Tercio Creativo miniatures showcase and review : French "30 Years War" fantasy miniatures.

 Hello guys,

A quick update on my XVII c. warbands.  This time I painted a couple of excellent "Tercio Creativo" sculpts, from his "Gallic usurpers" faction, aka French, with a slight fantasy look, but historical enough for me. My only complain is their scale, 32mm heroic scale, so a little bit bigger than my other miniatures from other manufacturers like Anno Domini 1666 (28mm small), Bloody Miniatures (28mm standard) or Bicorne (28mm mid to big).

The first one is a cuirassier with a curious helmet but historical as I could see in military museum of Paris, Les Invalides, some examples of these kind of helmets are in my previous post.

This cuirassier is over armoured, by mid XVII no cuirassier would be dressed with that amount of metal plates, but the miniature is nice, and his weapon is quite interesting, an Axe-pistol:

The painting was quite simple, just a dark metal colour, washed, drybrushed and with some simple edge highlight, it was fast, I did not want to spend hours with that dark armour, and I matt varnished it. The cloak is foundry blue, I am quite happy with its result as it looks smoothly painted and clean.

The other miniature is a conversion of a Tercio Creativo guard with French halberd. I cut his head, which was also a cuirassier head with a sunrise expression , and glued a metal head with a XVII c. cabasset in French or Dutch style , nicely done by Reiver Castings miniatures (Thanks to Rob Anderson who kindly donated a bunch of these).

I like the  Fleur de Lis on his chest cuirass that identify him as French. I painted his trousers in the same blue tone of the dismounted cuirassier's cloak, in order to give some cohesion to the warband.

With these two miniatures, I have a total of 3 Tercio Creativo French, and I plan to build a modified Mordheim warband or just play Donnybrook or Encamisada.

The third mini was painted a year ago or so, and is the leader of my French enfant perdús, from my Siege of Girona 1684.

I will add more miniatures from this brand, like a flag bearer, a sniper, a duelist... And from other brands maybe some common troops  maybe from Bloody Miniatures and Anno Domini 1666. The only problem with Anno Domini 1666 is that its miniatures are more realistically proportioned, and are more slim and less bulky, but otherwise fantastic sculpts like its King's Musketeers and Cardinal's Guard! 

Here you can see some unpainted examples

from left to right: Tercio Creativo, Bloody Miniaturd, Bloody Miniatures and Anno Domini 1666.

All these are Tercio Creativo miniatures, some of them very useful for XVIIc games.

conversion on the right

Some small terrain pieces for generic or XVII c. games

 Hello guys,

This will be the last post of 2022 ! I am painting a couple of galleons in different scales to see which scales fits my needs for the new games like Mad for War (Barry Hilton) or Black Seas (Warlord Games), also some Romans,  Foundry Marlburians...  But also I wanted to finish 3 small terrain pieces for my XVII games. 

The first one is a stone cross, by "Tercio Creativo", very simple terrain although quite nice, I painted it in several shades of earthy greys, washes and drybrushing. This kind of crosses were (and are) very common in Europe,  It is intended to be used in my XVII c. games in Spain, Flanders or Italy, also in WW2 Italy or France.

the other 2 are: a barricade made of wooden boxes, very simple and easy to paint with successive drybrushing stages in different tones, and a paper flag on top with Spain's coat of arms. 

And a destroyed cart with barrels and wicker basket, also quite simple.

Sorry but I don't remember the manufacturers of the last two pieces. All 3 are resin.

Cheers and Happy New Year!

Another member of my Tercio skirmish force

 Hello guys,

It has been a while since last time I updated this blog. In August it was too hot to paint, and also some summer trips abroad prevented me from grabbing my brushes, but here I am again.

These past weeks I am in a World War 2 mood, so I want to re-launch my Bolt Action force for Sicily, Normandy and Far East, but in the meantime, I wanted to finish a miniature from "Tercio Creativo", a sword and buckler man, in heroic 28mm scale, so more 30mm than 28mm... I have a lot of these miniatures and really like its sculpting, but they are little bit too big compared to the rest of my collection, so I use them separately, in skirmish mode.

I painted him using the Foundry Triad system, and then matt varnish with brush... sadly I used a dirty brush (with some plaster from a terrain project) when applied the matt varnish, so there are some traces of plaster in the trousers of the figure :( but anyway, I am happy with the end result.

Now all the miniatures of this range I have already painted, plus Alatriste, from Anno Domini 1666. the difference in size is slightly noticeable.

Cheers!

XVII c. Marksman: sniper for the Tercio!

 Hi guys!

I hope your summer is going fine, despite this terrible hot weather...  now I continue in my Pike and Shot mood, so  I am slowly (as always) building a small warband of  a Spanish Tercio for skirmish games such as Donnybrook, or our modification of Mordheim, adapted to 30 Years War. 

Last month I painted Captain Alatriste, using a miniature from "Anno Domini 1666" miniatures, you can see it in this blog in the last entry of June 2022. And  I also have the standard bearer from "Tercio Creativo", which I will show to you soon, and now I have painted a sniper or marksman, also from "Tercio Creativo".

This brand is a Spanish company which produces some good quality resin miniatures for their sci-fi and alt-historical games like “1650 a capa y a espada” a fantasy game set in an alternate world with some factions inspired in mid XVII C. Spanish and French.

