Fireforge crusaders

I love these miniatures!  Everything about them.  Nicely chunky, fun to paint, and with really good interchangeability between kits.  I'm not planning a review of them here, just illustrating my enthusiasm for the product.  I've now built several boxes of each of their plastics apart from the Teutonics (which I'll probably move on to once the Mongols come out), but here's a few images of the crusaders I've done so far.  They're mostly Hospitallers, so I hope you like black.

These are a mix of pieces from the Sergeants and Templar Foot sets.  The bases are 20mm square 3mm foamboard (I prefer chunky bases, easier to pick up so less temptation to handle the paint!).  The shield designs are original art on sticker paper - can be tricky to line up as you need to be right first time every time, but they can be 'ripped and chipped' like the ply or leather surface of a shield might be.

 I went for greys and neutrals for the hose etc., with only a couple of colours spread throughout the unit, to keep it cohesive.  For a bit of relief from the black, the chaps above are wearing plain undyed padded armour.

 I especially like the kettle hat heads in these sets (plus you still get to see the eyes).  Not sure about the historical likelihood of the chap on the right's weapon, which looks like it might be more of a danger to his compadres.  Certainly his companion thinks so, hiding behind his shield like that.

 The backs of the shields are painted 'planked', more as an artistic convention than anything else, as I believe play construction was well accepted by this time.  Mind you, ply is boring to paint, and planked looks funkier.  Love the scale coat bodies in the sergeants set.

Differences in 'eye approach' here - you can barely make out the eyes of the chap on the left, but his friend has the crazed look you'd expect from a man wielding an axe.

Another spearman looking nervously at his companions spikey mace / club.  The Templar Foot set includes mail-covered arms, and bodies with cool 'splint' armour on the shins, as in the pic above.

God Wills It!  The Templar Knights set is too cool for words.  My son encouraged me to paint them up as Hospitallers, though they look just as awesome as Templars or secular knights.  I chose unbarded horses (there are also six barded horses in the set), and hand weapons rather than lances (apart from the standard bearer, of course).  The heads in the knights set are different again to the two foot sets I've worked with, and interchangeability is great.

Close up of one of the knights, and I've just noticed I forgot to paint the little tuft of foliage on the base.  D'oh!

The standard doesn't look right to me now.  White on red would have looked better, and considerably more dramatic.

How dynamic does this chap look?  I love his pitched-forward positioning, and the combination of covered face / massive axe would appear very intimidating.  If I was 28mm tall.

And there's the remaining three knights.  I felt obliged to pay homage to Hollywood and give at least one of them a spikey flail.