15mm Welsh Cavalry and Light Infantry

The last couple of weeks saw the completion of twelve elements of Welsh cavalry including two command elements:

This is a mixture of heavy cavalry, seen here in the front rank, which can also double as 'knights' as per the Northern Welsh option in the DBMM army lists:

The lighter or ordinary cavalry are arranged here in the second rank:

These included some quite characterful figures with a fair bit of variety:

I again used Little Big Man Studio decals on those figures carrying shields:

The only minor quibble is that some of the figures sit awkwardly on their mounts, an issue I have found before with the otherwise excellent Forged in Battle figures. This therefore requires a bit of manipulation to get them to sit straight and with enough of a contact point for the glue:

I also completed fifteen elements of auxiliary troops and a dozen elements of light skirmish infantry:

The Welsh light infantry is classified as inferior. This usually means they aren't carrying shields so I primarily used those sculpted without to represent skirmishers, albeit with a couple carrying shields mixed in for variety:

The remainder have been based as auxiliary infantry:

This is all the actual Welsh figures for the army now finished. All that remains is to complete another twenty elements or eighty figures of Viking allies to complete the army.

15mm Welsh Warband

The next major tranche of my early medieval Welsh project was to complete sixty elements of fast warband which, as they are based the same, will also double as the Northern Welsh fast pike option:

The figures are again Forged in Battle. If I'm totally honest these are not my favourite of their figures as there was a bit of flash to tidy up, but once done and painted up I think they are more than passable:

As with most in the Forged in Battle range the packs contain a variety of poses which always helps to keep the motivation going:

I have again stuck to mainly neutral colours with lots of greens, browns and greys:

I was originally going to keep the shields neutral as well, but in the end decided they needed a bit of a lift so purchased some Little Big Man Studios transfers to add a bit of interest. They don't make any for Forged in Battle Welsh so I took a chance on some Carolingian transfers which, because they were made for the FiB Carolingian figures, weren't a perfect fit and required a fair bit of trimming and/or painting to blend them in:

The other thing I have noticed is that LBMS shields used to come ready-punched with the central area for the steel shield boss removed. I never realised this but I believe that Stephen Hales, the talented designer, used to manually punch the holes himself. 

Since the collaboration with Victrix, who now distribute his range, they have decided to distribute them unpunched. No matter as I ended up purchasing a set of plier hole punches and it was quite fun, although I am still finding small sticky dots that I have inadvertently deposited around the house:

These figures took me a lot longer than I had originally planned, mainly because I headed off to New Zealand for five days in late June and also because I had to commit a week to grandfather duties. Nevertheless, this does mean another 180 figures (well, 182 actually as I have two spares I am planning to use elsewhere) toward the project and I feel like I am now on the home straight. Next up, some light and auxiliary Welsh infantry.