It's been a few weeks since I had anything to post about here, but with good reason! The last few weeks have been largely taken up with a blizzard of clipped bits of plastic flying everywhere, then being glued together and prepped. I have assembled my monster-sized order for the Wars of the Roses, and based them. I thought a photo-review would be deserved reward for my efforts with the little men!
Above is the full host of the unpainted new arrivals. Upon assembly, I have glued each one to a 1p coin for a base (exactly 20mm across and a useful weight to keep them upright) and have glued some sand to each model at it's feet, fully prepared for spray-painting the basecoats.
Here are some close-up snaps of the billmen. My army was previously very heavily slanted in favour of longbows, at around 2:1. I found this limited my use of a lot of army lists, which seemed to go more for a 1:1 ratio in some cases. In any event, I have made a good number of billmen to slightly rebalance things, although the longbow is still easily the most common troop type.
Speaking of which: the longbows! The most numerous of the lot, and quite a prickly little hedge they make.
As my experience grows, I have actually done more detailing than before. Take this little figure, where I have added some of the grounded arrows to his coin base, so they are ready for him to snatch up. When I did my first batch of WotR figures a year ago, I never thought of this addition, so I'm glad to have added it now to a couple.
The Nobility - the men at arms in full plate armour. I made many of them with standards the last time, so I wanted to avoid any more this time around. These figures tend to be the most limited in the Perry boxes for poses, so I did try to vary them a little by clipping off standards to leave figures with only a clenched fist, or trim off a pointing finger to create a hand hanging down by a side, etc. Very small stuff by 'pro' modelling standards, but a bit creative for me, anyway.
On a more practical note, some bases! I thought of cutting MDF bases myself, but then realised this would be maddeningly hard to do. Instead I found places on the internet that sell them - specifically 'Warbases' and 'East Riding Miniatures' both did them to the 12cm x 6cm size. I ended up ordering from the latter, as they were fractionally cheaper.
Here are some of the mercenaries I got, in the form of a unit of crossbowmen. They are very nice, as are the pikemen (which I photographed but it came out impossibly blurry!) As a point of curiosity, I believe the 'bodies' and 'heads' of the mercenary figures are unchanged from the original WOTR infantry boxes - only new arms & equipment mark them out, plus some very good commander figures (nicely ornate armour, new head selections, etc.)
This shows the handgunners from the mercenaries set. I'll probably deploy them as skirmishers, as they don't seem too likely as a formed unit. (After all, the figure with the drum can probably produce the most "booms" per minute out of the lot of them!)
Yorkist commanders - I got these from Perry themselves, and they are going to be the ward commanders for the battlefield. I mounted these guys on 2p coins, which gives them a larger 'footprint' to make them distinct. No risk of these guys getting lost in the ranks!
Same again, as the Lancastrian option for commanders. Much less plate-armour on show, and a bit more dandified medieval fashion. Possibly unwise on the battlefield, but a nice idea for the more 'courtly' faction during 1455-1461.
That, largely, is it! In the background of the photo above you can see some of my practical 'extras' in the form of some coloured (plastic coated) paperclips I have straightened out to make some standard flagpoles with (just the right height!) and also a bunch of the grounded arrows I have glued to small 5p coins which shall be useful as disorder markers for my units.
Next, into the loft for spray-painting!
