Perry Miniatures Medieval Billmen

Miniatures here from two different commissions - one for Wars of the Roses (liveried household billmen) and one for Italian Wars mercenary troops.  Just goes to further show how adaptable this Perry kit is!

First up, some of the mercenaries.  As with the pikemen (earlier post), I wanted more variety in colour than usual, and to allow for unit-splitting.  So the block was broken down into sets of five.  This group are in savoy blue, wine red, and white.  As they are intended for a Louis XII era Italian Wars force, three have optional 'Renaissance' metal heads in soft hats.  This is an interesting transitional period - from the widespread use of armour in the 15th century, to the gradual move towards unarmoured troops throughout the 16th and early 17th century.

Side view of the same unit.  I've fitted the chap at right front of this picture (right rear of the base) with a leather jerkin instead of the bright cloth most have.  Not sure how common they were on the battlefield, but they were certainly in use by agricultural and arboreal workers, as were the bills themselves.

Classic black and white with red details.  I've used this colour scheme on everything from crusader knights to Space Marines, and it always looks striking.  The red especially seems to jump out at you.  Not sure about the white hat though... maybe I should have gone with red.  Bit of hat-angst there.

Side view of the black and white guys.  Some striped hose might have worked well here too.

William Stanley household billmen for the Wars of the Roses.  I went with more variety than usual on the hose for this unit - even just the front row shows white / red / black / blue / green.  The dominant red still shows which side they're on - even if historically nobody knew until the last minute...

Closer shot of the leftmost guys.  When the client receives them, he'll do a much better job of ranking them up than I have!  Chap at front left seems to be doing his own thing.

Another shot of the other six.  This is just half of a unit of 20, half with weapons elevated (like the chap front and centre) and half with weapons levelled, so they'll look much better when correctly grouped.

Derby's men (the other Stanley),  The tawny and green colour scheme has been combined here with lots of white in the sleeves and hose, and even one chap with a white quilted jack instead of his livery coat.  The three colours work nicely together, like the Indian flag.  The badge here is a simplified gold eagle's leg, put on by hand.

Side view.

Another side view.