On the workbench....

I've been gathering together various infantry figures for the next units, which will be French 'heavy infantry'. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to group them together in units yet, so am going to go about this a bit differently, and just paint loads up and decide how the units should be put together afterwards.

I don't just want to use the Perry plastics exclusively, so have been looking at other manufacturers to see which ones will mix in well, with or without conversion work. Even if a range is proportioned a bit differently to Perry, quick headswaps go a long way to help them blend in, as long as they are not far too short in stature (i.e. Old Glory and Foundry). 

One reason for doing this is I have a certain vision in my head of how the unit will look, and I want certain poses yet not have many noticeable duplicates. The Perry foot knight plastics are of course great but can look a bit too 'random' in large units, and I've never really liked the bill and halberd arm poses from the WOTR infantry plastic set (at least not in ranked up units).

So here's a brief summary of what I've found useable from other manufacturers. These are NOT reviews of the ranges or quality of the sculpts, but rather a look at how they can be integrated with Perry Miniatures if you are really fussy about this sort thing, like I am.

Front Rank - Generally chunkier and a bit shorter than Perry, and some of the poses are a bit stiff, but some of them could be made to blend in well. The weapons are a bit too chunky.

Venexia - A limited range, but some are very nice, though a little bit shorter than Perry. Come with separate heads and open hands, which is useful. Sold by Lancashire Games.

Grenadier - Kind of chunky, a bit inconsistent, but some are nice. The weapons are far too chunky though. This old range is now available from Forlorn Hope Games.

Athena - Vary in size, some are taller than Perry, and overall somewhat slimmer, but should mix in fine.

Crusader - A tiny bit shorter than Perry, probably not noticeable, somewhat slimmer and with tiny hands. Finely detailed.

I've cherry-picked some sculpts from these ranges to be used in the upcoming heavy infantry units, plus some for a Burgundian archer unit sometime in the future. Some I've given headswaps, and have manged to drill out and replace certain oversized weapons. 

First thing to point out is I think Grenadier match really well with Front Rank - If anyone was to start a Front Rank WOTR project, they could mix in the Grenadier sculpts for more variety.

Next up, here are a selection of armoured men-at-arms from Perry, Athena and Steel Fist, to be used in my French infantry units. With the open-handed ones I mixed it up and gave them poleaxes from a variety of different manufacturers, to help them blend together (and just to be different!). 

Here's two of the polearm infantry form Venexia - good sculpts which take Perry heads and new polearms perfectly. I really like the armoured one, he's going to be really useful for various units (I've got four of him in total).

Next up, two polearm infantry from Grenadier. I replaced their chunky weapons with better scaled alternatives (which required a bit of hacking and drilling). Some of the Grenadier sculpts have short little legs, but these ones scale perfectly with Perry.

And here's a scale comparison of various ranges for my polearm troops. I plan to mix these all in together. The two Venexia ones are slightly shorter, but I could happily raise them up a mm or two, no problem.

I've also got some archer conversions - I want to use as few of the Perry plastics as I can for my next archer unit, so wanted to find as many metal longbowmen from other ranges that could be made to mix in. I've done this before with Crusader Miniatures -give them new plastic Perry bow hands (from the Agincourt range preferably), and perhaps right hands and new heads too. A couple of the archers form Grenadier are  nice - the one here in particular, I just gave him a new bowhand for consistency. A few of the others Grenadier archers will probably need leg swaps if I was to use them....

I tried giving the same treatment to some Front Rank archers. The poses of the shooting ones are a bit stiff, and they do look chunky alongside the rest, but I think I'll use a few of them for sure, they can always be hidden inside the unit a bit.

And here's some archers from Athena. Some of these have really great poses, but they are somewhat inconsistent in size. The one on the left is a perfect mix for Perry, whereas a certain few others are comparatively massive. Many of their bows were bent and damaged, but that's just the problem of thin metal weapons - easily improved by replacing with plastic bow hands. The one on the right has a bow in pretty good shape though, so he'll keep his unless I manage to snap it by mistake!

Don't expect to see these conversions painted up in finished units for a long time, but I might keep you updated with future 'workbench' posts as I paint them up.