The Hapsburg Army Expands

Here are some photos of my 3mm Austrian Empire forces for Black Powder. All of the figures are by Oddzial Osmy, of course, bought through Pico Armor in the U.S.

New here are three battalions of Hungarian troops, two more batteries of artillery and four squadrons of hussars to go with the five battalions of infantry and one battery that I have previously painted up.

The Austrians will eventually get another three battalions of infantry, six squadrons of chevauxlegers, four squadrons of cuirassiers, and two battalions of grenadiers, as well as a regiment of Grenzers and a jaeger battalion. The light infantry is already on the painting table.

 The entire army, as it is so far.

The Hungarians! Note that the labels aren't correct at this point: they're just added in to give me an idea of what they will look like in terms of color and composition.

Hussars! These guys were actually pretty fun to paint, as I will show below....

Finally, here's how I painted the hussars. Going from right to left, you can see the application of each individual color, in fourteen individual stages.

Billy Bones paper ECW miniatures

Went I went up to London in August, I got bit by the Pike & Shotte bug. I desperately wanted to buy a Warlord's starter army, but when I realized the cost of it, and thought about the fact that it wouldn't give me even one third of one army... for a rules set and period I had vever before played.... in a scale I hardly ever play in (28mm).... Well, I had to admit that it was a Bad Idea.
When I got back to Brazil, however, the bug still hadn't went away. I REALLY wanted to try out Pike & Shotte, as I'd never played Renaissance before and it had always appealed to me.

But what to do now? I certainly couldn't justify spending 500 USD on a whim and there are, as of yet, no 3mm pike and shot armies. I guess I could try 2mm or 6mm... But what to do about the rules?

Then I found out two things:

1) Warlord Games is very sensibly selling a digital version of Pike & Shotte. Well, glory be! Mind you, I do think it is a bit expensive for what is essentially a PDF, but hey: it's cheaper than overseas mail, by a long shot! And i won't begrudge Warlord my hard earned reais they way I'd begrudge, oh, say, Games Workshop.

2) Billy Bones makes an excellent, funky set of paper ECW minatures.

Well, that settled it.

For USD, I bought my Billy Bones figs and for another 50 USD, I bought a beige bedsheet and printed up masses of figures on thick manilla paper. I printed them out at half-scale, making them around 15mm (they are originally about 28mm). You can see the inital results, below: