With the Mirliton ranges no no longer being available in the UK, I decided to try a different manufacturer to round out the 5 pike blocks I owned already. After a bit of browsing I settled on the perhaps unlikely choice of QRF/Freikorps, on the basis that they looked to be a similar heft and body shape to the Mirliton figures, and also as they too had open hands for separate weapons.
The QRF figures are a smidge more frail, and are less "frilly sleeved" than the "a bit frilly" Mirliton figures, but with a good selection of flags downloaded from Alex Flags, compatible basing and similar paint schemes they look pretty decent at tabletop distances to me.
These are 40x40 bases with 12 figures in 3 ranks - an ADLG Kiel
I chose to blackline these figures - not a style I usually adopt, but with the blocks of adjacent colour on the Swiss and my reluctance to ink-wash a set of figures with so much white on them it helps to make the limited palette of contrasting colours pop a little more
It can of course end up looking like Mondrian was their official uniform designer.
The bases are painted in a Homebase testor pot - nice and cheap !
The Mondrian effect is very visible from the back
As I've probably posted before, making sure to paint the edges of the flags to remove that unsightly white paper line along their edges is really important and makes a huge difference to the overall look and feel. If you don't do this your eye is automatically drawn to the (white) edges of the flags, breaking the illusion of the figures.
Here are some of the QRF/Freikorps guys next to the Mirliton figures (LKM on the right)
I also based up some halberdier units - these are pretty flimsy and I can see some casualties in the halberd-blade department as soon as they take to the table in battle conditions
Another view of the two types - Mirliton on the left, QRF on the right.
Halberdiers again. Not that great close up, but these are painted for tabletop distance viewing.
