You know what I want out of life?
28mm plastic female Landsknechts. That's right, I want REGIMENTS of them to build an army with.
There's not much cooler than a Landsknecht:
Except you know, this:
You know what I want out of life?
28mm plastic female Landsknechts. That's right, I want REGIMENTS of them to build an army with.
There's not much cooler than a Landsknecht:
Except you know, this:
Need some female Landsknechts right now?!?
Here's what I found:
Hasslefree:
Wargames Game Studio "Hot and Dangerous":
Village Hope on Etsey:
Raging Heroes:
And:
Anybody know more?
Not quite gaudy enough for a Landsknecht. But this is a beautiful mini I picked up for Mordheim.
Wouldn't look bad with WGA Conquistadors either.
@JTam I would get a 5 box deal. I have always wanted an all female army but the plastic kits have fallen just a bit short. The shield wolf shield maidens we're good, but a bit too large and I did not like their weapon selection for unit building. The shield wolf paladins... I just don't like. The WGF amazons were not great. So I would buy a ton of these.
Reaper bones 5 had a female landsknecht. She is not available retail yet but you can occasionally finder her on eBay.
@William Redford
While your listing close.... but not actually good.
The Mantic female Regiment. Wanted to like it. Couldn't.
Preemptively:
"This belongs in Fantasy." Well, the section is labeled "Classic Fantasy," and female Landsknechts are not that.
An argument could be made for General Chatter..... but it's hard to edit posts there, so I skipped it.
Gender bender Landsknechts fall under "Gunpowder and Mercenaries" to my mind.
@JTam
Well I did hear that there where real female Landsknechts from female reenactor once, but it did sound an awful lot like modern revisionist history. I do know that there where wives of landsknechts that did do “dangerous violent jobs” things from time to time like loot the battlefield and defend the camp, but I think it was exceedingly rare for them to pick up a pike and two handed sword, frankly they seemed more like frying pan and dagger type fighters.
Also given we have Landsknechts Ogres coming, why wouldn’t female Landsknechts be a classic fantasy thing? Same deal with shield Maidens while we are at it, who in real life would have been farm girls with some combat training and probably not show up alot.
Though I will admit I would rather have regular platemail female knights in skirts first:
Frankly the best “Warrior maiden as Warrior maiden” sets that make sense for history are either Lady Scythians, other steppe archer women, and Samurai women.
@JTam the basailean "ladies" the ones mounted on big cats werent bad... but the infantry are awful. The faces look like they are men. So if you are looking to make a regiment of men dressed as women then these could work. But even then the poses and weapon options aren't great. I mashed up the riding ones with Fireforge mongols. Will share some pics when I get a chance.
@William Redford mantic mins are one of those things were you either love sculpt X or hate sculpt X and want a redo (for example, I actually like thier elves, but I know other people who don't 🤣). In either case those are still better at depicting female faces than some of the GW sculpts I have (don't get me started on the mixed gender elves from hell).
Do the bodies have to be dedicated females? Under all that armor and those puffed sleeves, you can't really see the difference anymore, unless you want cleavage. Just add a few females to the head selection, like the irish kit has enough heads to completely avoid the celtic mustaches.
I originally voted that I'd buy a box, but the more I visit this topic, the more I'm tempted to want to field an army of female Landsknechts for something like Pike and Shotte. The pictures in the start of the topic are too inspired! I know no matter what I'd purchase at least a box.
I think we definitely need to locate a place that has "female landsknecht heads" conversion bits and that'd at least be a good start. I want some women's heads with those big puffy hats! Even just the hats themselves would suffice!
By sheer chance, a pal of mine provided me with a 3D printed, flexible resin, female Landsknecht - as a printing test.
I'm definitely for a female Landsknechts kit.
Even though their historicity might be debatable.
@Blutze @lauregami
Hmm you both actually bring up a point that I have been somewhat waiting to discuss. I well answer the easy thing first, unarmored female landsknechts if real would probably dress very differently from their male counterparts with long skirts and probably be like the ladies in these pic except gaudier if possible (remember landsknechts where allowed to dress however they wanted) and with the weapons and sword belts, maybe they would wear the hats:
Now with that out of the way, in general when it comes to plate armor, particularly full plate armor some outspoken historians and hobbyists (both in wargaming and the reenactor community) would argue heavily that there would be no difference in appearance since boob plate kills, men and woman have the same body proportions, etc. .
However there are some very real world issues with these arguments:
A: females in plate armor are not really a big thing in European history (ie, they likely where not even 1% to 3% of the armored individuals on the battlefield and more around a 0.9% to 0.1%) and would likely have worn armor borrowed from a male relative as opposed to armor made for them and possibly be hiding their gender (meaning real European historical examples are not really a good argument in this case, not even for headswaps, just use enclosed helms if you want to be historical).
