Regular visitors will know that I am currently building a 28mm Later Italian Condotteri (Venetian) army to use of this year’s To The Strongest competition circuit.

An incomplete army, with borrowed figures to fill the gaps, took to the battlefield at the Welsh Open last month, but with the World Championships fast approaching, it was time to get cracking on the rest.

First up were the Lanzieri provisionati or spearmen. I decided to use the same figures as for the pikemen, but just use less of them. Not sure if that is correct, but the alternative was to perform reductive surgery on the pikes to make them shorter. which seemed like an awful lot of hard work and fragile joints!

Then I needed to paint up the final unit of Later Knights. Again I went for the un-surcoated look as this unit wouldn’t have an officer attached to it and could be used to represent lanza spezzate “broken lance” mercenaries.

This also made the knights very easy to paint: reins, horse, paint everything armoured in black then dry-brush with silvery-steel to get the armour effect. Lances in bright red and you’re done!

I’d already painted two units of foot knights (to use in case I need to dismount my cavalry in the face of, for example, elephants, camels, bad terrain, mucho missile fire etc) but needed three more to complete the set:

I loved painting these. Using Perry plastics enables you to build figures in some really unique, characterful poses, and they are even easier to paint than the mounted knights (no horse!). I also like the idea that such a puny looking unit (only four figures) can carve their way through a deep warband like the proverbial knife through barbarian butter!

So that is most of the army now done. Just need to do a few heroes, a spare unit of light crossbowmen in case I want to go earlier than handguns, and then an army standard and some Alabardieri (halberdiers) to bulk things out for bigger points totals.

All I have to do now is hope that the curse of the “first time on the tabletop” doesn’t apply at the World’s!