Kategorie: Impetus

Pilgrims of the first Crusade

With the publication of SAGA Crescent & Cross plans erose to beef up my Norman SAGA armie with some Crusader elements. First addition are the pilgrims. I have chosen to paint armed and umarmed pilgrims and some models from other blisters of the Perry Crusader range. It was important to me to depict them as strange group of people with various backgrounds including some, who own at least a shield and a spear and some who just carry a sleeping bag or some wealthier guys who actually want to see Jerusalem. All should look somewhat fanatic as they were.

29. Oktober 2014
Spieltrieb Feud – Heavy Cavalry First Element

This is my first Impetus element for our upcoming club campaign game for the german feudal medieval era. I have chosen the outstanding Legio Heroica miniatures. Much inspiration for the whole project came from Antipater´s Konradin army. I am very happy that my gaming club Spieltrieb Frankfurt decided to play Impetus in 15mm on a regular basis in order to have another common gaming system available to most members. FoW is still our basis, but we wanted to add more variety and since we have had much fun with Impetus in 28mm, we decided to learn more about the game in detail within a club campaign. This usually leads to more skillful players.

I have chosen an army which represents the forces fighting for the Abbey of Fulda in the 13th century. The town I was born in belonged to the Abbey in Fulda. They tried to get more power and land during that time and hence fought a lot. The knighs represent the Knights of Riedesel zu Eisenbach and the Hutten. This family has nothing to do with Jabba, but mabe the name derived from that family. The Hutten took care of the salt mines of the Abbey of Fulda.

The idea of having 3 knights or seargants with the same colors was taken from twreuter a club friend of mine who already planned his army including all colors and coat of arms of his troops. I liked his plan a lot and copied the idea. What I like a lot in 28mm to have an entire base themed for a specific troop. They get character during the game and you know automatically what they achieved and where they failed. In 15mm the amount of miniatures is higher but I hope to have a colorful army with many bananers too. So this is the approach and we will see how this works.

All lances are again made from plastic broom bristles, the banners are computer printed and painted over. I included 4 rare earth magnets in the flat hand made plastic card base so that I can transport them in a metal box or my magnetic transport cases. Again I am a supporter of very flat 1mm bases, which I sand down at the edges. They are still a little bit flexible which works fine with the Vallojo Acrylic Sand paste I use for basing in addition with some sand.

9. Mai 2013
Hartmut von Kronberg

This unit was painted for our Club´s presentation during Tactica 2013. It depicts the german knight Hartmut von Kronberg who earned money with robbery in the Area of Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt. The basing is again for Impetus, Miniatures are designed by Perry Miniatures.

The lances are flexible and were hand made by me. All banners were printed out and painted over.

The tent was designed by me, I used various materials to design the master. This is actually a copy made with dental plaster. I have made a few more which showed the siege area on the gaming table.

7. April 2013
Heavy Patrician Cavalry Weiß von Limpurg

For completing my Impetus Tournament army I painted another element of heavy cavalry. I have chosen a patrician family from Frankfurt Weiß von Limpurg and added many banners. The smaller banners were inspired by Frank Becker´s Lannister knights. The smaller banners were a fun to model.

This time I modeled my own lances using plastic bristles from brooms with greenstuff added for the hand guards. These are flexible which is very important for transport and gaming.

During the Tournament this element was our commanding element. We played with the Sigismund´s Imperials list and came 7th from 8 participants. Waldi was my team mate. We learned a lot and immediatly started to think about better combinations for our lists.

18. September 2012
Knights of Kronberg – The Donkey Charge

Our Club´s annual presentation for this year´s Tactica Hamburg was the Feud of Kronberg, a medieval local conflict between Frankfurt and nearby living Knights of Kronberg. During the Battle of Eschborn 1389 the Kronberg Knights led a charge in against the troops of Frankfurt. There is a myth around this battle. It was told that one of the knights lost his destrier and desparetly searched for a mount in the area. Unfortunately he was only able to find a donkey on which he rode into tha battle.

His charge was so devastating that the Frankfurters were completly demoralised and fled the ground. One stirps of the family has donkey ears in their family crest.

In order to have this myth appearing in the presentation I asked Ebob if he could do me a donkey or a mule because he really sculpts excellent mounts. He did this outstanding mule, thank you so much for this, and I mounted a knight on it. It is very funny that people did not notice it without help. A wrong mount in a group seems to be not very obvious. However it was great fun to paint.

The house and fence is from perry miniatures.

I was asked to post detailed pictures showing the farmer woman and her children and the knights in detail. Here you are.

