Category: Italian Wars

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.

A lot of the action at the Battle of Pavia took place within the Pavia park walls. I could not recreate the battle without having these walls and the associated gates. This post covers the decisions on how to represent the walls, the construction and the final images.

Designing the Pavia park walls and gates.

I planned to represent the East, West and North walls of the park. On may layout this will require the construction of 36 feet of walls including 7 gatehouses. The gatehouses do not all exist today but there is one in the new Park that stands tall. I took the executive decision that I would model the gatehouses in the Old Park based on this design. A photo from Google Street View is shown below. I planned to make them from foam; one early decision was that I was not going to try and carve the bricks quite as small as they are in the image as my time and modeling skills were not up to it. Also the initial plan was to leave off the merlons on the top for similar reasons – I later changed this decision as I will discuss later.

I wanted to scale the walls to be a realistic height and therefore used a correct 1:56 scale to model them, this means that the gatehouses and walls are imposing. When I designed the walls I initially did not have merlons on the top, however I came across the following wood cut of Pavia which shows the merlons on the wall. The prospect of having them was too tempting to resist.

Building the walls.

The walls and gatehouses were constructed from pink foam. I cut the foam with a table top wire foam cutter. The bricks were then carved using a sharp knife. The process of carving bricks on 7 gate houses and 36 feet of walls turned out to be a much bigger job than I expected. I have now completed all of the gatehouses and 18 feet of wall. Here are some images of the making of the wall.

Once the walls were carved I textured the walls with aluminum foil. Here are a few photos of the process. You can see the before and after effect and it really makes the difference.

As I mentioned before I eventually decided to add merlons to the gates and walls. This was when I came across the idea of having them 3D printed. Overall I had 400 of them printed. When painted they work really well with the foam walls.

The bricks were painted a beige red from Vallejo. However I still wasn’t completely satisfied with the look. It was at this point I bought some sand-lesss tile ground in beige and brushed it into the gaps between the bricks. I then added iso-propyl alcohol and sealed it with scenic cement.

I then added the bases using cut mdf from Things from the Basement. They custom cut the bases to size. I then used foam and spackling to make the correct height and the channel for the canal.

Finishing the walls

The walls needed to be mounted on bases. Certainly on the West of the park there is a small canal alongside the wall. I am still trying to determine if there was one against the East wall. I wanted to model the canal. I also wanted to put some scatter terrain on the base and make sure that the color and texture of the base matched the terrain mat. Here are some images of the first six sections of the total of 18 sections that I am making. I placed various bushes, trees and other vegetation on the base. In a future article I will discuss the trees.

Summary

I still have a fair few walls to make, but the back of the job is broken as the gate houses are all finished and I have my construction methods are established. The Pavia park walls should make a good back drop to the terrain. The next post will probably be an update on the Landsknecht painting situation. With over 500 landsknechts the painting of them seems unending.

One of the most commonly seen features in the Battle of Pavia artwork is the Pavia city walls. In order to give my game context, I wanted to capture some of the key features including the city walls and park walls. I have just completed the city walls and I am now working on the park walls (which will be a feature of an upcoming blog post). This post concentrates on the city.

The above image from the Pavia tapestries shows the look of the city that I was trying to capture. The main features are the large gatehouse on the left, the city walls with smaller towers and the large towers with battlements throughout the city. I also wanted to capture the color.

At Historicon 2022 I put on the Battle of Ravenna. This battle took place outside the city and I decided to create the city itself as a backdrop to the game. I used walls from a company called Table Top World out of Croatia. They are excellent resin cast models. To save cost these walls formed the basis of the walls for Pavia. They may not be identical to the Pavia walls but they were close enough for my needs. In a previous post I covered how I painted and weathered the walls.

As you will notice from the above photo, the walls were limited in extent and did not have a gatehouse. The main reason is that Table Top World do not produce a gatehouse compatible with the period. Their gatehouse is fantasy based.
Inside the city I had buildings which I will use again for Pavia.

