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Hello, people! I just registered to start one of these P&M Blogs for my project. You know, to sort of track my progress and to help me stay motivated. My game of choice is Pike & Shotte by Warlord Games, for which I ordered the starter box "For King and Country", directly from Warlord. Delivery was faster than expected. From Nottingham to the Swedish sticks in less than a week. So weekend plans be damned!

I thought I'd kick this off with a bit of unboxing. I'm sure the set has been unboxed several times on the internet, but I've been wanting to do an unboxing for a while so I might as well.


Here's the parcel that'll start it all.


I found this customs note hillarious "Detailed description of the contents: 'Toy soldiers'"


Here it is. The "For King and Country" box. No shrink wrap, but that was gonna hit the bin anyway. The box has dead cool artwork on the front.


On the side of the box is a guy that seems to mean business.


And when we open the box we are greeted by the very same gentleman, along with six other gentlemen that look just as pissed off.


It is of course the beautiful rulebook. The full rulebook, not some pocket starter set variant. Hardback and heavy. And it has that lovely new book smell.


The rules look like just about any other rules. Well structured, and looks easy to read. I haven't given the rules a good read yet, but I certainly will.


It also has pictures of painted models.


Some harsher than others.


And of course some artwork. Not very exciting though, since most of the pictures I saw flipping through the book are present on Warlords other box sets. If you've been on Warlords website, you've seen most of the art in the book. So not much exclusive, but I'll take it


A nice European map as of 1648 (LEAVE SKÅNE ALONE! We'll still take Finland though, thank you very much)


It has a lot of this stuff, which is brilliant. These are loads of different flags used by the different English combatants, and well as those of the Scottish and Montrose. Very interesting. So the rulebook is something I look forward to reading more thoroughly.


A little quick start sheet. Just might come in handy.


And then you have the plastic pit. A bunch of plastic sprues that'll make 82 28mm miniatures. So the box says, I haven't actually counted, hehe.


And here it's piled on my desk (poor laptop first it gets virus, and then it gets buried under a bunch of stuff). It's a good enough chunk, alright.


Here's the sprue for the rank'n'file minis. There's 13 bodies on it with options for pikes and rifles, and a bunch of different hats and feathers and other stuff. These figures are generic for the time so they can represent pretty much any army in the game, from what I understand. And that's pretty amazing, cause that means you're not tied to any specific armies out of the box (technically the figures included are Englishmen, but they work just as well for any other army). It doesn't come across in the picture but they're highly detailed. Some pretty bad mould lines a few of them, but it's plastic so it's easily taken care of.


But for now I'm putting the plastic back in the box, to focus a bit on the rulebook. For once I'm not working tomorrow (Saturday) so I'll start building then (or maybe even tonight).

So the box has the rulebook, and a good bunch of minis. No separate bases though, but the minis have little Army Men-like bases that surely will make them stand for the time being.

I hope you enjoyed reading or just looking at pictures, and that you'll tune back in for some building and painting

Subscribed.

Awesome! I was hoping for a Historical blog using Warlord plastics to start up for ages, and this one is a period I am interested in, as well! My problem would be that I'd be unable to settle for just one force! Which do you think you will pick?

livanbard wrote:Subscribed.

Too kind, too kind I like your signature!

Da Boss wrote:Awesome! I was hoping for a Historical blog using Warlord plastics to start up for ages, and this one is a period I am interested in, as well! My problem would be that I'd be unable to settle for just one force! Which do you think you will pick?

I'm going for the Swedes, with the Västergötland Grand Regiment to begin with (they weren't really involved in the TYW, but they did exist at the time, so I'm cutting myself some slack). The biggest problem I see in using the starter set minis for Swedes are the hats. I'm no expert in the era, but they aren't giving me a Swedish vibe. But I'll stick to the idea, and see what it looks like once I get some paint on. Thanks for checking it out!



I did a bit of assembling this morning, and this is the result.


- He's got a pike!
- That's not a pike. This is a pike!


A bit bendy though. I don't have too much faith in the durability of these, but I'll deal with it when that day comes.


An old man with an incredibly sexy matchlock rifle. I didn't give this man a hat/helmet, cause he just looks too cool without one. If you see a balding long haired guy with a thick moustache you know he's a peerless psycho butcher. He's also the first mini from the box I assembled, so he already feels special to me.


The leader of the group. This guy looks pretty Swedish, and will be a good representation of one. Looking forward to putting some paint on this guy.


"Cause I'm the flagman *wah wah*" I had to put green stuff between the flag arm and the body, because otherwise he'd be waving the flag in his own face and cover his warface and warbeard. The helmet wasn't really meant for this guy (see it tilts to the right, and doesn't really fit), but I didn't care, because that helmet takes him places.


