last step, I brought in Devlon Mud wash in with a very thin brush to create a line between the two colors.   I think it works!  It looks good from 3 feet away but of course, photos aren't shot from 3 feet away.

I'm just happy that I've been able to incorporate an Impetus-like diorama into Field of Glory!  Here's a shot that incorporates a dime to show the 15mm scale for nonmodellers.  The medieval tent is by Baueda and it is spectacular.  I'll be using Baueda for all of my tents  in the future!  Figures and wagon are by Essex and quite excellent themselves.  

The rarely seen "dime" pavis. 

Last is the work in progress pic. It is true that posting a "work in progress" pic at the end of a post is out of order but blogging requires you to start with your best picture first to (hopefully) draw readers in.

It occurred to on me that I need some fortifications to my Ottoman Turks army so I got about building them.  These were made with Durhams Water Putty thickly mixed and slapped on Litko bases. Woodland Scenic Fine Ballast over the top with glue/water mix. Fortifications will give my Janissary foot an assist when fighting on wide open Knight-centric battlefields. And as a bonus, having the Janissary fight from behind fortifications is also historically correct!

When Accident became Providence!

No, you can't eat them

Hungarian Knights!

Hungarian knights in the 14-15th century were equipped much like their western counterparts.  Unlike their western counterparts, Hungarian knights didn't routinely charge everything that moved on the battlefield.  Repeatedly facing Ottoman Turk light horse tactics must have taught them to be cautious.  These knights are the core troops around which Matthias Corvinus' Black Army was built.  Much like a game of high stakes poker, you are "all in" when the knights go in! 

These are all Essex figures and they were a joy to paint.  Essex horses are just fantastic with a great variety of poses and figures.  I would say these figures represent my best work to date.  I took the time to black line the tack on the horses and I think it was worth the extra effort.  I also tried painting faces for the first time.  Not so easy with old eyes but its a start!  Forgive me for the number of photos but I'm pretty pleased with these 3 battlegroups.  I need to savor my painting victory before moving on to the command stands and camp.  The end of the Hungarian project is in sight! I'm really interested to see how they do against the Ottoman Turks.