Royalist Harquebusiers on Foot

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 Bit of an eye candy post today; where I finally get around to painting the Royalist harquebusiers on foot (they've only been sat in the 'to do' pile for nine months or so).

For those of you new to KeepYourPowderDry, or the Civil Wars in general, you might be wondering why anyone would want dismounted cavalry. In a nutshell regiments of horse joined in the besieging of houses, but as horses weren't particularly useful when attacking a house, their riders dismounted to fight. They were often in the first wave of assault troops as their buff coats and armour afforded them considerable protection (in comparison to infantry). Plus it also gave them a share of any spoils if the assault was successful.

For more information about the role of harquebusiers in sieges, and a look at my existing assault parties see here.


These are Steel Fist figures from pack ECWF 09, but as I have zero faith in Steel Fist swords (they are much too slender to be practical) I have replaced them all with new swords made from cut down 26/6 staples. (Not too difficult, you've just got to go for it and be very very careful drilling a hole in the figure's sword hand.)


Leaving aside my quibble with the delicacy of weaponry, these are beautiful figures. Too many ostrich feather bedecked hats for my liking, but some nicely animated figures (I even kept the kneeling figure, and I hate figures in a kneeling pose).

It would have been nice if a few of the figures had been given grenadoes, an essential tool for any storming party, I don't necessarily mean 'in the act of throwing a grenado', they could have been equipped with a bag containing grenadoes.

my older PP assault party figures

As they clearly didn't read my post from January this year, I'll repeat myself and say "now all that Steel Fist needs to produce, to make me really really happy, are a pack of siege engineers (correctly attired, rather than lazily replicating the incorrect illustration in Haythornthwaite), and a pack of labourers. And maybe a pack of civilian drovers..."

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Comments

  1. Codsticker9 December 2024 at 16:55

    Great work. The Steel Fist figures do look very nice.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Radar10 December 2024 at 16:14

      Thank you Codsticker. The SF figures are very nice, but I'm not sure I would trade my PPs for them

      Delete

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