The Landsknechts for Pavia are an important part of the battle and the forces needed. I am in the process of painting them and wanted to give an update of the progress.
The Landsknecht forces
The French side has the Black Band Landsknechts. These comprise of a pike block of 144 figures and 48 shot figures. They will be commanded by a command base with Francois of Loraine and Richard de la Poole, the Duke of Suffolk. I have finished the pike block and I am well on my way to completing the arquebusiers (which will be covered in a separate post). Sijie Hao will be sending the command base shortly.
The Imperial side has two pike blocks each comprised of 144 figures. They also have 108 Landsknecht arquebusiers. They are commanded by two command bases, one with Georg Von Frundsburg and one with Marc Sith. I have finished the two pike blocks and I am making good progress on the arqubusiers. The two command bases have also arrived.
Photos of the Pike Blocks
As mentioned before, this post is really about the Landsknecht pike blocks. The arquebusiers are not quite finished and will be the subject of an upcoming post.
Some design decisions on the pike
One of the Imperial pike blocks uses Foundry figures. At the time that I started the project, these were the best Landsknecht figures available in my opinion. As the project progressed, SteelFist released their excellent range of Landsknechts. I then made the other two pike blocks using figures from the SteelFist range.
Over the course of the project I can see how both my painting style and painting ability have evolved. I much prefer the look of the latest two pike blocks, but the Foundry block is good enough for the project.
Each pike block is 12 figures wide and 12 figures deep. On rows 7 and 8 I have six flags on each row. The flags about two thirds of the way back copy what I see in the period art work and the total of twelve flags looks impressive. The Black Band pike block uses a lot of horizontal crosses which were associated with the French. The Imperial pike blocks use the Imperial eagles and the diagonal crosses.
Landsknechts for Pavia summary
The Landsknechts for Pavia have really taken a huge amount of time and even though I enjoyed painting them, I will be glad when they are all finished. I will post details of the Landsknecht arquebusiers soon, but for now I intend to move on to completing the trees for the battlefield.
Photos don’t show for me…..