The Army of King Matthias (and other stories)

These three rather splendid books dropped through my letter box the other day.

The three titles; The Army of King Matthias 1458 - 1526, Warriors of the Hungarian Frontier 1526 - 1686 and Hungarian Military Flags are all by the Hungarian graphic artist Gyozo Somogyi.

I caught up with these titles from a book review in the latest issue Hobilar, the Journal of the Lance and Longbow society which reviewed the first title but went on to point out where these Hungarian publications could be purchased, both from Military Matters but also from bookline.hu (the Hungarian version of Amazon apparently) the later being where I picked the titles up from. They were ordered and received within a week, so definitely no complaints on the service.

The three volumes I picked up (there are several more from the same author who specializes in Hungarian Military History from earliest times right up to the current day) are all each full of illustrations with only an introductory page of text on the background history of the chosen title in both English and Hungarian and the rest of the volumes full of plates only with captions, again in English and Hungarian.

I thoroughly recommend these titles for source material for the period and locale and a search on Google for Images of Gyozo Somogyi's work will give you a good taste of his other work available.

February WIP

Since I've been pretty busy over the last month and have managed to get some bit's and pieces done (yes, it's even surprised me!) I have managed to post a couple of completed works and I've nearly completed some other things too (but I'll save them for a future post) I thought I'd share some of the definitely WIP bits that I've got some progress on that will wait until other things have progressed more before getting some more attention.

The first up is the first of my WWI period troops that I've been thinking about for quite a while, these are some Cossack Cavalry for the White Russian themed force that I will put together.

White Russian Cossack Cavalry - WIP

These are Copplestone Back of Beyond range figures and are up to Marks usual high standard, looking forward to getting these painted in the fullness of time, though I haven't decided on the 'type' of Cossack they're going to be...yet.

Next up are some more cavalry, Armigeri (Mercenary German Men at Arms) destined for my Hungarian Black Army project.

Armigeri - Mercenary MAA - WIP

 Now based up and undercoated they will languish in their box until later in the year. These are all old Foundry figures picked for their more gothic look, sallets and armets generally. These should add nicely to the growing number of troops massing up for a paint job in the Hungarian forces.

The last of the trio that I thought I'd post is a bit different.

The Executioner - WIP

This old fella has been a favourite figure of mine for more years than I care to remember. An old Ral Partha figure that I liked as soon as I saw him. An old figure sitting in a box for years since I stopped playing any real RPG's, I dredged him out and have stripped off all the old paint (some of which really didn't want to go) and I've now got him ready for a new lick of paint. He'll no doubt get done over the next few weeks as I do other bits.

More to come next time in the way of completed figures but I'll leave that for then. Till the next time....

Jan Jiskra - Hungarian Hero

Finally got the Resources section of ALBAtwo up and running with a copy of a very good article from Bob Black from back in 1986 from Military Modelling magazine.

The article deals with the forgotten Jan Jiskra, a contemporary with Jan Hunyadi and Mattias Corvinus etc from 15th Century Hungary. The Article comes complete with three plates (the above pic being the first of the three) of Hungarian Troops of the period by Richard Judson (More folically challenged readers, like myself, will recognise his works from the likes of WRGs Ian Heath books etc). The Gallery has downloads of good resolution scans of the figure plates for those interested.


http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/albatwo2/resources.html for the article
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/albatwo2/hungariangallery.html for the Hungarian Gallery


Recommended reading for those interested in Eastern Medieval history, and the plates are nice. Bobs writing on this kind of subject, including the Lance and Longbows publication on John Hunyadi are excellently researched and among the few publications on the subject in English.