Marching Arquebusiers

In between the mass of glue, flock and brown paint that has become my rebasing project I have managed to get a few figures painted up. Above are eight Wargames Foundry Landsknechts. They are sold as pikemen or halberdiers but I have made them into arquebusiers with the simple addition of firearms from The Assault Group. The pouches, match and powder horns are from the old Citadel Empire Handgunner set which had figures with plastic bodies but metal arms holding handguns. The also included these pouches for the handgunners. They can still be tracked down on Ebay and are really useful for this kind of thing.
Arquebusiers are always depicted with the tools of their trade in contemporary illustrations. I felt just adding the handguns would not look right. The straps for the pouches are simply pieces of thread glued in place and painted. Some wear the pouches over their shoulders with others hanging them round their necks ready to use. You will notice a couple of the figures hold the arquebuses by the barrel, one even hanging his pouch and match from the butt. This was a little homage to one of the plates in the Osprey "Swiss at War" book where Swiss handgunners are shown going into action, some of them holding the guns by the barrel over their shoulders. I am not sure whether this is based on a contemporary illustration but I thought it was a nice addition.
I have painted these up as I am currently rebasing my marching Landsknecht pikemen and only had eight marching arquebusiers to accompany them. As they were all in the same pose I decided adding another eight would give more variation and give me four bases of shot, with four Landsknechts on each, to march alongside the dense ranks of pikemen.

Wargames Foundry Landsknechts. The  handguns are from The Assault Group and powder horns and pouches are old Citadel pieces

Marching Landsknecht Arquebusiers