"Question re Warlord Landsknechts" Topic

I'm a complete newbie to the Renaissance period. But i have been enticed to paint my first-ever lot of Warlord Landsknechts, and am really enjoying the freedom of mixing and matching all sorts of weird and wonderful colours.

I have a question about the armour. Three of the plastic figures are obviously wearing breast-plates. However, I can't work out if they are also wearing armour on their backs. They have crossed straps on their back to hold on the frontal armour – but are these straps supposed to be over the top of a back-plate, or just over a cloth inner garment?

Here are my first efforts at Landsknechts: link

Double sided breastplates/cuirass seems to have been common, but I've also seen ones with only a front piece.

Regarding the crossed straps across the back, I've seen those even on top of a metal back.

Beautiful work!

Good job.

Great work!
I would suggest that you do some of each, some with back and breast plate and some with just front plate.

Just my 2 cents……hope it helps.

I'm pretty sure that if a figure is wearing back and breast, then they are most likely to be held together at the side, suspended from the shoulders and not held on with individual straps.

Backplates make not much sense for Landsknechts, unless they wear full armour.

I like the colors! Nice paintjob!

As I am not a friend of glossy finish I would give them a spray of dullcote. Just my opinion, though.

If you do more Landsknechts from WG I would replace the WG pikes with broom bristles, around 8cm long. The WG pikes are a bit on the short and spear-headed side. Try to avoid their crossbows, as Landsknechts did not use them in the field. For the front ranks with lowered pikes I recommend Steel Fist or Foundry – and Steel Fist do have fine heads to swap. The WG metal line of Landsknechts is also quite good (being bought from Pro Gloria who contracted Paul Hicks, iirc) and mixes well. For Flags take a look at Petes Flags collection.

Cool, thanks for that advice, Puster.

I have now matt varnished the figures, other than the armour.

I will look at those Steel Fist figures for the front ranks.

To me these look much more realistic. While "bright" is often assumed to be a feature of Landsknecht outfits, I doubt that any contemporay clothing would keep "bright" for more then a week outdoors. These look like business to me :-)

Just one more aspect – the flags born by Landsknecht were usually on a short pole, that means the grip ends below the hand. This enabled them to wave the flag when within a host of pikes. The later "poles" that were put to the earth were not common with them.
I am not sure wether that was inherited by the Swiss or developed seperately. "Waving the Flag" became some sort of folklore sports in Swiss and Southern Germany that even made it into some modern disciplines.

BTW: Here is a master thesis with a ton of images – in German, but that does not really hurt the actuall images:
PDF link