The first part of this will be a unit of halberdiers.
What is now called "An der Fähre" (At the Ferry) started out as the
cottage of Karl Ruderer, who operated a small ferry business at an
infrequently used travel route.
When more and more merchants started to use this route, soon
small queues started to build on both sides of the river, which soon let to
inns being opened; shortly thereafter smiths settled there, food was needed
so some farmers joined... and very quickly a
village formed - named after the place it is situated at - the ferry.
The Bürgermeister soon was forced to spend money on a permanent village
guard, as drunkards needed to be arrested, disputes between merchants needed
to be deescalated (especially when the merchants employed caravan guards) and
raids by bandits needed to be stopped.
The core of the village guard is a company of halberdiers.
The miniatures I ordered from [Mirliton](
http://www.mirliton.it "Mirliton"), one pack of each of their halberdiers (I, II, III and command group) from their fantasy human range. They delivered very quickly, great service!
The miniatures are very nice. They have crisp detail, are very varied in details but still look like one type of troop, and no pack has duplicates. Especially the variety in equipment is very fitting in my opinion, as in medieval type times there was no real uniformity, as basically very piece of equipment was manufactures as a one of a kind due to lack of industrialised manufacturing. The mold lines are very small, even the ones going over the chainmail are easily removed.
The only complaint I have about them is the basing. No bases are supplied with them (which is fine, as depending on which game their customers want to use the models for they would need round, square 25mm, square 20mm, hex, ... bases), instead they have quite thick integral bases. When glued to the 20mm bases usually used for Warhammer humans, the integral base basically doubles the base height - so I have to cut them down. This is not difficult but tedious work.
The first 5 models have the mold lines removed but are not yet glued to the bases - this I will only do when all minis are ready, so I can rank them up in the formation I will most often use them, 5 wide and 4 deep.
I did not pay enough attention when buying the models. On the one hand the command group only includes 4 models, so my unit is not 20 strong but only 19; on the other hand it includes two leader type models and no halberdier, so I have an extra hero (back row with the plumed helmet) but only an 18 strong unit.
Models ranked up and glued to bases.
Here you can see how I marked the position of the models.
Bases covered with plaster to hide the integral bases.
Bases covered in sand.
I basecoated the models with my airbrush and Vallejo surface primer black 28.012.
The first colour I applied to the chainmail some of the miniatures are wearing with... 72.053 Chainmail Silver... what else...
After that, I painted the studded leather armour with 70.822 German Camo Black Brown. Yes, there is really not only black and silver on the miniatures in the following picture:
I painted the quilted armour in three different shades of light brown / khaki.
The plate armour, helmets, bucklers, hellebarde blades etc. were painted in steel. I used the Vallejo air colour, which has a very nice consistency.
Now I am thinking on the unit's/village colours and the emblem. I want the emblem to show water and the ferry.
Something like
My problem now is that I cannot think of anything that shouts ferry and at the same time is easy to paint...
Here are several examples of ships on an emblem, but they look to much like sea faring vessels, not like small river crossing ones.
This one
I like very much, but I don't see me painting the two guys freehand on tunics...
Do you have any ideas/suggestions?
Thank you very much.