Three more infantry regiments for the Thirty Years War / English Civil War project have been moved onto the painting desk. They are needed for a refight of the Battle of Ameixal, a major action of the later part of the Portuguese Restoration war (1640 to 1668) that will take place at the HK Society of Wargames meeting later this month. The battle saw a Spanish army that had invaded Portugal fighting a defensive action against counter-attacking Portuguese, who were supported by a small English force.
I will use these new regiments for the Spanish army and am giving them a different colour palette to that used for earlier units. Those have been predominantly dark blues and reds with darker leathers and buff coats. Any steel helmets and body armour have been blackened. The new regiments are being given some lighter colours, offset with touches of black and red. Helmets and armour are in polished steel, a more usual practice for the Spanish troops of the period - or so I recall reading some time ago?
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| Closer view of the regiment furthest along in the painting process |
The figures being used are all from Pendraken. Apart from the command figures which are from the English Civil War range, the musketeers and pikemen come from the Elizabethan range, so are somewhat anachronistic for a battle in 1663 but I am likely to be using them in future for battles of the 80 Years War for which they will be a better fit - and at 10mm scale who is going to look too closely?
Each regiment of 8 pikes, 16 muskets and 4 command figures will be expanded later into a full Tercio of double that size, plus an extra command group so that they can serve either as a single Tercio or a pair of regiments. As they are Spanish, I may add a couple of bases of Rodoleros - sword and buckler men - for use in earlier periods. I have some Spanish flags already from Maverick Models but sadly they don't do Portuguese flags as far as I can see. I'll use some other flags from my existing stock for them, pending research to find another supplier.
For the pikes I am experimenting with flexible plastic rods, 0.5mm in diameter. These are being painted in a mixture of colour and white glue and I hope they will prove less prickly and less prone to break off in hurried handling than the brass rods I have been using. If they don't work out, the open hands of the figures make it easy to replace them.
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