I brought these gifts for you, they're up in my bum.


They're not 100% finished though, cause I still have these little swords to put on them. I just couldn't be bothered at the time cause some of these models really were a PITA to assemble. I also have some more cutting, filing and gap filling to do (a lot of it on some of the little guys), because I got a little impatient. There won't be much priming today anyway, because of the wind.

Thanks for looking I always love me some comments.

What caused problems with the assembly? The detail on the miniatures looks pretty nice.

Subscribed!

Will be watching this thread with interest. I've been collecting the Warlord Hail Caesar range, and it's definitely interesting to see another one of their ranges.

What kind of problems are you having with the assembly of the miniatures?

Pacific wrote:Subscribed!

Will be watching this thread with interest. I've been collecting the Warlord Hail Caesar range, and it's definitely interesting to see another one of their ranges.

What kind of problems are you having with the assembly of the miniatures?

Sweet I had a hard time deciding whether to get "The Conquest of Gaul" or "For King and Country", but obviously I ended up with the latter. Thanks for commenting!

Da Boss wrote:What caused problems with the assembly? The detail on the miniatures looks pretty nice.

To answer you both, there weren't any problems per se. More like new kit frustration. Slippery parts that wouldn't go together and the glue wouldn't cure fast enough. Those kinds of "problems".


I think I can go ahead and say done on the test model. And sorry for lousy pictures. Phone camera, and no proper photo set up.


I have no source on how this regiments uniforms actually looked, but I can imagine it was something like this. Black and yellow is one of my favourite colour combinations, so I'm glad I get to use it. The model comes across much darker in the picture than it does eye to eye. The yellow is brighter, and the hat is light grey, rather than dark grey. Also the pipe on his rifle is brighter.


It's not entirely finished though to be honest. I still have to attach the sword holster (I forgot), and it could use some more highlights on the black. And I will take a different approach to the yellow on future models.

The wind stopped blowing but I was out of spray primer, so I had to prime this by brush. Small things aside I'm pretty happy with the result. I'm gonna paint a lot of these, so there's plenty of time to improve. Again, it needs a few touch ups but for now it's finished. I'm gonna George Lucas a few more highlights plus a sword holster on to it as I do it on the next models.

And till my next post I'm gonna leave you with this

Nice blog. Consider me subbed.

 Scrazza wrote:
Nice blog. Consider me subbed.

Thank you

-

It's 06.21 in the morning and I just got home from work. Thought I'd post a little, hehe.


I haven't picked up a new spray can yet so I'm still tied to painting the figs one at a time, and this is the one I'm working on now.

I'm gonna paint some more later today, but now I'm gonna get some well earned sleep.

Sleep is for the weak. Get Painting

 Scrazza wrote:
Sleep is for the weak. Get Painting

I'm not weak, alright? I'm lazy. Big difference

-

Anyway, update time!


Four done and ready for basing.


Here's a 40x40mm base I cut out from an empty DVD case, which are great sources for cheap plasticard by the way. I also round the edges down, for two reasons. For one, it looks better. And, then it won't matter too much whether the measurements are 100% precise or not (they aren't )


Superglue the figs on in a way I see fit.


PVA glue some sand on.


First paint a solid coat of black (not the most fun I've ever had). And then a light layer of rather dark brown. Vallejo Game Color "Charred Brown" is my dark brown of choice.


Put on some static grass, and touch up the shoes a little.


And they're ready for blood!

I'm pretty pleased with them. As individual models they're admittedly mediocre, but grouped together on a single base with some static grass I don't think they look too shabby. Your typical musketeer unit has 8x2 models, so four of these bases lined up, which I imagine is gonna look pretty intimidating.

Let me know what you think

Also, I pimped the thread title a little. Important stuff, that.

This rules! Subbed and excited to see where this goes.

Looks very nice! Like the work you have done on the base, think it complements the miniatures nicely.

If you want a less time intensive option for bases (although a little more expensive), I recommend the Victrix bases which do 40x40 packs plus another mixed pack.

Anyway, looking forward to more!

Alright, call it lazy
Anyway, nice update.

Returned to find a nice piece!

My sig, yes the pikes annoyed me so much that I changed to metal one on the standing pikeman. I have yet to find a solution to the brancing/ready men.

Also to further Swedish flavor consider swine feathers. (plastic rod + a small spear tip)

Moltar wrote:This rules! Subbed and excited to see where this goes.

Thank you very much. And welcome!

Pacific wrote:Looks very nice! Like the work you have done on the base, think it complements the miniatures nicely.

If you want a less time intensive option for bases (although a little more expensive), I recommend the Victrix bases which do 40x40 packs plus another mixed pack.

Anyway, looking forward to more!