B: medieval and Renaissance armor smiths where probably more like tailors and not likely to be the masters of scientific safety methods they are today and accounts of some historical battles made this really clear. Plate armor was just as likely to be a knights doom as his salvation half the time, and it wasn’t always just from drowning in puddles because you can’t get up in heavy armor, an awful lot of it was just shoddy in real life. Add to this that patent laws didn’t really exist till fairly late, meaning smiths probably didn’t willing share armor making knowledge except maybe with their apprentices, and you get some big questions on how real world female knights would have looked (and it really is a would have).
C: Men and women don’t actually have the same body proportions in real life on average. Modern ballistic armor made for males actually chaffs enough women that the USA’s military at least has developed female body armor.
D: A good number of female reenactor apparently wear these under their historical armor to protect themselves ( I think there is even diffrent sizes but I could be wrong on that):
E: Meanwhile in ancient India you have this, and no I am not sure if it is combat armor or ritual (I would assume the later but this did come up when I searched "ancient Indian women warriors in armor") :
Oh, and in both cases since we are talking women there wouldn’t be these:
So yeah… given all that armored female minis should look different for fantasy settings where female knights would be common (Maybe they wouldn't have double boobplate but I could see a uniboob plate and they would likely be smaller on average) and there isn't a real good reason to just do them as headswaps in a history set unless you really like the idea of girls wearing codpieces for some reason🤣.
"Male" european breastplates from ~1350 when they started to be actual singlepiece plates (though still textile covered mostly), to ~1550 when the globe shifted downwards for some reason, would have enough space to house at least the lower 50th percentile of chesticle sizes. Those plastic inserts would only be necessary with flexible armor types (mail, gambesons, etc) - and depending on the game rules, you'd want to wear them even as a male. At least in HEMA longsword you see them under (thicker than olympic) fencing jackets. Oh, and I think I remember single cups on modern sports archers, as per the amazon myth.
Those contemporary images show fully civilian unarmored dress on the females. I don't think a camp follower pulling her knife on you or being handed a halberd was what JTam had in mind with this thread. They would belong into a general civilian/commoner/peasant/whatever you wanna call it kit (and discussion thread).
I did not consider codpieces when I made my original post. But I think they could be done as separate pieces, similar to some manufacturers do visors on sallets. Failing that WGA doesn't seem too concerned with making homogenous kits that lead to one single homogenous unit (and even a male-only kit/unit shouldn't have them on every single dude). I could easily see three out of six bodies not having codpieces, and three out of ten heads being female - that matches up with the numbers in the irish kit (six different bodies, ten different heads, three mustache heads).
I give you proportions and overall size, though I really couldn't afford to care with how many different manufacturers I am including in my monster manual. They simply are all over the place, nothing I can do.
unless you really like the idea of girls wearing codpieces for some reason🤣.
Hey, who are we to deny them?
@JTam well, landsknecht ogres aren't very "classic fantasy" either, but WGA is making them there anyways.
@Blutze
I would argue that even if it’s just under “flexible armor” for HEMA it does pose as question about how female plate armor would actually evolve. (and I think it may depend on what country you’re in, the first source I heard about it from was Japanese and they made it sound like you wore it under every armor including plate but thats unimportant).
Not to mention the other arguments I posted or where merely referred to in articles (such as women being smaller on average than men, etc.), this means you would likely still see some differences that could not be covered with a headswap. Plus it’s a clear fantasy subject and one should really just go all out with it if you’re going to do it😉.
Likewise your argument about “not what he is going for” is actually a much stronger argument for this being a separate fantasy set, since the contemporary picture females I showed are likely to be closer to what actual female landsknechts would wear if they are/where real (ie they would wear skirts and flamboyant female fashions unless they were hiding their gender, in which case again what’s the point of female headswaps?) as opposed the girls in female cut landsknecht cosplay they are showing pictures of😉.
@Estoc landsknechts in general have kind of been a part of classic fantasy in wargaming since Warhammer Fantasy Battles.
@William Redford
That's really nice. Thanks. I haven't been to the Black Scorpion website in quite a while.
Found an example of a Hot and Dangerous female Landsknecht painted up on Facebook:
For that matter the Hot and Dangerous "Anno Domini" and "Conquistador" model aren't terrible fits for an Landsknechts Officer and handgunner. Although I don't know what to think of the handgunner's helmet.
@JTam
On their FB page someone posted this:
"If You wonder about helmet it is based on Juan de Borgoña paintings made in 1514 showing conquest of Oran. Cortez started his conqest of Cuba in 1511 and Mexico in 1519, so about the same time. Many miniatures of conquistadors are of time - they show Spanish army from 1580 or so."