5. August 2012
Hand Gunners from Frankfurt

My club Spieltrieb Frankfurt presented a medieval Impetus game during the Hamburgian Tactica 2012. We showed a local setting where the citicens of Frankfurt fought in a feud against nearby operating robber-knights of Kronberg.

Since the Perry twins did not have images of the miniatures in their story, I did not knew, that these models were that outstanding until I saw Antipater´s incredible beautiful Handgunners . He inspired my very much to quickly buy these models and add them to my city force of Frankfurt.

The initial plan was to have another crossbow unit prepared for the event. However sometimes good ideas are born, when something is not at hand. Although I bought three times at Perry Minitures I forgot to buy enough crossbow men. Therefore I suggested our project leader Lemming to use hand gunners instead. He decided to base them as skirmishers, which is more useful for different existing and upcoming lists for the period. But even more important was to me, that he suggested to achieve the look for two elements by using wounded and dead gunners, who sadly experienced the danger of new invented weaponry. So this idea was great and I designed an exploded handgun by using a cutter with a polystyrol rod.

I tried to position the miniatures in a way which makes it possible to put them right in front of each other. This is not very important for the game since skirmishers are used to screen the more important troops, but for display it´s not bad.

The leader of the unit is one a patrician from Frankfurt. Actually I do not know the name of the family, I just saw the crest on a church during a walk through my home town and painted it. The patricians were not noble, so I think that the leader is interested in new weaponry and maybe he understood how important the weapon will be for the future.

18. März 2012
The Feud of Kronberg: Heavy Cavalry from Frankfurt

My second Impetus element for our club’s presentation for the next Tactica wargaming show is an element showing Johann, Herrmann, Henne and Siegfried von Holzhausen, all members of an mighty patrician family with their mercenaries. The family crest shows three roses on black. I designed the banners in order to look similar than the on the crest showed in the Dome of Frankfurt.

My plan was to show the patricians on their way to the battlefield. Therefore I depicted a country road and showed the group in loose marching order. In my imagination the only good fighter in the group is the infantrist with the huge falchion walking behind the rich citicens of Frankfurt. His job is to secure that falling off the horses will not end in instant death. As far as I can imagine a patrician was not as experiencend in fighting than their opponents, the knights of Kronberg.

Good to know that the family pevailed some more centuries and wasn´t extiguished during that battle. Adding some local spice to hobby project was again much fun and I will definetly go for more crests out of the region. However I am sure that the base can be used in any other conflict in that epoche like the 100 years war.

30. August 2011
Kronberger Fehde – Infantry with polearms from Frankfurt

In our club we started recently to play Impetus, which has the very nice effect, that you can design diorama bases with your miniatures. I really love to collect that kind of army, interesting to know is, that there are guys out there, who play DBA with that kind of bases as well.

However I do like the Impetus gameplay so far, since I do enjoy games, if they are surprising at some point. If I am a little bit more experienced in Impetus, I will talk more on that. I always wanted to have a medieval army, and I urgently needed to have an excuse to paint the Perry´s Agincourt to Orleans Range.

The conflict we want to depict is the „Kronberger Fehde“ a local conflict between the City of Frankfurt and the knights of Kronberg, which had quite an impact to the decline of might of the free german cities. If you follow that article you will find a painting of the battle which took place in spring 1389.

The miniatures I used wear gambesons, chainmail and partly plate armour, since the germans still used a lot chainmail during that time. Lemming told me, that the german chainmail was of such a quality that it was still used in contrast to the french and english armies of that time.

I definetly was inspired by Antipaters excellent Impetus Bases, which also are shown in the Extra Impetus book, he made me look at that system. He supported me with detailed information on the armour and clothing of that time and his literature list was an excellent starting point. Thanks again for that, Antipater!

I modified some of the miniatures, since the Perrys depicted some of them as suffering from dysentery and therefore leaving their trousers down the heel, always prepared to shit. That was not exactly my expectation for the force of Frankfurt, although they failed in the battle due to loss of morale, as far as I know. El Comandante therefore will show some of them with their trowsers down.

The rock was made by Rusus, it´s made from Ceramofix and is an phantastic material, since it looks like real stone, but is absolutely flat on the bottom. I used a very similar painting technic as told by Elladan using airbrush paints to ink down a white rock.

The banner was inspired by the medieval painting depicting the battle of Kronberg. It shows the Eagle of the Holy Roman Empire on red. I used an illustration from Wikipedia to create the banner. The printed paper was glued and afterwards I painted and highlighted the red. Since I want to use a lot of banners, I prefered to use the printed banner technic. For sure I will paint some Knights banners by hand, but that motive is very detailed.

24. März 2011