Walls and gatehouse

For Pavia, I wanted to increase the size of the city and include a gatehouse. I found a 3D print called Port Winterdale gatehouse. It was available in 28mm but was much too small for what I needed. A 3D printer that I use managed to scale it up to give the effect I was looking for. I then painted and weathered it in line with the other walls. I also bought additional walls and small towers from Croatia.

In the above image you can see the effect of scaling up the gatehouse. I places a 28mm SteelFist pikeman in the entrance for scale. In person the gatehouse does give the imposing visual that I am looking for.

The above image shows the increased length of the city walls, they occupy the best part of a 4′ x 6′ terrain mat.

Towers

The other item in the Pavia tapestries that I wanted to represent was the tall towers with battlements that stand over the city. Charlie Foxtrot models do a nice tower with a Pantile roof in mdf. I really liked the model but towers were not tall enough for my walls and the roof wasn’t what I was looking for. The owner agreed to sell me the towers without the roof section but with two extra middle sections for each tower to raise the height. I purchased three towers from them.

I then had a tower top scaled and printed from a Norman Fort 3D print. This fitted perfectly on the mdf tower. I then spackled and sanded the walls to get the texture I was looking for.

The work in progress is shown above, with the finished painted and weathered model shown below. I kept the same color scheme as the city walls.

The image below shows how the towers rise above the city walls. The combination of the walls and the towers achieved the appearance that I was looking for. I have two of the towers completed and plan to complete the third next week.

Closing thoughts

When I put the Pavia city walls on the table at Historicon I will populate the inside with buildings and figures from my existing collection in the same way that I did for Ravenna.

Overall I am very happy with the way the city is turning out. I know that a lot of people plan to run Pavia as a game next year. I don’t know if my city of Pavia will be the largest amongst those put on the table, but I suspect that it will be in the top five. If someone does something larger, I can’t wait to see it.

The next blog post will be on either the park walls or the Landsknecht pike blocks. I am working on both at the moment and I am not sure which will be finished first.

As a bonus image or two here is the pontoon bridge from the Pavia tapestries. It was created from 3D printed boats and some cut and weathered balsa wood.

The Castello Mirabello is a central feature of the Battle of Pavia, with most of the battle taking place around the building. I therefore decided that making Mirabello for Pavia was important and that using a generic building would not give me the look I wanted. Unfortunately no manufacturer currently makes a model suitable for Mirabello, which left scratch building as the only option. This post details how I constructed Mirabello.

Reference photos.

The buildings at Mirabello consist of a main building, outhouses, walls, a gate and a moat. Unfortunately only the main building exists today. A photo of this building was the main source material.

This photo set the main layout of the building. However, it looks like stucco was originally on the building as shown in the attached drawing.

This drawing also shows the outbuildings which I still need to construct. In addition to this drawing, many of the art pieces of the period also show an observatory. Probably the most famous is the Pavia Tapestry image.

The tapestry also set the color palette for the building.

Making Mirabello for Pavia.

I decided to construct the main building using foam as the base structure. The doors and window frames were purchased from “Things from the Basement“. They also cut me a piece for the balcony frontage. These were all custom parts. I would recommend this company for all mdf laser cut parts.

I contacted a local 3D printer to make the pantile roof. One recommendation is to buy the roof first and then make the building to fit it. I have found that 3D pantile roofs are a very easy option rather than try to make pantile roofs from scratch.

The balcony was a combination of a laser cut part backed by foam.

The building after the windows, doors and roof are added is shown below. This photo shows a temporary assembly to test the fit of the parts.

The next stage was to texture the building, the first thing that I did was to fix some brick paper in several locations. These would show through spaces where I left off the texture.

The next stage was to use spackling to texture the surface. This texture was added by hand, allowed to dry and then sanded down.

The building was then painted and weathered. As a base coat I used Vallejo German Camo Beige. I then dry brushed with Vallejo White Grey. Finally I used a Vallejo powder of European Earth. This last powder was applied sparingly, but it rally brings the building to life. Lastly, on the south wall I used a dark green wash sparingly in places to add algae to the walls.

Building the observatory.

The observatory was built using two different 3D printed buildings purchased from Etsy. The first was entitled Minature Arcane Dome. It is a very sci-fi type dome and I had to sand off many of the rivets from the roof. However, it provided a great top of the observatory tower. Below is a picture of the building after sanding and priming.

