Conquistadores for Christmas!

Comments

Henry - January 2, 2021

I just had a look at the comments on the Facebook front page, and I have to say that I have no problem with as many unhistorical late 16th century morions as WA sees fit to supply being included in the set for those fantasy gamers who seem to be obsessed with this helmet design, as long as their inclusion doesn’t leave insufficient room on the sprue for enough historically accurate helmets and weapons to equip all the figures. This will, after all, be first and foremost a set of early 16th century conquistadors.

Nuno Pereira’s blog article is about late 16th century Portuguese African campaigns, with atypical costume and equipment requirements even for that historical period. I think we need to be realistic about what what one set of plastic figures can encompass, and trying to cover this subject would clearly be stretching things too far.

Henry - January 2, 2021

A couple of Old Glory’s offerings I missed in the previous post:

1. The later ‘Long Decline’ portion of the renaissance Turkish range includes a number of Arab types that could be usable.

2. The Portuguese also fought the Persians, and OG has a dedicated medieval Islamic Persian range.

Henry - January 2, 2021

Assuming WA’s Conquistador set does end up giving customers the option of creating Portuguese forces, for those wondering where to get affordable figures to represent their opponents in the Indian Ocean, in terms of plastic boxed sets there’s a few options currently available: Gripping Beast’s Arab sets are passable as they come in the box (no distinctly Dark Ages/early Medieval helmets should be used, though), and, with some mods (e.g. replacing the firearms with arquebuses/bows) the WA and Perry Afghans (representing actual Afghan mercenaries, Baluchis, or just generic Indian Muslims) could be used without too many historical accuracy quibbles (the advantage of middle-eastern figures is of course that their costume, and to a lesser extent, their weapons and armour, are relatively timeless). There might even be potential to use the Perry Mahdists for the Portuguese’ Ethiopian exploits, but this would probably entail substantial conversion work.

If you’re prepared to use metal figures there are numerous Indian, Arab, Turkish and East Indies options among Old Glory’s various budget medieval, renaissance, colonial, and American wars ranges; e.g. most of the figures in the Spanish American War range ‘Moros’ packs could be used as generic Malays.

There are too many more expensive possibilities for me to list in the ranges of other metal figure manufacturers if that’s where you’re prepared to go. I’ll leave that research to you :- ).

Henry - January 1, 2021

Here’s the description of early 16th century armament from my old DBR Army List Book 3, list No. 1, ‘Portuguese Colonial 1494-1700 AD’:

’Initially armed with crossbows or a mixture of swords, halberds, boarding axes and bladed half-pikes… ’.

The list allows half or more of the crossbowmen to be replaced with arquebusiers after 1520.

Henry - January 1, 2021

The Portuguese favoured pole-arms over swords, so as long as there are enough arms (in both senses) of this type Vasco da Gama’s rascals should be reproducible.

James Hall - December 31, 2020

Great news. Conquistadores is a niche period in wargames. Please keep in mind most Spanish military forces were fighting in Europe and the exploits of the Spanish led by El Gran Capitan in Italy in the early sixteenth century then of Spanish in the Pavia period! Are legendary. This is a brilliant period that plastics could open up to the wargaming public.

KL - December 31, 2020

Possible to show a scale shot? maybe with fantasy (warhammer) mini? Thanks, this is an excellent kit.

Javier Garcia Cano - December 30, 2020

If we are talking about Conquistadors the morion is out of time. The morion is a helmet of the mid XVI century, and popular only in the second half of the century. Other medieval helmets as open sallets, kettke hat and cabassets in their medieval form are the proper helmets for Conquistadors. And you would have to think in including crossbow, there were more than arquebus in the first years of the Conquest of the Indies. If you need documentation about this period I offer some articles I wrote some years ago about this matter.

David Reay - December 30, 2020

Excellent! Look forward to buying and fiddling with them.
You can’t satisfy everyone, but you usually have a pretty good try!
My only thought is that an earlier, “cabacete” style morion would have been nice, and I agree the comments about one or two open hands.
Keep up the good work, and best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2021!

Albin Östberg - December 30, 2020

This looks fantastic!
One of the most important things that I have to point out though, (and others have aswell), is that the typical Morion Helmet associated with Conquistadores, was NOT in use during the early period, such as the Conquest of Mexico! :)

Instead, they should have Cabasete Helmets with/or without attached Gorgets and Bevors.
This type of Helmet would have evolved into the Morion at a later stage.

Such as this: https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2001/CSK/2001_CSK_09168_0082_000(023903).jpg?mode=max

Looking forward to this! :)
/Albin Östberg.