A Pike And Shotte Review

I decided to dig out my pike and shot troops after watching Cromwell half a dozen times. Well, at least the parts from Edgehill to Naseby anyway. The film had a colourful cast of thousands led by Richard Harris and Alec Guiness. The battles had little to do with history, but they certainly are inspiring to a wargamer.

 These are some of my lobsters with very colourful trumpets and drums. The heavily armoured cavalry are later Knights from Giant Plastics (I have scads of them as shown in an earlier blog entry). The musicians are converted from those Thailand cowboys and indians I ordered a while back. The shooting cowboy aiming off into the blue makes a great trumpeter with the addition of plasticine and paint.

 A Minifig 25mm General accompanied by one of my cowboy standard bearers. I have a dozen Minifig commanders and I wish I could claim that I painted them, but they were an ebay purchase some time ago. They fit in nicely and do look the part.

 Part of the "English" Royalist army shown previously. I set up a vaguely English vs French battle, but truth be told it's a mix up of almost all my units.

 Some of the "French". I like the barrel barrow. I did that with an Airfix 8th Army lying soldier and some odds and ends. The big wagon is from an ebay win from an English man named Coombs. He made wonderful conversions, and they are sprinkled throughout my armies.

 My French commander at the left.

 The bare headed commander is the Airfix Sherriff of Nottingham on a Giant Knight's horse.

 These are some conversions I did to try and emulate some soldiers I saw in the Cromwell film. They are dragoons that are seen at Edgehill, when Timothy Dalton first rides up to the King. You see them also at Naseby, but only briefly. They have black fur hats and a red bag, and a red uniform. The movie shows them with white stripes, but for the life of me, I can't find a uniform reference in any of my books. Perhaps a fancy by the film makers, but too colourful for me to ignore.

 The English side again. A home made gun from Mr. Coombs, a multi barrel piece of ordnance. A good mix of my toys, Little Lead Soldiers, Giant, Warrior Miniatures, Airfix and Hong Kong, and Minifigs.

 Overall, I have nearly 800 figures on the table. It took me an evening to dig them out of their boxes and set them up on a table to photograph.

(Edit) I found more pix. Plus my sister shed her old laptop that I've been using to post with Chrome. Luckily I ended up with it (Thanks Kathryn!) and now can post more readily.