Lead Mountain today, White Mountain tomorrow?

When visiting Prague with my son a few years ago, one sunny afternoon we walked out of the city to find the memorial to the Battle of the White Mountain, the opening engagement of the calamitous Thirty Years War.  We headed westwards along the ridge from the Hradčany, following the route we assumed the Protestant army would have taken before the battle.  This took us through a fine park on the outskirts of the city and then into open fields in which the modest memorial to the battle can be found.  When we began to walk back, we found that there was a well frequented tram stop nearby and realised we could have saved ourselves a long and thirsty walk!  No matter.  I am not sure if the seeds of the idea of building a set of Thirty Years War army were planted then, but the idea is now being shaped into reality.

This is not a cow

Before arriving recently in England for a few weeks I placed orders for more 10mm figures to flesh out my Thirty Years War armies.  The lead has landed, so have I, and now I am enjoying cleaning up the figures and sorting out how I will organise them and paint them when I am back at the painting desk in Hong Kong.

Orders were placed with three of the five manufacturers I have used before, Lancer Miniatures, Newline Designs and Pendraken.  I realised as I neared the end of painting the first tranche of figures and had done some more research that I had been unbalanced in my army building for the period, having far too high a proportion of infantry to cavalry.  So, for the second round I decided to go cavalry heavy - though I now find that I didn't follow through fully on my intentions.  

Pendraken's 10mm lists also were a good hunting ground for compatible figures to add interest to the battlefield.  I bought some scythe men and peasants  to add a touch of local colour, hatted officers from the League of Augsburg range to add a touch of bling - as well as supplement a dearth of general officers made for the Thirty Years War/ECW ranges - wagons, pack horses, riderless horses to match with horse holders for Dragoon units, sheep and cows - or not cows as it turned out.  As I started trimming off the few bits of flash I realised that every figure in the bag of cows was a bullock!  I beefed about this to Pendraken, who kindly apologised, regretting their misteak but declining to remodel the figures which, at every scale, not just 10mm, turn out to be not cows. This left me udderly disappointed but I move on.

From Lancer have come Cuirassiers, Helmeted Cavalry and Hatted Cavalry, plus enough infantry to make up a large tercio.  

Lancer Miniatures ECW cavalry.  Dragoons on right, followed by Floppy Hat Cavalry, Lobster pot Cavalry and a smaller number of Cuirassiers to left foreground.

Lancer Miniatures TYW/early ECW infantry

The Lancer figures are quite bulky when placed beside Pendraken Cavalry from their ECW range but I was interested to find that the mounted officers from the latter's League of Augsburg range were easily as big as the Lancer cavalry.  This will not be a problem as I will not be mixing the Lancer and Pendraken cavalry in the same units. The officers are going to be on their own command bases so can be on the non-Napoleon end of the size range without difficulty.

Lancer ECW Cuirassier to left, Pendraken ECW to right

Same Lancer Cuirassier compared to Pendraken League of Augsburg Range Hatted Officer

From Pendraken, as well as the figures already mentioned have come mounted Dragoons, Cuirassiers, Lobster pot helmeted and floppy hatted Cavalry, together with dismounted Dragoons.  

Pendraken ECW Cavalry and League of Augsburg range officers in foreground.

From Newline have come an assortment of infantry.  Most of these are to allow me to replace all the Pendraken musketeer figures that I added to my first order of Newline figures to bulk out the tercios.  Some of the freed up Pendraken musketeers will be used to make up dedicated units of musketeers or commanded shot, others will be matched up with still unpainted Pendraken pikemen to make a couple more tercios.  The first six tercios I did will then be entirely Newline figures.  I have also bought from Newline some of their Pikemen charging their pikes.  These I will mount on strips that I can put into the front rank of units that are about to engage in melee, swapping out a strip of men with upright pikes.  An unnecessary flourish, but since it can be done and should look good, why not?

Newline ECW pikemen charging their pikes

To dress up the battlefield further, 6mm scale buildings from Battlescale have arrived. 

Battlescale 6mm bridges, windmills, farms and a ruin

Buildings for towns and villages

Fieldworks

 To finish off the units when painted I'm working through Maverick Model's flag list to select a good variety of Imperialist and Protestant flags to add on.  Happy days.