I don’t play that game, but I really like how their miniatures look, and some of them are very useful for historical games 30 Years War style ! 

So this miniature is called “Zurriago” in their catalog, but currently is out of production, but probably will be for sale soon. 

I instantly fell in love with the oversized heavy musket and the aesthetic of the miniature, the sculpt is very good, with no flash or bubles... so with those merits he is now the marksman of my warband or little skirmishes force. 

As you can see, it’s full of little details (very time consuming to paint). I painted him mostly in Foundry paints triads, I specifically like their brownish shades like conquer brown, buff leather, and dark African flesh, also use Vallejo paints, and this time, I resorted to Citadel Rakarth Flesh for the shirt of the soldier. In past times I used only citadel (from 2000 onwards) but their tendency to dry out inside the pot made my change my paint range to other paints.

The varnish is my new favorite matt varnish; Green Stuff World ultra matt varnish!

I hope you like the finish result :)

Civilian gun and militia for the siege of Gerona 1684: PART II FINAL

 

Hello guys,

Here is the part II and final of the civilian and milita unit for the siege of Gerona 1684.

I've added an unarmored pikeman from NorthStar 1672, turned into a gunner, painted in earthy colors, in order to give him a more civilian look. Also a Front Rank militiaman, from the "Monmouth Rebellion" range, I replaced his scythe with a halberd, to give him a more military touch. 

Front Rank late XVII c artillery man with a green stuff feather

Civilian Hero

The gabions are 3D printed, the Chevaux de Frise is from Warfare Miniatures, and the fence is resin from a Polish brand whose name I can't remember (sorry!). Regarding the gun/saker, it's a mixture of various brands... Warlord carriage, Warhammer wheels...

These defenders, although painted and modeled to "serve" in the 1684 Siege of Girona, are nevertheless generic and versatile enough to fight in any 17th century siege from 1665 onwards.

In this particular case, they will load the cannon with shrapnel, nails, stones, buttons, or coins to wreak havoc on attackers at close range, plus it can fight well in melee mode and musketry fire, making it a potent unit: entrenched, with melee and ranged attacks!

The other two guys; kneeling musketeer and soldier with plug bayonet were shown in the previous post about this unit, and they are Bicorne and Front Rank miniatures respectively.

I hope you like them!

Civilian gun and militia for the siege of Gerona 1684: PART I

 Hello guys!

Following my project on the siege of Gerona in 1684, I came up with the idea of ​​making a unit, which consists of an old cannon or saker operated by civilians and militia, led by a popular hero from the ranks of the common people or maybe, an hidalgo (lesser nobility).

                                                        

                                                        

                                                        

In order to do this I am going to use a spare gun that I had stored somewhere, a couple of gabions, a palisade and other defenses, and behind all this, the defenders.

I am using miniatures from various brands, especially Front Rank, but also Bicorne, North Star 1672 and Tercio Creativo.

I did not want to paint these guys very uniformed, in order to give them a more civilian appearance, and I have tried to use different shades of brown, gray and green. But also some regular troops like the musketeer with the plug bayonet, I have painted the complete uniform in green,  just like the Tercio from Granada city, present in the battle.

                                                     

                                                     

And I will paint one of the artillerymen inspired by the fantastic illustration of Bruno Mugnai in his book about the Spanish army

This is just a teaser since the whole  unit won't be finished until early May, but the idea is that it counts as a cannon-supported by militia. 

If the hero who inspires the defenders dies, the unit loses leadership and if they are unlucky with the dice, it could be melted away... But if the hero remains, the countrymen will fight for Spain, for the king and for San Narcissus, patron saint of the city. The cannon fires shrapnel at close range, making it deadly against French infantry storming the  breaches of walls that have already been demolished.

                                                    

                                                    

For this I painted a few months ago French assault troops with armor, grenadiers and a petard assault team...

Now, some context:

in the first post of the Siege of Gerona 1684 project :

https://spanishleadpainting.blogspot.com/2021/01/new-campaign-project-siege-of-gerona.html

you have the complete text with the details of the fighting, but I want to share here with you some notes for this unit:

"after the French bombardment, two breaches were made in the walls, one 20 feet (6 m) wide and an even larger one easily climbed by fallen rubble. To prevent the assault, the besieged raised a fortified barricade from the Santa Clara bastion to  the Governor's crescent, pulling people from both crescents to place them in defense of the barricades. This was protected by the 2,000 best musketeers in the garrison.

In the 2 breaches of the walls, the aformentioned barricades were built, with fascines and gabions, and the Spanish put 8 guns aiming to the wide breaches, the Germans of Von Bek, did a great job in those works. The Bishop of Gerona sent the troops good food and wine, because they did a good job during the bombardment days, building defensive works."

Also

"The Germans in French service who took Santa Clara's bastion, were inmediately counterattacked by a student company from the walls, and regular troops, using a bronze cannon  loaded with musket balls, inflicting the Germans great damage. That bastion was near a fountain with a statue of Saint Narcissus, the protector of Gerona, so the Spanish, according to contemporary documents, started to shout "fight the heretics!, Viva España, Viva San Narciso! Victoriaaaa!" and charged the confused Germans, who finally lost their position and run away without their weapons."