Assembling Bretonnian Men at Arms

 

So, it's been a long while since I've painted anything for a large battle game rather than a skirmish game. I did a little bit of a stock take, and decided I have enough models for two units of 25 men at arms, and one of 20, leaving me with 36 archers. To bring it up to 4 units of 10 archers, I ordered one sprue of 4 archers from eBay.

I've started by sorting the basing. I've really liked how Krautcover "Common Earth (dark)" looks so far, so I'm using that. I glued it on using a bunch of Geek Gaming Scenics glue I got free in some goodie bag at some point.

I was a bit nervous about how much might flake off over time, so once the glue was dry, I mixed up some more with a bit of water, and soaked them all in a layer of water and glue with an old brush. Once it dried, I wasn't losing any material when I tapped them. Success!

I started assembling the first unit and glued a couple of them to the bases using super glue. After leaving them overnight, I confirmed my suspicion that I couldn't be this lazy and that they were very wobbly due to the connection between the basing texture and the base. I quickly pulled them off and pinned them.

I'm already thinking during assembly of how I want the units to look. I like the idea of naming units, so thought about what their backgrounds could be. For the first two big blocks of men at arms, I've decided to split them between peasants raised from the countryside, and a town militia. This unit is going to be the country unit. In assembly, this will mostly be down to what they're not - I'll be using all kettle helmets for the town militia!

To pin the dog, rather than try and pin through the leg, I ran a pin up into the body up the inside of one leg. You can't see it at any angle you'd view it on the table. I'm really pleased with how it turned out! I decided to use the dog with the "rural" unit as I felt it fit quite well.

For the town militia unit I'll be digging through the internet for town names in Mousillon. For the rural unit, I'm thinking of using the name The Good Folk of Mousillon. It's a nice medieval sounding phrase, and is a nice counterpoint to the later fate of Mousillon.