...More soon(ish)

OK, it was a race against time but the 90+ Italian Wars Venetian Condottieri army was completed in the proverbial nick. Of time that is, not the police station.

I have always wanted a Condottieri army and have had the figures for a 15mm army stashed away since buying them in Rome about 12 years ago. Imagine how surprised I was when my wife and I stumbled on a wargames shop when on holiday there!

Nevertheless for the l'Arte de la Guerre competition I had entered at Beachhead Show last year I needed a 25mm/28mm army. I had stupidly enntered the competition before finding out what the period was going to be and then found myself committed to a competition for which I had no suitable army in the scale. 

I still needed to finish a 15mm Classical Indian army for a competition in Oxford on 9 January. Undanunted, I decided that it was possible to get a whole army in the 4 weeks after Oxford.  For this project I was fortunate that I already had about 8 boxes of Perry's Wars of the Roses plastics that I was originally going to use for what it said on the box. 

That was towards the end of November 2021 and with a birthday and Christmas ahead I was able to do a bit of planning with the gift list. Stradiots and spare Italian heads  duly arrived and put in the painting queue to start as soon as the Indians were finished.

I made a start with a couple of stands of knights and kitbashed a stand of LC Crossbow from the Mercenaries and Light Cavalry box.

Perry's knights and some light cavalry crossbow

Starting the pikes

Slowly gathering in strength

First pike block completed apart from the basing. Lovely flags found on eBay from Pete's Flags

This is a 1stCorps Italian Wars Command group - well the standard bearer. I used another of Pete's Flags rather than the one supplied. The barding is a transfer - I was almost successful with this but the 6th and last section split.

My three command bases.

And that is it ready for the Beachhead Competition in Bournemouth.