The base of the structure was another 3D building from Etsy entitled Harbour Watch Tower. This was a turreted tower. I removed the top of the turret and used the rest as a base. To join the buildings I needed a sloped surface as shown in the Pavia Tapestry. I constructed this slope from foam and finished the surface with spackling.

The finishing of the making of Mirabello for Pavia

The following two photos show the finished buildings. I still need to do the outbuildings, gate and moat. The overall building length is about 13″.

The making Mirabello for Pavia was really my first attempt at scratch building structures. I think that it turned out quite well. It is a little larger than most commercially available buildings, but will form a good centre piece for the battle of Pavia.

I just recently received some pictures from Sijie Hao showing the next set of Pavia Commanders that he has painted for me. They are currently being shipped. This post is just a short one to show the latest pictures.

The second set includes:

• Georg von Frundsburg
• Marx Sittich von Ems
• Ferrante Kastriota, Marquis Civita Sant’Angelo
• Robert de la Marck, Seigneur de Fleuranges
• Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur Bonnivet, Admiral of France.

The next image shows the command bases of Fleuranges on the left and Bonnivet on the right. I just love the painting of both the figures and the flags on these bases.

The next bases are the commanders of Imperial Landsknechts. The Landsknechts took the field in two pike blocks of around 3500 men in each. One of these pike blocks was commanded by Marx Stitch von Ems and the other one was commanded by Georg von Frundsburg. There were also many Landsknecht arquebusiers that operated independently of the pike blocks. The picture below shows the flag bearer of Marx Stitch on the left and then von Frundsburg and his flag bearer in the centre. The figure on the right is Sant’Angelo.
Von Frundsburg is painted as he appears in many images with the red and white sash across his chest.

The image below shows a close up of Marx Sittich with his flag bearer behind. The flag pole draped over his shoulder is a great touch.

Below are a couple of additional close ups of Fleuranges and Bonnivet

These are the latest Pavia Commanders. I still have additional commanders that Sijie is painting. While Sijie has been progressing these figures, I have been working on the buildings for Pavia and an additional 144 figure Landsknecht pike block. I hope to post pictures of both very soon.

The amount of work needed to get the Pavia project finished in time for Historicon in July 2025 is huge. I still have a vast number of figures to paint, buildings to build and trees to make. In my next post I will do a review of the buildings, which ones I have finished and which ones I am still working on. I always wanted to spend some time creating command bases for Pavia featuring the actual commanders at the battle. However, I was coming to the realization that the time for researching each commander and creating the base would not be possible in the short time that I have.

That is when I came across Sijie Hao on the Italian Wars Wargaming Facebook page. He is both a superb artist and someone who meticulously researches the Italian Wars. I was immediately drawn to the quality of his work. Luckily he agreed to do some commission work for me on Command Bases for Pavia. I have never had commission work done for me before as I prefer to paint my own figures. However, his work will truly put my Pavia project over the top.

I initially gave him six command bases to do just to see if everything went smoothly. It did and I have now agreed to purchase an additional ten command bases from him. The first order consisted of:

• Francis I King of France plus three of his Royal Retinue.
• Palice and his standard bearer.
• La Tremoille and his standard bearer.
• The Marquis del Vasto and his standard bearer.
• Charles de Lannoy and his standard bearer.
• Charles, Duke of Bourbon and his standard bearer.

Photos of Command bases for Pavia

Now that I have received these figures, my second order includes:

French

• Charles Tiercelin, Lord of Roche du Maine
• Francois of Lorraine and the Duke of Suffolk – Richard de la Poole
• Anne de Montmorency
• Florange (Robert de la Marck, Seigneur of Fleuranges
• Bonnivet
• Duke D’Alencon

Imperial

• Georg von Frundsburg
• Marx Stitch von Ems
• Ferrante Castriota Marquis de Sant’Angelo
• Marquis de Pescara

After these ten bases arrive I will only have three more command bases for Pavia that I need. These will be Antonio de Leyva, Captain Hernando de Alarcón and Gallot de Genouille. I may make some of these myself or depending on time I may make another commission order.

