Saturday, November 01, 2014

Mirliton Handgunners

With all the non-human units I have been painting for the rest of the gang, I thought I needed to restore balance to the Warp by painting up the Mirliton Handgunners (or Fighting Men with Guns in the Forlorn Hope catague and Harquebusiers in the Mirliton catalogue) I bought along with the Halfling archers.


As you can see, these come in 5 different poses, with handguns that look rather different too - which makes me wonder: historically, did handgunners have the same "model" of guns?


Here you can see them poses with my Perry plastic handgunners. The Mirliton figures are smaller than their Perry counterparts, but because of their stances they blend in quite well.

I have been thinking about giving my army a more "pike-and-shot" doctrine, so these are a useful addition. I should be getting my Perry foot knights from Martin tomorrow, which will let me bulk my Greatswords up to a horde of 40. Thereafter I hope to buy a dozen crossbowmen from Claymore Castings when their new figures are released. Stay tuned.

1 comment:

SteveHolmes11 said...

On the subject of "Model" of gun. There's little evidence of any form of mass production in 14-1500 Europe.

No shortage of candidates for mass manufacture: Shields, spearheads, bricks; however most stuff was hand crafted with little evidence of numbers of people being brought together in large enterprises.

This is a significant step backwards from the Hellensitic / Roman / Han Dynasty worlds, where mass production was needed to feed and support the burgeoning cities.

My guess is that a limited number of smiths manufactured the barrels, and local carpenters fashioned the stocks as ordered by the mercenary shootists.