Pineapple Miniatures - first of the first - Brunswick Army, Quatre-Bras1815

How could I forget to take a picture of the 1st Pineapple of them all?

Of course! No one would think that Pineapple Miniature could reach the world wide prestige it holds now as number 1 product for sale at the Museu Militar do Buçaco! 

The first was a large box packed with 30 Brunswick miniatures - infantry, cavalry  and artillery - Esci transformed miniatures, including a figure of the Duke itself from Waterloo1815.

The flags are hand painted in paper. I remember using avıdly the excellent Osprey book on the subject for painting and scratch building my Brunswickers.

I found this rarity in Izmir, Turkey by puuuuure coincidence in OB house.

How was this possible? 😳

DBR- Battle of Mohács 1526 (part 8) 20mm Hungarian household cavalry

Now for some Hungarian just out of the varnish spray.

Most of figures are Miniart Burgundians and French with some Zvezda French knights. 

Here is Ludwig II ahead of his household cavalry in that mad charge against the Ottoman center.

Take a good look at him cause he died some minutes later and may be the last time you see the young king.

In order to have balanced armies I'll make a group each time of Ottomans  and  Hungarians. 

The flags are colour photocopies of the ones I showed you in part 6.

Hungarian cavalry is great and easy to paint (as all Gendarme cavalry type) :

- black spraying

- apply some dry brush steel colour 

- and later aluminium colour. This will make the knights armatures shine and look cooler. 

The Zvezda horses are quite short in height and look a bit silly with its horsemen on top. That is strange for probably the best plastic small scale figure manufacturer ever.

On the contrary Miniart horses are tall and slim but all this mixed together makes a pleasant sight.

Truly speaking the ones I would like to have are the DDS XVI century knights but these suckers have vanished from the market as no shop seems to have them on stock. I think it was Suleyman...

DBR- Battle of Mohács 1526 (part 7) - 20mm Ottoman and Hungarian flags

The first group are some Ottoman flags for the Suleyman years taken from the web after a research by OB ( no she is not from Brigada Tripeira, she is Galatasaray).

The first is the Ottoman Battle flag; the other ones with the red field are the State flag and the green are generic Ottoman. 

The quality of the printing will not be the best as the phone camera resolution is not a great thing. 

If you want the real stuff send me an email to jpp681@gmail.com and I'll gladly send you the file.

The 1st page of Hungarian flags are suitable for the cavalry and are hand painted with acrylic, hence the scrubby look.  

The isolated flag in the next picture is the Ottoman Solak flag and should be used in a cruciform pole.

The next group of Hungarian flags already include some for the infantry, namely the last two which can be used for the Landsknecht.

After resizing you may print them at your will. Hope they can be useful. 

DBR- Battle of Mohács 1526 (part 6) - 20mm, first Sipahis painted

The converted Sipahis from two posts ago already painted.

These ones were conversions from Esci and Italeri with some extra details added.

The blue colours on most of these Ottomans vests were inspired on the Mohács movie I've showed you. There are many more available on the Osprey books and such. Search in the web for George Gush Airfix articles on Renaissance warfare. They are an excelent start for the period and mainly designed for wargaming.

The red flags are loosely based on the red flags of the Silâhtar Sipahis, one of the elite group of the household cavalry.

  

  A few extra were added like the Evergreen bow case...

... and an armoured chest protection    for everybody made out of painted Liquid GreenStuff and a turban from normal GreenStuff for one Sipahi per stand.

DBR- Battle of Mohács 1526 (part 5) - Figures you can use.

These are the existing plastic for the Renaissance period and Ottoman Vs Hungarian (according to PSR site).

Ottoman:

- Orion janissaries.

- Zvezda cavalry.

- Zvezda janissaries.

- Lucky Toys Turks.

My Ottoman army will have all of these less the Janissaries Orion box as I could find two Zvezda janissaries boxes in Izmir, and c'mon, buying Ottoman soldiers in Turkey is really cool (in spite of Zvezda being Russian...). 

Hungarian (most approximate, as there is no Hungarian dedicated box ):

- DDR Landsknecht (2 boxes, one with pikemen and another with Doppelsoldners and arquebusiers).

- DDR knights  (apparently not in production).

All of this figures but the DDR knights will be on my army, and will be replaced by Miniart knights.

BUT, there is always a butt (and some of them are reeeeeally extraordinary...) you can use other boxes from late Middle Ages to make the large variety of different soldiers present at Mohács 1526: 

Non dedicated Ottoman boxes:

- StreletsR Muzlim Foot Warriors, Arab Cavalry and Turcopoles Cavalry for the Azab, Akinji, Balkan and Tartar contingents.

- Esci Muzlim Warriors for some torsos and heads both for Sipahis and artillerymen. 

(This is the IPSBLQHB (initially-pretty-stupid-but-later-quite-helpful-buying) I did at a supermarket for 1€ each. 

- Italeri Saracen Warriors for camels, foot Azab and horses. 

- Italeri Mongol Horde for tartars and Sipahi barded horses.

Non dedicated Hungarian boxes:

- Miniart Burgundian or French Cavalry as they are almost the same. 

- Zvezda 100 YW French Cavalry also have many lancers that fit nicely the Hungarian knights. 

- Zvezda 100 YW French Infantry, specially for the crossbows. 

