Chopping the heads off spaniards

Way back before I even came into the Oldhammer movement/scene/collection of nerdy teachers (delete as applicable) I started another of the many projects that have stalled since. I'm a amateur student of history and 4 or 5 years ago my interests moved past the Italian wars (still a fascinating period of history) and on to europe in the late 16th century. I particular I bought and devoured every book I could find covering the Dutch Revolt (as well as the French wars of religion). Strangely, this is an area of history that isn't particularly well served by the 28mm miniatures industry. There are options however. I've bought a load of Foundry's swashbucklers to serve as dutch or english - arquebusiers, musketeers, halberdiers, swordsman and pikemen. 

This still left me the problem of putting together a Spanish force. The Spanish army at the time were considered to be the best infantry in the known world. A bit of internet work and I decided on gamezone figures for the spanish musketeers (you'll seen these before if you are a regular to this blog)

There are only three poses so there has been a bit of headswapping in order make a convincing unit.

Which leads on to the point of this post. I managed to snag four packs of the citadel estalian handgunners to use as spanish arquebusiers. Thats the great thing about a lot of the Perry twins output during that period, a lot of there fantasy stuff was actually just historical figures in disguise (if you look in warhammer armies, the Bretonnian army is actually a a Burgundian army plus some wizards, the flags are spot on and everthing!) I've used the bretonnian figures for the hundred years war english and french, hungarian, german etc. I've got 60 of Volands Venators painted as european knights of the late 15thC. Anyway, the estalians are spot on but there are only 3 poses so it's time to get the jewellers saw out and chop off some heads (carefully).

I tried to keep as much of the ruff intact as possible as I'm going to have to repair these and the less fiddly work I have to the better.

Swap the heads over and pick a different direction to face...

And i've adde a couple of poses to unit. The guy on the far right is in just too much of an awkward position to be able to cleanly remove his head.

Combine this with some of the gamezone figures (again with some headswaps) and I should be able to achieve a reasonable amount of variation within units. The best thing about this is that not only can I use these for my Dutch Revolt project (and French wars of Religion and Elizabethan Irish wars) but I can use them for mercenaries in my Empire army. I like getting double bang for my buck (or quid!)

Oh, talking of the sculpts of the time. The empire pistoliers are in fact 16thC german mercenary reiters.

See! This one is mounted on a Perry medieval horse. I've got a ton of these that'll need the head swap treatment at some point. I've recently been thinking about reviving this project as the Donnybrook rules look like they might be the right fit. I'll investigate after pay day (or if I can sneak out to Claymore when I'm up in Edinburgh next weekend!)