Medievals have turned out to be the trickiest period I've tried. With World War II there are reams of uniform information to reference for painting. Dark Ages are pretty much "muted earth tones to taste" and information for Ancients is so spotty you can get away with painting them however you'd like, but Medievals... there's just enough heraldry to be confusing and intimidating enough to put me off getting started.
Luckily the Analogue Painting Challenge was just the kick in the rear I needed to throw caution to the wind and paint up these Fireforge Foot with a "good enough for now" paint scheme.
Researching potential paint schemes, I became interested in Edward I. The bad guy from Braveheart was involved in battles from his youth until his death, fighting across the British Isles in the Baron's War and against the Scots, even taking part in the Crusades. His livery was a striking yellow and red, also used by his son Edward II at Bannockburn, and variations on that color scheme appear amongst much of the nobility that fought with or against him. Standardized uniforms were not used during the medieval period, but it's not beyond reason that soldiers would use some sort of identifying color (either a piece of clothing, strip of cloth, or shield color) to identify themselves as belonging to the retinue of a lord.
I painted these Fireforge figures up in various earth tones, with a number of red or mustard yellow tunics, surcoats, and leggings. I gave the shields a variety or yellow and red color schemes. I thought there might be some shields provided by a lord, but most would be provided by the men themselves. Without a factory stamping these shields out I tried to vary the color tones and patterns to represent the variety of sources these shields would come from. The Fireforge set also comes with a variety of shields; longer kite shields, and shorter heater shields. From what I gathered, the kite shield is an older design, but lingered on in Eastern Europe, while the heater was far more common from the mid 13th century on. I bought a pack of heater shields from Gripping Beast as I intend to use these figures for the Baron's War and wars against the Scots.
Hopefully the colors will tie the figures together but avoid looking like a uniformed Napoleonic regiment. I'm planning on using these as Edward's household troops, but with such a common color combination I can also use these as the retinue for any knights or nobility with red or yellow heraldry.
I sabot based these for mass battles (such as Hail Caesar), but based them individually so I can try them out with Lion Rampant.
