More Plastic Medievals - this time some cavalry

 In my continuing quest to buy up what seems like the entire Corvus Belli medieval 100YW range in Siocast, the third installment was a pack of mounted sergeants that I actually paid full price for (!!) at Warfare last year (unlike the bring and buy bargain that made up the initial purchase). 

This gave me 18 mounted figures to act as the lance-armed cavalry who support the proper Knights in a host of Medieval armies, these guys being sufficiently generic (for me...!) to work in almost any western -ish (I say that because I might try them as Hussite cavalry one day) European Medieval army.

These guys seemed to be made with plastic that was a smidge harder (aka less "Airfix 1/72nd scale"-style) than the other Siocast figures I picked up and painted earlier in the year. 

I've not seen anything from PSC to say they are now using a newer version of the Siocast resin, but on the basis that Warlord Games have made exactly such an announcement recently it's not an unreasonable guess that PSC have also migrated (or been migrated by the Siocast people?) to a new formulation too.

I used a black spray undercoat on these, in order to give me the sort of deep shadows that make the padded leather jerkins really pop - the best thing about these figures IMO, and well worth making the effort to paint them carefully so they stand out. 

To get some colour into them I did 2 bases with blue jerkins, 2 with red, one with green and one in a more plain brown leather. 

The white bit is a set of diagonal stripes, which were cleanly cast onto the models and pretty easy to pick out with a small brush

I also continued my run of doing 4-spot faces on these guys too - some of them had pretty small faces under those helmets but at wargaming distances they look OK IMO. 

 

From the back the striped, blacklined effect on the jerkins comes out really clearly

You'll note that these two sets of guys in red do have slightly different coloured reins - again allowing me to differentiate these as separate units or drop them itno different commands in an ADLG army if needed, or to keep them together as well.

 

Some of the spears were bent, and some others seemed to bend out of shape quite markedly after I undercoated them - which was weird - but they do seem mostly to have bent back into shape with just a little manual encouragement with no need to heat them in hot water or anything. They can't be made dead straight, but they are break-proof so swings and roundabouts there I guess. 

I did try and drill out one chaps hand to take a plastic broom bristle spear, but much to my surprise I found it really tricky to do. 

This was because the arm of the figure wobbled alarmingly (being plastic rather than metal of course) when I was drilling into the hand/gauntlet, meaning I ended up with a pretty ragged and messy hole even when using my Dremel with the uppy-downey lever thing contraption. As a result I basically gave up on drilling any more and left them as they were.  

 

One thing I did find was that the riders sat a little "wide" on the horses, and being plastic its simply not possible to squeeze the riders legs together to grip their mounts more tightly as you can do with metal figures. 

That means you are relying entirely on the glue to make a good bond between buttock and saddle, as the riders legs are permanently set a bit wider than the horse's backs. 

All in all I'm very pleased by how they have come out, and now I'm frantically flicking through army list books to find an excuse to use them!