2mm Pike and Shotte

Many years ago in an early issue of Wargames Illustrated, an article was published by Stephen O'Leary entitled Renaissance DBA Revisited. A very thoughtful early variant to DBA, this article even included army lists to cover most of the period.

At the time I tried these out with a couple of armies knocked together from some spare 15mm figures and found them to work very well. But time moved on, and I completely forgot about them until I rediscovered the article on-line.

This fired me up to create a couple of portable armies to use solo, with the rules, when I went on holiday. To make things small I chose to go with Ireegular Miniatures' 2mm Pike and Shotte figur blocks. These were mounted on 25x20mm mdf bases from Minibits (all laser cut, these are good quality bases without the premium charge added by some suppliers). The bases were textured with some fine bird cage sand and painted Vallejo Camo Green rather than flocked.

Well that was five weeks ago. The holiday came and went ...... Without the solo wargaming! However I've finally finished them today and I thought I should share them with you.

Each army is 12 elements (like DBA Ancients), so I aimed to provide two armies as a starting point with a few alternatives so the armies could be varied.

The main elements of each army are infantry and cavalry. Each base has two bases of each.

Command figures are represented by the pairs of horse to the front.

Artillery bases have two guns with crews and a command base inbetween.

There are a couple of Dragoon bases with standing dragons backed by their stationary horses and horse holders.

The figures are surprisingly detailed when you look at them under a magnifying lens. Painting them is quick and simple (even if I didn't get them finished when I said I would!). I paint the bases first, then dry brush with a Camo Green/Yellow mix to pick out the sand. An overall coat of a very dark black/brown acts as a base coat. Then I just use a fine brush to dab colour on the high points of the figures. 

The faces need only be painted on the front rank, hats are dark grey generally and the flags painted one colour (orange or yellow in this case). The pikes were block painted tan yellow and then washed black to provide the shadow between the pikes. I'm really pleased with the finish, from an overhead view they look quite convincing. To try out a new period or if you're just short of space, these figures have got to be worth considering, they're good value for money too.

Together the two finished armies fit in a box about the size of a packet of fags. Battles should be possible on a surface about a foot square. So should be very portable! 

All i need is another holiday to try them out!