Hohensknechtes and Stadtsknechtes.

Wow, Grandfather Nurgle has had it in for me this year! A weeks worth of flu in January, and now a nasty bout of flu lasting from the 8th February and ongoing (but getting better). So apart from considering the need to start a Nurgle Chaos army to appease him, it has also played havoc with my painting and blogging this month .

What I have achieved are a few test models. As mentioned before, I am currently sorting out all my Oldhammer era miniatures into armies, which is something I am still trying to get to a point to update my blog on. Now, when considering the Empire army, I realised I had no mounted Knights. With all of the armies I want to have something emblematic about that army in it, and so far with the Empire army I have Reiksgard, Fleglers, Armbrustschutzen, and Helblitzen, but no mounted Knights.

Citadel only made the classic looking Empire towards the end of the 3rd Edition (1992), and I did'nt really want to use them as I did'nt think that their look suited the older looking Empire miniatures I am using. They did make some, at the same time as Brettonians in 1989, but they can be a little expensive to find, and tricky to find all of one type. Also the horses they were suppllied with at the time were unbarded, and two of the three types of Empire Knights require barding. The only other Empire Knights released were the Marauder Miniatures ones, but they are quite rare and expensive.

So, bearing in mind I want to keep my armies all Oldhammer era, I decided to try something. I have a few spare Wargames Foundry War of the Roses Knights, which were originally Citadel's C26 Men at Arms range., which to me have a simialiar look to Empire Knights. So I added an embossed Marauder shield to each of them, and painted them up in brighter, more Empire' looking colours. I think the look fine, and I will add another five when I get around to actually painting up the army itself.
Enjoy :)

 The Empire Cavalry section of Warhammer Armies.
Itook the scan from Jaeckel Alone's blogspot. Check out his wonderful Empire Soldiers here:
http://jaeckelalone.blogspot.co.uk/

Five Knights.

Front view.

I used two different types of Knight. One with the full plume...

...and the other with a light plume.

The other three Knights. The shield if the Knight on the right is an old Warhammer Regiments Dwarf shield, which gives a Sigmar feel to the miniature.

Rear and side view of the horse with it's head down.

Rear and side view of the horse with it's head up.

Next week will probably be some Undead.

Three pre-slotta C01 Fighters in blister packs.

As part of my current sorting through of my collection into a series of 3rd Edition Warhammer armies, I have been buying all sorts of odds and ends, mainly from e-bay. I have been keen to add very characterful miniatures to add that little extra something to particular regiments, as well as buying miniautres I have always wanted, but never got around to getting.

With that in mind I have been buying a lot of the old Citadel C01 Fighters range, as well as some other C-Series, later F-Series ranges, and a few Marauder Miniatures. Whilst browsing online I found a seller selling packs of unopened C01 Fighters, which I thought were quite resonably priced (£8.95 each) for unopened packs. Looking closer at the various packs these three stood out as they looked to contain some unusual and great looking miniatures from about 1983. So I took a chance and bought them.

Now, when it comes to old and out of production unopened miniatures, I am one of those people who would much rather open it and paint them, rather than leave it just because it's still in the pack. Many of the old miniatures are lovely (hence the whole Oldhammer thing!) and deserve to be set free and painted and Citadel intended! So, I have opened these packs with a view to adding them to an army (probably the Estalian or Marienburg armies).
Here's how I got on...

Enjoy :)

 The unopened packs.

 Early C01 Fighters, from about 1983.
(Taken from the Stuff of Legends site:
http://www.solegends.com/citc/index.htm ).
I can't be sure, but I understand that they were sculpted by the Perry Twins. There are striking similarites between these and with other Perry sculpts, which I will outline later, which leads me to suggest they sculpted them.

First of the three, still in blister...

...the second...

...and third.

Opened!!!
Still heady from the blast of 1980's air, I tried to locate this miniature amongst the C-series ranges, but could not find him! He might be unlisted?
He is a Fighter/Knight in heavy armour, with a plumed helmet and sword. To me looks late 15th, early 16th Century in historical terms, due to the style of helmet (a burgonet helmet with falling buffe), style of the armour, and the chainmail armour on his legs.

Shield with Griffin. It is clearer in the ink washed photograph.

The second Fighter.
Again, heavy armour, sword, shield. He is wears a slightly later looking burgenet, and trunk hose, making him look more mid-late 16th Century. 
He is in the centre of the catalogue page above.

Rear view, with backpack and crossbow, and burgonet plume.

The third miniature.
Like the second Fighter, he has sword, shield, heavy armour, and trunk hose. He is based on the sculpt of the second Fighter (or visa versa). He has a rather fetching hat too. 

He is centre right hand side of the catalogue page.

Shield.

Backpack.

The shield is the same sculpt as a shield used on a pre-slotta Goblin. Citadel often swapped shields and weapons between sculpts, sometimes between ranges.

The three amigos!
The sculpt of the three miniatures is superb. Considering that they are 35 years old, the quality would easily stand up now.

Side by side the second and third miniatures showing the same basic sculpt.

The first Fighter.
He is a simlar sculpt to a fighter I bought a little while ago.

Shield with the Griffin, black-washed.

Black washed to show the details.

Black washed second Fighter. You can see the trunk hose clearer.

Rear view. Great details, including the crossbow windlass. 

Black wash.

Face details.

Looking at the miniatures I realised that the bear quite a resemblance to the Perry Twins 'Wars of Religon' range, which was produced by Citadel around the same time (1983). The style of the sculpting and scale look similar, as do details such as the burgonet.
On the left is the second of the Fighters, on the right is an Arquabusier from that range. It is also why I think that the second and third Fighters look late 16th Century to me.

The 'Wars of Religon' range is still avaliable from Wargames Foundry.
I checked out the site and found that several of the range also bear a resembalance to the Fighters.
Here is the range on the Wargames Foundry website, from where is got the photograph :
https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/late-16th-century-1560-1610

Next blog update should be on some of the armies I have been sorting out. I have started test painting a few things, but am still in 'sorting out/army list compling' mode.