Building retinues of Condottieri and Landsknechts for Lion Rampant requires research to get the units right. I’ve assembled a list of magazines, games, books, and blogs you might find useful.

Three caveats:

I play for the gray zone between plausibility and rule of cool. I won’t mix space pixies with Knights Templar, but I’m at peace including Niccolò da Tolentino on a board with Milanese shields circa 1470. I like to play the period beginning roughly 1360 when the Englishman John Hawkwood led the White Company into Italy, and ending in the early 1500s, when the era of Pike & Shot began to supersede Renaissance tactics.

I’m not a historian. If your Dad is a historian and tells you something is wrong with this article, trust your Dad.

Resources on this list are informative, fun, and inspirational. It’s not a complete bibliography.

Magazines

Wargames Illustrated (“WI”) has featured numerous articles about Condottieri and the Italian States wars over the years, and often includes maps, mini-histories, and tabletop photographs for painting inspiration.

Battle of Pavia. Source: Warfare History Network

WI296, June 2012. “The Battle of Pavia, 24th February 1525.” As befits a battle where armies were trying to figure out how to counter “the new effectiveness of infantry firepower,” this article is an extract of Pike and Shotte rules. This decisive defeat of the French might be a bit late for our purposes, but could be adapted to a large Lion Rampant death match. Includes battle map, turn by turn AAR, and photographs.

WI314, December 2013. “Henry VIII’s 1513 ‘Army Royal’.” Henry VIII romped through France, not Italy, but Stuart Mulligan’s excellent article explains how to select, build, customize, and paint an army of the era. There’s a full page on Landsknecht pike, on point for the Italian Wars. Includes a chronology and spectacular tabletop photos.

WI330, April 2015. If you track down only one back issue of WI, this is the one to find. The issue’s theme is mercenaries! Articles include:

“Toy Soldiers of Fortune.” Overview of mercenaries. Includes photographs, sidebars on the White Company and Swiss mercenaries, and special rules for rolling a d6 to handle payments.

“Take Me to the Action! Early Renaissance Mercenaries.” Not specific to the Italian Wars. Includes excellent photographs of Perry Miniatures, map, and brief bibliography.

“Sign Here: Italian Condotta Armies for Lion Rampant.” New rules for Condottieri written by Dan Mersey himself, the creator of Lion Rampant. This is the single most useful article I found and includes a critical table mapping real life soldiers to Lion Rampant units. For example, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to play Sword & Buckler men as Fierce Foot. Special rules for auctioning units add a mercenary feel. Mersey also suggests specific manufacturers for your preferred scale (28mm, 20mm, or 15mm) and material (metal or plastic).

“Painting Landsknechts.” What it says on the box. The ever-inspiring Stuart Mulligan provides guidelines for research, planning complementary colors, learning from woodcuts, and understanding the parts of a Landsknecht uniform. I have a retinue of unpainted Landsknechts sitting in a box, and when I work up the courage to paint them this will be the first resource I use. Includes photographs and bibliography.

Landsknechts

WI358, August 2017. “A Larger Lion Rampant.” Rules for sieges and mass melee. I haven’t tried these variant rules yet because most of the sieges in the Italian Wars happened after the period best covered by Lion Rampant, and I wonder if siege warfare really works with a skirmish chassis. However, the Siege of Mirandola (1510) lasted only a month, so if you’ve got a hankering to reproduce it this article might help. Includes photographs and new rules for siege machinery.