Long, pointy sticks preparing for action!

Well, there was quite a delay with busy work, family time and beach time [oh, the horror of it all...] but I finally finished cleaning up and 'heading' the miniatures [I feel this is the accurate term to describe attaching the heads...after all if you remove the head it's 'be-heading'].  The 20 pike from Sash and Saber came with the 7-7-6 even split of the three types.  Heads included were 9 helmets, 10 brimmed hats, and 2 no hats at all [one with a possible bandage / possible hippy headband - I guess it's our call if he's from Woodstock, UK].  Not much in the way of extras and my reading indicates that the knit and monmouth caps were a common wear for pikemen as they provided extra padding under the helmet something I'll suggest to Chris of S&S.  Here's the opened bag:

I ended up mixing in caps from the Romanoff and Musketeers to get the effect I wanted.  I've two stands of 6 pikemen without helmets for early war Royalists to reflect their generally worse equipment [perhaps Cornishmen - I'm still keen on forces and a campaign in the Southwest].  The third is helmeted and will be a Parliament pike stand.  There was a problem with sizable pits on the snapsack, pictured below:

Low bid?  Faulty construction?  Mice?  Unlikely in them all, so we'll have to fill them with some putty before priming.  Also, the wild metal bit on the sword scabbard will have to be trimmed - I cut them then point the scabbard ends with the a Dremel bit.

Anyway, still a bit of work to be done as described above, but here's the product right now:

On the left are the pikemen awaiting helmet issue / acquisition:

The single helmet per stand is a veteran of the Dutch Wars with a souvenir.  The better-equipped Parliament pike are on the right - it helps to have friends in Hull it seems:

As usual, there is quite a bit you can do with the three body types and the several head types.  One needn't have any figures with identical body/head combos.  And even just placing a head at a different angle or looking in a different direction makes the figure seem quite different.  Also, plenty of characterization is possible, which is part of the fun with these larger figures.  

I'm looking forward to painting them but still sticking with my goal of assembling them all and figuring the units before painting.  I've only ten foote figures left to assemble; two commands of 5 figs each [one Romanoff and one S&S].  I'm looking forward to this as they are quite colorful and the regimental commands of my Colonels - who are quite characterful themselves!  

Finally, there's a unit of 7 plus 3 command of harquebus horse.  They look quite good, too and as I am keen on the horse in general I'm looking forward to them.  Make a nice change from cleaning foote.  The interesting thing about the war is that the smaller the battle and campaign, the more important the Horse was and more likely to be fielded.  So the proportion of horse in a small command was much higher than in a large command.  Will make for dynamic small battles.

Overall, I give these a 7.5 / 10 cornets due to the excessive cleaning with the pitting and shaping of the scabbards, and for lack of head variety.  Still, nice figures for the table.