Les arquebusiers de Thierry

If you're a nobleman, you can do as you like as long as you can afford it and it's not treason. Even then, if you've got the money you can probably get away with treason as well. For most, though, it means indulging one's whims. Les arquebusiers de Thierry is one such whim. Inspired by the troubadours' tales of Thierry l'Arquebus, the minor noble Vicomte Lincolne raised a band of skirmishers armed and dressed as the literary figure; an arquebus and the green cloth for which the area of Lincolne is famed. The Vicomte seems to have missed the point that, although green is a good colour for a woodsman, poacher or skirmisher, as soon as they start shooting the noise and smoke will give them away instantly. Nevertheless, the greencoats are good shots and (for peasants) fairly stalwart.

Knowing that I'd better raise some troops (read: paint!) fairly sharpish, I knocked these first six out this week. They still need their bases finishing but I'll do them all in one go at the end. Here they are bravely hiding in the lee of a village headman's house. I was going to pick a francophone rendering of "Robin" but found that there's been a 1960s French series called "Thierry le Fronde" about a Loxley-esque character who used a sling rather than a bow. Fun fact!

"Look busy, mes braves, here comes the Vicomte!"

"Um, can any of you hear wingbeats overhead?"

Six peasants with handguns aren't going to stop an orc horde on the rampage, so next up on the painting corks are the other four that I need for the "How to do Oldhammer" project, including Thierry (his name's actually Guillaume, but you don't argue with a Vicomte) himself - check out that feather!

Four handgunners, one knight. Nope, nothing funny to say.

That knight will join his fellows that I've been rebasing from hex bases to 20mm squares to allow them to rank up.

I was obviously going through a "green phase" when I painted these. The two larger knights are Black Tree Design figures; really nice to paint.

The building doing such stalwart backdrop service is made by pmc games who seem to have dropped off ebay, sadly. I'm glad I picked up a bunch of them a while back - resin and prepainted. Lovely!

The eggbox is not part of the terrain.

All the roofs come off.

These villages are going to need some resources for the defenders to forage from. I've got a bunch of barrels I can quickly paint and base up to use as tokens, but I've also got these:

"Fetchez le vache!"

Cows, goats, pigs and hens. I don't think the tiny sheepdogs will be useful compared to the massive hounds common to 28mm gaming!

These are last on my list of things to prep. for the Oldhammer day in August - I must muster more soldiers before that!

Now for a glass of wine with my beautiful wife.
Rab