For the Hungarian infantry I still have to look better both for arquebusiers and spear armed figures probably from Miniart, metal being the last resource.

This Mohács 1526 project will be mostly a job on the cheap side, with many boxes from the stockpile and conversions, and when this happens it's a particularly thrilling thing as what comes out is generally a collection of unique figures. 

DBR - Battle of Mohács 1526 (part 4) - converted Sipahis

One of the  first sources of figures for this Mohács project is a huge stash of Esci Muzlims I found some 10 years ago in a supermarket (???) in Covilhã, a city close to the Spanish border.

There were 15 such boxes, all the same, and at an irresistible 1€ each as I told in the previous post. So I bought them all with that typical eagerness of the pre-crisis era, thinking as usual that one day they could be useful for Alcácer Quibir or to fight the French Foreign Legion or ... whatever. 

Well, we just don't need too many coherent reasons to justify our hobby, do we?

So here it goes he first use of the Esci Muzlim box. After comparing the figures to the ones I could use for Mohács 1526 there is only one figure (better, its torso) and some heads that can be used. What  could I expect if the box was designed for XIX century North Africa?

Worse: there are only 3 such figures per box. But at 15 boxes it makes 45 figures, plus some 21 more from some 7 other boxes previously bought. 

So here you can see what use I gave them:  they turned into armoured mounted Sipahis. 

        

     

These figures were cut by the waist as well as some Italeri Mongols and Saracens who provided legs and horses. 

The bond was achieved with cyanocrilate for soft plastics. 

The scimitar was cut off and replaced with a lance made from the bristle of a plastic broom.

The arms of some were heated with a lighter and placed in different positions for the sake of variety. 

Ottoman army is gathering around his sancak (flag- for you not versed in Turkish, he he ...).

DBR - Battle of Mohács 1526 (part 3) - Shots from the movie

Just for some colour I'll show you some camera shots from the movie on the battle of Mohács 1526.

The Ottomans:

The Janissaries are supposed to sport blue jackets but the period miniatures show them in all sort of colours, mainly blue, red, yellow and some green.

Armoured Sipahis.

Sipahis Rumes (western Sipahis).

Artillery.

The Hungarians:

Heavy cavalry.

Hussars.

Landsknecht:

Hope it continues to help, Big Andy. But nothing's better than watching the movie.

DBR - Battle of Mohács 1526 (part 2) - B/W drawings

The movie I posted a few days ago is an extraordinary encyclopedia on the equipment and uniforms of the battle of Mohács.

The information is such that I decided to do some drawings on the soldiers and equipment of the battle from the movie it self. This way I can stop seeing the movie  almost on a daily basis and have a rest...

There are no specific plastic Hungarian figures in 1/72nd scale, the same for many of the Ottoman types. So I hope these plates are useful to make conversions from the existing Zvezda, StreletsR, Miniart, DDS and such. 

The Hungarians:

The Ottomans:

Flags and last uniforms:

Hope they can be useful to all who want to wargame this period.

Pineapple Miniatures - 1/32nd scale - 95th Rifles, Buçaco 1810

Brand new from ACTA : the famous 95th Rifles, which fought around Sula Village at Buçaco 1810 against Ney corps.

If not for the tucked trousers and the bayonet in the rifle (hindering aiming) these miniatures portray nicely these famous soldiers. 

'Were can I find them?' is everybody asking, right? Buçaco Military Museum, as usual...

Pineapple Miniatures - 1/32nd scale Portuguese artillery - Buçaco 1810

Latest additions for the Buçaco museum:

The ACTA 9 pdr gun manned by four ACTA crew. 

Originally these figures are Waterloo British, but with a few carved out details and some putty they become Portuguese artillery for the 1810 campaign. 

Pineapple Miniatures - 1/32nd scale conversions for the LLL and theBritish Line infantry

This post is about some changes I made on the A Call To Arms (ACTA) Belgian infantry equipped with the Belgian Shako (based historically on the Portuguese Barretina) in order to produce Stovepipe equipped infantry.

This happened because I quitted waiting for the ACTA British Light Infantry, equipped with the Stovepipe, from my normal supplier.

The Belgian Shako had the cords taken out with a X-Acto and GreenStuff was modelled to the back part of the Shako and a pompon was placed in the front.

The Loyal Lusitanian Legion was a unit present at Buçaco that used the Stovepipe as it had been equipped in England.

Here they are with the correct headdress.

 The ones I painted before were wrong and the best I could do was to paint an old model of Barretina used in 1808.

Using the same changes you can also produce the British line infantry as these 88th Connaught Rangers. 

The only few other small extras are the woolen shoulders also made in GreenStuff.

Pineapple Miniatures - 1/32nd scale Portuguese and French cavalry

Pineapple is now riding 1/32nd scale horses. Portuguese cavalry are A Call to Arms Life Guards conversions. The helmet is not absolutely accurate even after some GreenStuff applied.

The French are again A Call to Arms. This  time straight out of the box Dragoons for the 26th regiment.

Also a few more 1/72nd scale boxes:

Also painted is another group of 30 individual 1/72nd scale miniatures, Scottish and French line infantry.

French line infantry, Buçaco 1810.

79th line (Scottish) infantry, Buçaco 1810.

All These can be found as usual at the Buçaco Military Museum.