28mm Fireforge Hospitallers - now in red!

Having now painted more Hospitallers than actually served in the Holy Land, any variety when it comes to painting Fireforge's excellent medieval miniatures is always welcome.  In this case, there were to be several deviations from my normal way of working.  Firstly, and most obviously, six of the mounted Hospitallers were to be finished in red;

The second difference was that the miniatures were to be multi-based.  As you can see in most of my other postings, I usually base miniatures singly.  It's a small feat of engineering getting three mounted Fireforge guys to squeeze onto a 60mm x 45mm base and not look like they've just crashed!

As I was modelling two units of three, one is equipped with lances, and the other with hand weapons (yes, I know a lance is a hand weapon... but it's a common Rules distinction).  I have to admit I wasn't at all sure that the red scheme would 'work' on a barded horse, and almost chickened-out and gave all six unbarded horses.  But I'm happy to report that I was wrong.  Despite the huge amount of red already on display from the cloaks and surcoats, the barded horses (to me) just look more intimidating - rather than too fancy or just too much :)

I don't think I got the shield shade quite correct, as it looks a bit soft compared to the vibrant blood red of the rest of the miniatures... but the crosses on the barding look pretty good.  Looking at the pictures now, I'd have had maybe only one barded horse per base. And not had two brown horses on the same base.  And maybe left the cloaks off the riders who were on barded horses.  Just to improve the balance a bit. 

As well as the red ones, I was also to produce some in classic black. Again, these were a little tricky to rank up on the small bases - this is probably just the right size base for three horsemen in 'true' 25mm, but a bit cramped for these more heroic sorts.  I'd guess Perrys would fit more easily.  I'm much happier with the composition of the unit above - three different horses both in pose and colour, and only one of them barded.

This is another lance-armed unit.  Again, it might look better with only one barded horse - but I wanted to do half the riders (overall) with barded horse and half without, so some bases got two.  This looks more obvious, as both barded horses are also black!

This is the command group. They've clearly been paying attention to the ordained instructions of not shedding blood, and have chosen to wield maces instead :)

Another unit with hand weapons, and a better looking composition.  Incidentally, some of the Hospitaller shields use transfers from Veni Vedi Vici, rather than printed paper shield covers as I normally use.  There's a bit less variety, but they look pretty good.  The transfer sheets are well priced, and you get two sizes of cross.  I've used the larger on the horses, and the smaller on the shields.

A short note on horse colours... there are probably hundreds of guides on painting horses, and I wouldn't profess to be any kind of horse-expert.  But I find that some colours / combinations work better than others.  For impressive knights charging into battle in their splendid black gear, a range of sober tones and patterns is complimentary - blacks, greys, browns, and keeping the markings to white or black.  Historically, the best horses were mostly gone after the first flush of crusading zeal, and many were not replaced at all - or replaced by smaller local mounts, or even mules.  But here's the thing... I wouldn't want to see a unit of Hospitaller knights mounted on a mishmash of chargers / piebald mares / draft nags.  So instead of going for the visually-unappealing (but historically accurate) I plump for making the horse more of a background item.

This means darker neutrals for the Hospitallers, where I might give Templars mostly greys or lighter browns for their mounts.  So you're looking at the rider, not his steed.  If you take a peek at the earlier posts of dark ages Irish, you can see the opposite approach.  The mounts are small ponies (historically accurate) so I've 'enlarged' them by painting them mostly lighter colours, and even going piebald with a few.

The same commission included footsoldiers to back the knights.  They're on the next post...