Glad you like! As for your suggestion, cutting out a base does not take many seconds, so I'm pretty content with sticking to that. Besides, not all bases in an army are 40x40. Cavalry bases for example are larger, so this way I can get them just the way I want. Always like me some suggestions though

Scrazza wrote:Alright, call it lazy
Anyway, nice update.

Thank you, thank you.

livanbard wrote:Returned to find a nice piece!

My sig, yes the pikes annoyed me so much that I changed to metal one on the standing pikeman. I have yet to find a solution to the brancing/ready men.

Also to further Swedish flavor consider swine feathers. (plastic rod + a small spear tip)

Welcome back, and thank you.

I am definitely adding the swine feathers. At first I thought they'd look harder without, but I tried adding one and they do look much better. So I'll add some of those later on. Because after all, Greedo did shoot first

-

Today I traveled over an hour to attend a 25 minute meeting, and then over an hour again to get back home. At least I got to get something from the store that I really really needed.


Be praised! Oh, be praised!


Oh, and a spray can from the gaming store


I assembled a few more musketeers and got to spraying. I love using brand new spray They haven't gotten colour at the time of posting, but they will. I might get some base coating done on them today.


Also, these pikemen got their hats peeled off, in favour of these:


I just placed an order for them. I wish I had known when I ordered the set, but £2 shipping isn't too bad. I'll have to cut and file the heads some more but I'll worry about that once I get the helmets.

So, pretty useless post, this. But thank you for checking it out anyway

Today is not any day, but today is this blogs 1 week anniversary! Or technically that was yesterday, but in my book 00.10 is still the same day. Any way I thought we'd celebrate!


With some gakky toilet paper.


And of course a fresh piece! I only put three guys on this base to add some variation and to save me some trouble. I'm not gonna do this on a lot of bases though, because that might cause some confusion. Max one three-man base per unit will be my philosophy. I'm still just trying it out after all.


Was pretty happy with this guys face.


And here's a pic of them from the back.

I need to brush off some excess grass from this one, but other than that the musket unit is halfway done. Let me know what you think!

Yes the helmets, they came with my Swedish army, one for each guy, swine feathers and some armored commanders and pikemen. (forgot to add this because I was on traffic last post)

 livanbard wrote:
Yes the helmets, they came with my Swedish army, one for each guy, swine feathers and some armored commanders and pikemen. (forgot to add this because I was on traffic last post)

In traffic? Bad bad boy

As nice as the helmets might look, I'm gonna let the musketeers have the hats. I just can't be bothered changing them now. But all the pikemen are gonna get the helmets. And the Storming Parties too. Do you have any pictures of your stuff?

-

Thought I'd give you a little Saturday noon update.


Not to get ahead of myself, but I got a little bored of painting so I started making a movement tray for the musket unit. This is what's been made at the time of posting. The uneveness of the sprues won't matter because it's gonna be "based" like the models. Making this made me really excited to line up a finished unit on it. There won't be much painting done today though.

Peace!

bad day in bosnia wrote:

 livanbard wrote:
Yes the helmets, they came with my Swedish army, one for each guy, swine feathers and some armored commanders and pikemen. (forgot to add this because I was on traffic last post)

In traffic? Bad bad boy

As nice as the helmets might look, I'm gonna let the musketeers have the hats. I just can't be bothered changing them now. But all the pikemen are gonna get the helmets. And the Storming Parties too. Do you have any pictures of your stuff?

I was not driving, lol.
I got some of mine assembled but none painted. Need a new airbrush.
I take some pics with the metal parts, if time permits.

 livanbard wrote:

bad day in bosnia wrote:

 livanbard wrote:
Yes the helmets, they came with my Swedish army, one for each guy, swine feathers and some armored commanders and pikemen. (forgot to add this because I was on traffic last post)

In traffic? Bad bad boy

As nice as the helmets might look, I'm gonna let the musketeers have the hats. I just can't be bothered changing them now. But all the pikemen are gonna get the helmets. And the Storming Parties too. Do you have any pictures of your stuff?

I was not driving, lol.
I got some of mine assembled but none painted. Need a new airbrush.
I take some pics with the metal parts, if time permits.

Alright, cool

-

I just noticed my blog is pretty high up on the "Recent Exalted Threads" list, so I feel pretty horrible about my lack of progress This is not much, but at least it's a courtesy update.


I have basecoated the yellow, the brown and the flesh areas on these four. There'll be more done later today I hope.


And some more assembling's been done, so the musket unit is fully built now. I just have to get to painting. There won't be much priming though, because October.

So things aren't moving fast by any measures, but I've been busy and things. And things.

Subbed!

I love historical blogs; it's not a period I'm too interested in but you're doing a fantastic job!

Indeed, I'm eagerly awaiting more whenever you have time!

Thank you for the courtesy, have you delved into the pikemen?