I was feeling a bit out of control on my Pavia 2025 project following Historicon. I needed to identify what units that I had and what units that I still need to paint. Over the past few weeks I have formalized the order of battle that I am aiming for. With over 400 figures still to paint (mostly Landsknechts and heavy cavalry), there is a lot to do before Historicon, but at least I now have a plan.

Terrain

In addition to the figures there are five main terrain items to complete:

• The terrain mats – these are being made for me so I do not need to worry. They should arrive before the end of the year.
• The park walls and gates – I am working on these at the moment and my next post will probably concentrate on them.
• Castello Mirabello – I plan to scratch build this important feature and have ordered most of the parts I will need. Construction will start in November.
• The trees – there are a lot of trees to do.
• Movement trays for the figures. I will complete these in December.

Figures for Pavia 2025

Here is my order of battle. I have highlighted in green those figures that I have painted already.

From this chart it easy easy to see that the bulk of the work is Heavy Cavalry and Landsknechts. With over 400 figures still to paint, I took the unusual step for me of outsourcing the command stands. The main reason was time, but I also came across an artist who can really do superb command stands and does a lot of research on Italian Wars commanders. I will post pictures when they arrive.
Finally here are a couple of pictures of some Italian and Landsknecht shot that I recently completed for this project. There will be a lot more posts on the Pavia 2025 project in the next few months.

Even though I am working on my modern game for Historicon 2024, I am still also working on Pavia for Historicon 2025. The terrain mats are something that I plan to have custom made, as I just do not have either the time or the space to make them myself. Also, I would prefer to work on the figures, buildings and other terrain rather than spend too much time on the mats. As custom mats are a long-lead item, I need to get them ordered.

Type of terrain mat.

For the Italian Wars games that I have previously put on at the club or conventions (Garigliano, Novaro, Bicocca and Ravenna), I have used the teddy bear fur mats by Killing Fields Terrain. These have served me very well and have even helped me win Best of Show and Best of Theme awards. However, for Pavia I want to use something different.

For my recent modern Afghanistan game I used a custom mat from Warsigil.com. I was very pleased with how this mat turned out. So much so, that I have ordered another custom mat for my modern Historicon game for 2024. The new mat should arrive in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I have been working with Warsigil to produce mats for Pavia – I expect them to delivered by the end of the year.

The reason that I chose Warsigil is the high quality of their work. Also, the Battle of Pavia was severely influenced by both the terrain and the weather. There were extensive wooded areas and the ground was very wet and muddy. The last thing that I wanted was a lush, bright green terrain mat. Below is a picture of a wooded mat that Warsigil custom made for another customer. This surface is the type of thing that I am looking at for Pavia.

I will use the brown areas for the woods and the greenish areas for the grass of the park.

Design of terrain mats

At the moment I have ordered five mats, each of 4′ x 6′. These are intended to represent the park. Later I may order two additional mats to represent the walls of Pavia and the area around the Five Chapels.

Without going into too many details in this post, the five terrain mats will go in a “U” shaped design. The area between the two sides represents the course of the Vernovola stream as it proceeds through the southern end of the park. In this area it was impassable due to marshy ground on each side of the stream. Also there were raised roadways on each side of the stream, so firing was impossible from one side to the other. The only area where the Vernavola could be crossed was near Mirabello and further north. This meant that a “U” shape could be used, which would allow players to reach troops in the middle of the park. They would in effect be able to stand in the middle of the park.

The following is the image that I sent to Warsigil and the key below is my details that refer to the wooded Warsigil mat photo above.

The brown areas will be the wooded areas and the green areas will be the grass areas of the park. The stream at the top is the northern part of the Vernovola. Mirabello will be located at the southern part of the mat with the stream on.

This layout will give a lot of room for fighting, but have the constraints of both the wood and the stream.

Upcoming work on the terrain.

The next thing that I will need to consider is the large amount of deciduous trees with no foliage. The Battle was fought in February and I want this to be represented. I still have to figure out how to make these trees as they are not readily available on the market. I will keep on working on Pavia for Historicon 2025 despite still having a lot to do for Historicon 2024.

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