Hugh "the Hammer" Duggan, Pistolier Captain

I know I said that I would do the artillery first, but then I ordered another artillery piece and I thought I would do them together when it arrives.

So instead, I started work on the pistoliers. Here is the captain of the unit, Hugh "the Hammer" Duggan.

 There's a bit of a story behind this unit.

Now when I started this whole project, the idea was to take advantage of the relatively cheap Perry plastics to supply a human army for my Strandhogg games. I would have used a Dark Age army like the Saxons or Vikings also available, but I thought they were too similar to the dwarves I already own, and so I settled on the WOTR figures.

I had to choose a livery for the army, and instead of picking a historical heraldry I decided to use that of the name of an old friend.

As the force expanded I begin to imagine that I might be able to field a full Warhammer army. After some browsing, I decided to go for an Empire army instead of a Bretonnian one. Now one of the more exotic units in the Empire army is the pistoliers, which look like ECW cavalry, which are of course anachronistic - but hey, Warlord Games makes them in plastic, which suits me fine. I did feel a little guilty about painting them in the same livery as the rest of the troops though, so I decided I would paint them up as maybe a mercenary unit.

Once again, I turned to my friend to help pick a name, and I used the name of an old friend of his - Duggan. Rather happily, the Duggan coat of arms has the colours blue, white and yellow, which matches that of the Holmes (yellow and blue). This means the units will look distinct from each other, yet still be tied together by a common colour.

I am planning to create a unit of eight mounted figures, including the captain, a standard-bearer with the Duggan banner, a trumpeter, and five troopers armed with pistols or swords, as well as a dismounted version of each rider; this will allow me to use them in a dragoon or mounted infantry role for scenario games, with one figure in four being a horse-holder when the unit dismounts. But more on that later.

For the mounted version of the unit I will use the figures pretty much "as is", with the face guard clipped off to show the face better. The basic "uniform" will be a blue coat. The sash will be white. The saddle-clothe is likewise blue with a white border.

Hopefully I can get the dismounted version of "the Hammer" painted tomorrow and I will bore you with the story of that...