Hundred Years War: English (20)

Taking a break from painting men at arms or units of bowmen this week by adding some more bases of stakes for the English bowmen to shelter behind.

I've already done several of my unit bases with stakes built on to them, but wanted to do some singles too. Each English bowmen sprue comes with six stakes and I added some ready to use arrows and a few axes either stuck in the ground or embedded in a stake ready for combat.

Perry Miniatures also do a rather splendid set of Archers preparing for battle,hammering in and sharpening stakes with five bowmen engaged in various activities. They will come in handy for denoting units that are currently placing stakes during our games.

The first pair are hammering a stake into the ground, I painted these two archers while doing my last batch of archers so they are in the same livery jackets.

The next one is sticking bundles of arrows into the ground around the stakes so the archers have a ready to use supply.

His brown and gold jerkin does not show up so well in these shots, all looks brown.

 The stales on this one are the standard plastic ones off of the archers frame and are not as chunky as the metal ones.

This chap is using an axe to sharpen one of the emplaced stakes.

I'm not sure if they would have been sharpened before or after being driven into the ground, as the English army likely picked up their stakes and advanced at Agincourt before placing them again he may just be putting the point back on one that has been hammered back in.

The final chap stands ready with a stake and is watching over the other archers gear. This is a nice little pile of arrow bags, sheathed bows and other paraphernalia.

That's a sharp looking bill-hook he has there, somebody could get a nasty injury!

It's been an enjoyable diversion painting these, back to the men at arms again now though.