French ordonnance archers #2

Here's the second unit of French ordonnance archers. Like the first one, its a mix of Perry and Crusader miniatures, with most of the bow hands replaced by those from the Perry Agincourt plastic set. This one I chose to put in a red and green livery - the plan is to have most of the French army in red, but with some units varying this slightly so it doesn't get too uniform. I also added a few heavily armoured figures with polearms. The standard bearer is from the new WOTR range from Athena Miniatures, which I backed on Kickstarter (perhaps more on that in another post someday).

Here's a closer look at one of the Crusader Miniatures conversions, before and after. The new head is from Perry, and I was able to position it at a slightly different angle which I think really helped.

And here's a look at the added green stuff layers, courtesy of Graham Green (you can find him on Facebook under 'Greygreen Customs'). The riding boots from the first unit were such a success, I went for more of them in this second unit, and also realised I could add mail shirts under the livery jackets, to be paired with appropriate mailed arms. 

The captain and two of the polearm men are converted from the Wargames Foundry WOTR range. There are some real nice sculpts in this old range, but they suffer from being much smaller than the modern Perry range. This can be remedied (on some of them at least) by new plastic legs to give them the required height! Though if you are to look closely you might decide perhaps the waists are too high or the arms a little short, when mixed into a unit I don't think any anatomical oddities are noticeable. This only works on certain sculpts which can be paired with certain legs, and requires a bit of re-sculpting with green stuff to hide the join (which in this case I was able to do myself) - for this reason I've only attempted it with figures wearing coats or jackets, the lower edges of which can just be extended down.

And here's the finished unit! I'm even more pleased by this one than the first.