Blood and Plunder – Dugthefug1644

Sorry to leap around in the chronology of this project, but I hope if you read the whole thing you will still get rough understanding of how things unfolded.

When I was considering how to get into the game I looked at this cheap ebay part-painted Pike and Shotte purchase I made months before. I looked at the pictures on the Firelock Games website and thought there were some similarities between the Civil war minis and the Spanish Milicianos (militia).

I went ahead and painted several of the miniatures in the same colours as some of the official minis examples online. I put plenty of variety into the models knowing that these men were not equipped like a regular European army, but would be using hand me downs, mending old kit or improvising with the best that they had.

I decided to make the officer in the batch a Spanish captain. I knew that there was a certain flamboyance expected in the Spanish officer class. I went bright and colourful and think he will stand out nicely on the table top. ?

I am able to show off a scale comparison between Essex Miniatures (highlander), Firelock Games (unpainted), Warlord Games (running pirate) and Front Rank figurines (English militia).
All my alternative models come up slightly shorter than the official models. I’ll reserve judgement of the Firelock minis once I have painted more, but there was a fair amount of flash and mold lines on the ones I have primed so far.
If the scale distracts just use alternative basing to make the height issue less obvious.

For my taller minis I just carved planking into the plastic bases. For shorter minis I added coffee stirers planking to the same bases and that added a touch of height without putting them on a plinth.

I wanted to have a gun in my first battles, but haven’t invested in any ships yet. I know that pirates were opportunists, ambushers and craftsmen in many fields. A hastily erected gun platform to defend a beach seemed like a good excuse.
I used a DVD as a base, bbq skewers for patched up defenses and struts, Mcdonalds cup holder for the ruined tower and coffee stirrers for the platform.
Sandbags and barrel from Renedra and ladder from coffee stirers. 🙂

There are lots of funny people in the community. Keen on the history, but not all taking themselves too seriously.

For example how’s this for a follow up caption.

“It’s fun to charter an Accountant…And sail upon the wide Accountancy”

dw_shepard on the Shapeways 3D Printing site made a 1/56 scale cannon for me. It looks a touch smaller than expected but we know that size and calibre wasn’t an exact science in this era. I think maybe a 1/48 scale might be better. He’s knowledgeable about the cannons and was willing to make a 1/56 version for me when it wasn’t listed. Price wasn’t brilliant but 3D print won’t be super cheap for a while yet. The postage will be better if you’re in the US. The cannon is next to a Front Rank figurines English militia mini and a Warlord Games mini for scale.

It took Army Painter Leather Brown primer fine. The texture on the side isn’t a problem for me and this is the lower costing (presumably lower quality) print option.

I was worried that the lanceros would be very difficult to find cheaply or build from cheaper plastic sprues I already had. I think I have found a solution, with a fair amount of conversion involved. I have looked at a Warlord Celtic warriors sprue and a Natal native / Zulu sprue I had. The simple nature of clothes of some of the celts and the near naked and african features of the Zulu sculpts and heads has made for interesting options. I even found a Wargames Factory dark age sprue that had a Caribbean Indian native bowl cut haircut on one of the heads.

The official minis felt expensive for the number of minis you were getting per blister, they were more like 32mm than 28mm and the quality you were getting was below par campared to other sculpts during a spike in quality across the industry. These were historically accurate, had nice built in planked bases and I wanted to support the company, but I was also having a lot of fun converting the minis I already had and just hadn’t been putting to good use until then. Only when I started to struggle for conversion parts and when I began finding the Spanish Milicianos Indios particularly difficult to imitate did I cave in and introduce some of the official minis to my collection.

I also liked the Marineros miniatures in the official collection so purchased some of these. Here are my first 2 efforts from this 4 minis set.

The latest Blood and Plunder week gave me the nudge I needed to restart my project. Sadly the pages of forum posts from the old Beasts of War site were lost, but I will piece together my starting point and flesh out the first steps of the journey soon.

For now I wanted to share my latest pieces.

These minis charging the gun platform I made are Lanceros. Hard nuts from the islands who were told to use ambush tactics by their Spanish masters and expected to do so with nothing but spears and cut down pikes and pole arms. These units were made up of conscripted men and slaves for the most part.

I made the latest mini from an English Civil war Warlord Games plastic command sprue mini and a Warlord Zulu head.

The short pike he is wielding previously had an axe / halberd head. The ruff color is made of greenstuff. He is very old fashioned looking compared to his fellow Lanceros, but I still think he fits in OK with the group. The ‘make the best of what you have’ attitude to equipping these units and the diverse pasts that these men must have had made for a fun bit of artistic licence and narrative.