@JTam As far as size. Anno Domini and hot and dangerous are slightly different scale. Anno Domini is 28mm and on the smaller more realistic side of 28mm. Hot and dangerous is 32mm. Some of the girls are a bit shorter (like Eloise) and the landsknecht is a little taller. The girl with the breastplate and pistol was designed and billed as an Anno Domini mini and came with Anno Domini rules. She is supposed to be 28mm but I have not assembled mine yet. There were several girls from the first campaign that were not designed for Anno Domini but stats for them were included as a stretch gosl in the Anno Domini Kickstarter.
the plastic Anno Domini minis scale great next to wargames Atlantic where as the hot and dangerous girls are a little big in comparison.
as a side note, another great source of period appropriate minus is Assassins Creed: Brotherhood of Venice. Though they are 32mm and a little large (but not terribly so) next to the Anno Domini minis
@William Redford
Great stuff.
Very informative on the Conquistador helmet. Thanks for posting the painting.
I had a feeling the Conquistador helmet might have been based on a historical example. On subjects where I have a good enough grounding to be able to judge, I find the Hot and Dangerous minis to be well researched and surprisingly accurate.
The Anno Domino cross over is cool. They also had the FJ Dust 47 cross over mini:
(Pretty accurate kit and equipment. Actually pretty much everything is dead on minus the exaggerated heels. Yes, even the bone sack worn as a onesie is accurate.)
@William Redford Actually, I think Hot and Dangerous may sell sculpts in both 28mm and 32mm versions for subjects, though this is based purely on ebay box pics.
@Brian Van De Walker Well, they definitely advertise them as 28mm. They have 2 official sizes, 28mm and 54mm. Now they also call their Anno Domini 28mm. And said during the KS that the pistol chick would match the Anno Domini size.
Here are some Reaper minis (the black one is Bones, and the 2 blonde girls are metal), some Anno Domini (the light blue ones), a WA conquistador, and several Hot and Dangerous girls. Now even amongst themselves some are taller than others. None look out of place next to the reaper minis (that are listed as heroic 28mm). But all are larger than the Anno Domini and Wargames atlantic minis. The WA and the Anno Domini look good next to each other.
Found these:
Can't really describe them as my cup of tea though.
Green one is not horrible. But yeah, nothing I would buy probably.
In relation for female landsknechts, as it will more than likely be a fantasy themed kit; I would like to argue that other female races be included and as the ogre landsknechts have been released; I would also like to argue that there should be a fatansy kit that includes other races.
As for the sub-topic of armored female knights; I'd buy that in a heart beat. I also agree that the armor was made to be tailored for their users (hence why they're so expensive!) and agree that no boob plate though I imagine some female knights would want that as others would want a chest plate with a single bump. It probably be cheaper to produce in real life.
Do believe I'll be ordering some of these:
One new regiment of Halberdiers coming up. Wonder if it's possible to get them ranked up on 20mm square bases?
On "The Ladies of Mandrigyn" by B. Hambly, the protagonist, a mercenary captain, had to train a bunch of females (long history...), and he found that an halbard is very useful for a female fighter, more than a sword, given that most of them were shorter than males, after all for female samurai the weapon of choice was the Naginata, a (not so) short polearm. So a fantasy females' Landsknects squad would be equipped with this weapon, more than a pike, plus naturally some arquebus.
@Alessio De Carolis
Is that (Ladies of Mandrigyn) a decent read?
I popped over to the Wiki:
White Dwarf reviewing external publications. Different times.
I think the "experimental archeology" has found Halberds pretty much the king of hand held weapons for just about everybody.
That being said experimental archeology has some huge limitations / is not the end all and be all.
I was thinking about it the other day and say you rebuilt the bicycle and were discovering what it could do. You'd probably conclude one can travel 50 miles a day on roads, traverse moderately uneven terrain, and turn in X radius. That's what I can do in a bike anyway. And that's the level of proficiency I would argue a hobbist can ever hope on obtain. But what can people who devote their lives to it can do? They do a 100 miles a day in the big bike races. Look at the terrain mountain bikers navigate. Look at the insane jumps and tricks stunt bicyclists can do. I would argue that people who lived and died by the sword/bow/halberd/chariot reached similar levels of extreme proficiency.
@JTam it's the first of a trilogy, and it became more gritty with the following books, where are showed the darkest aspects of primitive warfare. I liked it, expecially the moral problems the protagonist has when confronted with his (bloody) past. And yes, people that was trained from infancy could achieve incredible feats with a weapon, but with our modern tech logically we can surpass them. After all one of the motives for firearms replacing crossbows & bows was that with few weeks of training you can decently handle a musket, but for a bow you need years (literally)