I've always been fascinated by historical mercenaries. This may go back to playing "Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries" as a kid (which is not, granted, strictly historical).
The reality of medieval and renaissance mercenaries was not pleasant. Emperor Maximilian I described the lives of Landsknecht mercenaries as “brutish and short." However, in light of this, Maximilian allowed them to ignore sumptuary laws that regulated what people could wear. Thus, the super cool, distinctive, bright and interesting fashions of the Landsknechts.
For my fantasy games I created a mercenary company called the "Coinpikes." As in, they wield pikes for coin. Here is the original design for the company's uniform (even though real mercenary company uniforms tended to be anything but uniform). Purple and green with red and white details (though there is very little green on there, and the white chest dominates the outfit). When I decided to paint a few miniatures to represent the mercenaries, this was the general color scheme I looked to.
The first Coinpike I painted up was a caster and/or noncombatant. Looking at the pose, he could also be an unarmed pugilist or a rogue, I guess. As this was the test piece, some of the colors are a bit different than on the other models. The purple especially is a bit lighter (since it's somewhat hard to find a good purple, I'd found).
The main body for this and the other mercenaries below come from the Warlord Games "Pike & Shotte" line. Since I only wanted to make a few, I picked up a sprue each of "Landsknecht Missile Troops," "Landsknechts with Zweihanders," and "Landsknecht Command Frame" during one of Warlord Games' fairly frequent sales. Each of the first two sprues had six bodies, a bunch of heads, and the appropriate weapons for their type. The command frame had two or three bodies and a handful of other parts.
The caster here procured arms from a Warlord Games "Bolt Action" sprue of "Winter Soviet Infantry." It looks for all the world like he's trying to hypnotize someone. It's not perfect, but I think it has its charm.
His color scheme is very close to the original design above, with changes made to fit the needs of the model. The feather on his cap didn't turn out very well, but feathers are hard and you'll see the feathers get better as we go on.
Our arbalist here doesn't have a hat on because her head is from a Warlord Games "Project Z" sprue. She wields a crossbow and has a little case of bolts on her hip. The sprue for the missile troops comes with both crossbows and handguns (old-fashioned arquebus models), and while I love the old-timey guns (and they were frequently used by Landsknechts), these miniatures are for use in a D&D-style fantasy world, so guns aren't really a thing.
I envision the arbalist as the sergeant of the little squad, relaying the captain's orders to the others and getting things done.
Here we have the captain himself. Another example of my orange paint equals red hair policy. I think he has a body and head from the zweihander frame, arms from the command frame, and a shield that originally belonged to a Skaven (because there were no shields in the kit). As a point of note, outside of a handful of sword and buckler men (who were more common in Spanish Tercios), shields weren't really used by Landsknechts. In a fantasy world however, liberties are taken and so this gentleman gets a higher armor class.
There's very little white on the model, as the armor dominates the figure and too many colors would clutter it. Instead, the fabric is predominantly purple and green with a bit of red and a little white poking through on his slashed pants. While he may have an issue if enemies attack from the rear, I really do love his armor overall. This figure is ready to lead troops into battle.
Also, his feather is incrementally better than the previous one.
This doppelsöldner wields a zweihander and looks like he's not going to take guff from anybody.
This figure was the last one I originally intended to paint for the squad and I took quite a bit of time on him. His face and especially feather turned out better than usual. I'm very proud of how he came out.
Doppelsöldner, by the way, translates as "double-pay soldier" because he was paid twice as much as other Landsknechts. In return, most were expected to run into battle on the very front lines and try to break the enemy's wall of pikes with their oversized swords. This did not usually end well. A line I heard about them says "Double the pay, half the life expectancy."
I love this model. He looks so relaxed, but still menacing. And that feather!
While I didn't intend to make any more of these mercenaries, when I was finished with the above I realized that I didn't have any pikemen in my coinPIKES so I threw one together. I used Perry Agincourt arms to get a pike. It looks like he's trying to poke something out of a tree.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the slow-witted rookie of the squad.
In any case, there are my
four five Coinpike Mercenaries for fantasy RPGs. They would also make great companions for a "Rangers of Shadow Deep" ranger whose kingdom has more money than manpower.
Here's what the miniature is made out of:
The character in question I'm now calling John Nox, because he isn't quite the same as the version I started from. The character pictured to the left I called Rot, and he's gone through a number of iterations over the years (as comics characters are wont to do). The first two versions pictured are from old versions of "Fábrica de Heróis" online superhero maker from at least a decade ago. The last one is a minimalist pixel art version of the same. I have to say, I loved making characters in the "Diniverse" style generator (the one on the far left); I must have made over a hundred.
