With the first tournament of the year (the Welsh Open) rapidly approaching, I have upped the speed at which I’m producing units for my new Later Italian Condotteri army.

First up are the last of the infantry that I need: a unit of Crossbowmen:

These are Perry platics taken from the Mercenary Infantry 1450-1500 box, and very nice they are too.

The Crossbowmen are pretty easy to build, and you have a nice variety in poses for both shooters and those reloading.

Next up are the first of the Later Knights, also Perry plastics:

The horses were fairly easy to put together: the only tricky bit was getting the surcoats to line up properly at both front and back.

The knights were a bit tougher: head and left arm were easy, but getting the lance-arm in the right place was a real pain as, presumably in the interests of pose flexibility, the lance and the arm come in two parts: the lance and the hand holding it, and the handless arm. Getting it all to fit together after wrestling with the horse surcoats and the rest of the rider was not fun!

They are, however, easy to paint: lots of good detail and relief. The panels on the horse surcoats come with some embellishments and studs along the seams which, as you can hopefully see, can be painted in a bronze/gold colour that really makes the figure pop. The rest of the model is mostly armour: black undercoat highlighted with steel.

All in all I love the look I’ve achieved with the Knights…almost enough to make up for the pain that was the lance arm!