1 : A Renaissance of Sorts

The Italian Wars of the late 15^th and early 16^th centuries had long been a favourite wargames period of mine – my interest ending with the Battle of Pavia, 1525.

My first Italian Wars army – a Venetian one – had been in 15mm. The figures were much loved but they now appeared to be pretty small and squat, even for 15mm. I bought the figures direct from the sculptor himself – the famous Aly Morrison – across the counter at a wargames show. They were beautiful scults in their day but they got rather overshadowed by later releases. Other manufacturers took the 15mm benchmark on to new heights that were simply incompatible with the little fellows. The all too usual tale of scale creep.

Another very common theme, one of incompleteness of ranges, together with incompatibility issues wore me down somewhat – sadly bringing my 15mm collecting to an end.

Fast forward a good many years and the emergence of 18mm as a standard. 2018 saw signs of a new comprehensive 18mm Italian Wars range. Blue Moon released photos of a range of rather exquisite sculpts. Also, a timely surprise came sometime later when Lancashire Games announced the re-emergence of the extremely fine Venexia Italian Wars range that had been out of production for a fairly long time.

Both good signs. And a new project was brewing!