Sir Henry Percy, the first of my two Captains for my Sword & Spear Feudal English army, is now complete and ready to take his place along side the Bishop of Durham against the Scots or French or whoever dares to stand against them!
Sir Henry and his standard bearer are both figures from the Fireforge Games mounted range, with bits taken from the men-at-arms and Templar Knights boxes.
Sir Henry is my second attempt at using the heraldic transfer sets sold by Citadel Six. I think I may just about be getting the hang of using these transfers! It appears that there are certain key elements to the instruction sheet that, if you follow carefully, produce a transfer that will touch up and look pretty good on your figure. The important points are:
i) use a craft knife blade, that you don't use for anything else, to cut through the carrier film. Cut at a very slight angle and always cut towards yourself;
ii) varnish the area of the figure to which the transfer is going to be applied and give it a good twenty-four hours to dry;
iii) have plenty of washing up liquid in the lukewarm water you soak the transfer in;
iv) coat the area on the figure with Micro Sol before you apply the transfer and have Micro Sol on the brush you use to position the transfer;
v) be prepared to touch up the transfer with a coat or two of paint after it has been applied. The inks used in making the transfers are not as good quality as others on the market and will rub off with the slightest handling, which means that you will be left with areas of white around the edge of the transfer and, possibly, on the body of the transfer itself, but, with some careful brush work, all can be restored and a decent finished product achieved.
With careful painting, the transfers blend in really well and the Micro Sol helps them to conform to all the crests and hollows in the casting.
The transfer used on the standard bearer's shield is from the Battleflag transfer range and is really intended for use on an infantry shield. There was a spare blue lion in the Citadel set, but it seemed a bit disrespectful to give the standard bearer the same shield as his lord and master and I'd completely stressed myself out doing Sir Henry's by then! The flag is one of my usual home made paper printed jobs, again, with some careful over painting to ensure the ink didn't run when the coat of varnish was applied.
Even the smaller tabard transfers went on without too much hassle!
The Fireforge trappers have an awkward flapping bit at the front, which looks spectacular, but makes the job of applying the transfer that bit more complicated. A fiddly method of getting round this is to trace round the transfer onto a piece of greaseproof or tracing paper. This template can then be cut to shape around the flapping trapper and used as a guide to help you cut the transfer to the right shape to fit!
All in all, I'm quite pleased with the way Sir Henry and his standard bearer have turned out and I just have one more command piece to do to have all three commanders ready for action. In the meantime, there are lots more archers and spearmen to complete and I'm even thinking of putting a unit of Irish mercenaries together to add an extra bit of flavour to my feudal host!
