Dark Dream Studio (DDS) – 72004 – Landsknechts (Pikemen)

Description:

Landsknechts (Pikemen)

Renaissance is not very well covered in our scale, the transition of medieval age to modern ones is a big gap in the 1/72 scale, just a few sets available for “conquistadors” and no much more. DDS make an effort for this era with 3 interesting boxes, two for Landsknechts and one for Knights.

The Landsknecht, also known as Landsknechts or Lansquenets, were German mercenaries deployed in pike and shot formations throughout the early modern period. This fighting force primarily comprised pikemen accompanied by supporting foot soldiers. Distinguished by their Doppelsöldner (“double-pay men”) stationed at the forefront, known for their mastery of the Zweihänder (two handed big swords intended to break enemy pikes) and arquebus. From the late 1400s to the early 1600s, they constituted the core of the Holy Roman Empire’s Imperial Army, participating in significant conflicts such as the Habsburg-Valois wars, the Habsburg-Ottoman wars, and the European wars of religion.

The box depicted here contains 24 figures in 8 poses to create a pike unit, and you can achieve some variation working with different hats, also as harms are separated, and some variation is also possible playing with arms. These aren’t easy to paint or even to fit together figures, although details are sharp sculpted, pattern of these soldiers was color full and different for any of them, at this time, uniform was an unknown feature.

Maybe not everybody like the sculpture style, but we have seen nice painted examples of these figures and they do their work pretty well. As other times in our scale, you will probably want to replace plastic pikes for metal ones, as they are separate parts, it’s easy to replace them, using for example 15mm metal pikes from Wargames metal manufacturers, or also trimming those from 28mm miniatures.

Sprues

The box contains 6 sprues, 3 of them contains the figures, bodies and arms separated, 8 figures per sprue, there are 2 sprues (or 4 depending on how you account them) with the pikes and one more with hats. Not all the figures needs a hat, those designed for the first row are armored pikemen with helmets. Over the time different colors has been used to cast the sprues that you can find just below.

Close up pictures

All the figures and parts has a lot of intricate detail, well done for a 1/72 scale and traditional sculpture methods as this kit was done. The problems of the set starts by the multipart arms and hats, but in particular the arms. Bodies has a big peg to fit holes in the arms (shoulder area) but this fit is not always so good as you can expect and some of the poses end being odd. Together with the work of get a proper fit, the eternal problem of glue the soft plastic of the plastic soldiers in 1/72 scale starts, because you will need to glue them to achieve a good and stable finish.

Hats are less problematic, but they also need some work to properly fit as well as pikes, that need to fit in the hands holes, without disloque the some fragile arms-shoulder-body joint.

The three sets that Dark Dream Studio tooled for the Renaissance era are a singularity in the hobby of the 1/72 plastic soldiers, without anything else comparable, even if they failed to achieve an easier engineering and some more convincing poses, the level of detail and ambition of the project has not been equaled in decades.