28mm Medieval Figures from Perry Miniatures & Fireforge Games

Painting L'Art de la Guerre figures and models

I picked up several boxes of Perry plastic medieval infantry at Warfare 2015... and then saw some assembled and part-painted figures in the Bring & Buy.. which I bought and took. This is the result - a set of ADLG-based units that can be morphed into more retro rulesets that will allow me to create pretty much any loosely medieval army going, including the English 100YW longbow forces

There is lots more of this stuff on my 28mm Perry Longbowmen pages

There is also more of this stuff on the 28mm Perry Plastic Gendarmes Page

In the foreground are two LH bases/units, one with lances and the other as crossbowmen. The lancer on the left is a Perry metal figure - it of course looks the same, but is again of course a lot heavier! The General and his flag carrier are some odd bring and buy acquisitions, not entirely sure where they come from and they are rather Renaissance-ish more than strict medieval, but good enough for government work in my army for now

This shows crossbowmen, longbowmen and the massed infantry with halbers and pikes in the background. The crossbowmen have pavises with transfers from Little Big Man Studios - never the easiest things to apply, getting the plastic coat off these transfers before sticking them to the models and wetting them to get them off the backing sheet seemed especially tricky! The standing pavises are magneitized in the same way as the longbow stakes are so some of the pavises can be removed if not needed. Each ADLG base of Medium foot is 60x60mm - a nice size to play 25mm games with I think.

Here they are a little closer. These transfers reminded me exactly why you need a totally WHITE background for LBMS transfers, which I also then cover with a coat of gloss varnish to provide a smooth clean surface to slide the transfer onto. Without a white background the image on the transfer totally disappears and is lost. I then painted the edges of the pavises in red rather than leave them white.

Pikemen, spearmen and men at arms. The spearmen are pikemen arms with the pike cut down and the tip re-glued onto the pikestaff. This sounds impossible on the face of it, but a liquid poly cement literally melts the two components and binds them together so even with the tiny surface area of the cut face of the pikestaff, the bond is totally secure. Impossible with metal figures!

Longbowmen and supporting (interpenetrating in ADLG) Men-at-Arms with some handgunners in the foreground. The plastic box set yet again amazes me, with the clever way the interchangeable arms can mean the same body ends up as a crossbowman, halberdier or handgunner.

These are metal Paviser figures, again with LBMS transfers which have been edge-painted to cover up where the transfer doesnt fully wrap the shield. For some odd reason I decided to magnetise the shields onto the infantry (I think I have a vague plan to occsionally change them to normal spearmen, or maybe to be able to mix up the pavise designs if I want..?). The slingers are random metals - I have no idea who from, maybe very old Essex Miniatures?

A better view of the huge investment in transfers and metal Perry figures that makes this unit one of the most pricey man-for-man units ever fielded!

I also made a few bases of random Medium Infantry with a variety of polearms and spears - these might be anything from swordsmen to spearmen, maybe even ambitiousl Almughavars... anyways, 3 bases worth of blokes with sharp implements. the basing technique is exactly the same as used for my Vikings - see the next video for how easy it is.

This is a base of early knights from Fireforge - another eBay purchase. The shields all have LBMS transfers on, as do the bardings - but again I forgot the white background rule on the red knight, and you can just about see that he has a series of line outline drawings of 3 lions on his shield, which on the original transfer were actually filled in in yellow. On a red background the yellow just did not show at all.... In ADLG 25mm they should be on a 40mm deep base, but they didn't fit hence 60x60.

Longbowmen and Stakes (removable, magentised) with a wall of Men at Arms behind them. Black undercoat, and a heavy wash of Army Painted dark tone gives them a real in-the-field Medieval look I think, which sometimes veers into the "too dark" territory in low lighting. I chose the darkest Army Painter as the mid tone one is a bit brown, and for all of these metallics I wanted to go with a real industrial look!

These handgunners have really been out on campaign for a little too long! I also cant help feeling that the one on the left has borrowd a pose from a WW2 German infantrryman..

Advancing bow-armed skirmishers. Looking this close up perhaps I should have done more work to fill in the joints on the arms and shoulders ?

The pavisers again. In retrospect the standing paviser figures might have been better, as some of these advancing ones are practically running, which looks tricky with a big pavise.

These longbowmen were pre-painted in the bring and buy purchase. If they are yours, I hope you are happy about how I've based and army-paintered them!

The medium infantry again - 6 to a base is a fairly loose formation

Most of the Men at Arms figures are just in armour, but a few have livery coats and I have painted those on each 8-man base with the same simple livery to gve an impression of "units! without going too overboard.

This is 2 metal horses and riders and one plastic. Again in retrospect I might not have mixed them like this as the plastic horses are only connected to the base with 2 hooves, meaning that when you lift a base with 2 metal horses by the one plastic horse it puts a lot of pressure on those 2 ankles! I fear the superglue might be needed at some point in ther lives...

Pikemen! Just under a dozen figures on each 60x60 base, so still suitable for FoGR too with some change.

60 x 60 is a really nice size again for these figures, giving chance to cram in a good few ranks.

...and on the march - this would be 4 ranks of bases for FoGR

Some aggressive-looking spearmen, cut down pikes by another name. The faces on these plastics are nicely cast to take an ink-type wash

The Dark Army Painter gives them a real lived-in-the-field look

A wall of dismounted knights, some with livery and some just as metal. They do all have belts though that need painting... honest!

These work fine straight out of the box - spray black, drybrush, add faces and you are good to go!

There are even some heralds in there to brighten up the wall of steel

These are standard infantry halberdiers and more irregular-looking spearmen. They look close enough to the foot knights to work as part of a line of swordsmen to back up the Longbows too I think

Fireforge knights, now done and on 60 x 60 bases for ADLG (and to fit the models on a 60mm frontage by staggering them).

These have mostly LBMS transfers for the heraldry - they have come out OK here in the photos, but were an absolute pain (even by LBMS standards) to put onto the models.

The LBMS plastic images have zero ability to work on anything other than a white background, and with just the heraldic image on the sheet you woudl need to paint right up to the edge of the pattern to overpaint the white - which, if you could do, you may as well just paint the heraldry anyway!

In the flesh its also been pretty much impossible to varnish-out the edges of the transfers. Being thicker than waterslide transfers they also struggled to mould to the form of the barding.

However, 3 of these knights (a yellow one with birds on it, a blue one with a Lion Rampant and a red one with three yellow lions) were done with waterslide transfers from Battle Flag.

Better, but still tricky, and still impossible to use on anything other than a white background. At least these ones have some basic colour around the image, making it easier to apply the transfer and then paint up to the edge of the coloured bit too.

That's the end - so why not go back to the Links Page and look for some more stuff ?

Markers for ADLG, 28mm Perry and Foundry medieval casualties on round 30mm mdf bases and 2p pieces. Mixing Perry and Foundry is possibly the most expensive way to create markers possible, but for the 28mm figures I think it's worthwhile! The different statuses are marked by the colour coding on the edge of the base. Red is for 3 hits, Yellow is for 2 hits and plain old unpainted is for 1 hit.