Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Recruiting Retinues - Again!

As mentioned by my previous posts, I'm heading in my 'Wars of the Roses' re-fight towards my own little 'Towton' climactic battle of mass-destruction.  I want to do it justice, and I think the one thing that has become instantly and undeniably obvious is that I need the maximum number of figures I can get!  After totting up lists and accounting for odd types like mercenaries, cavalry, skirmishers etc. I have ultimately come up short from my existing supplies.  This has led me to only one conclusion: I need to bite the bullet and buy more.

After the long months and years of painting the mammoth pile of my last WOTR figures, I came away swearing that I would never again buy more and put myself through all that again.  Well, that's gone up in smoke now, as I was at Carronade 2013 the other week and have bought the two extra boxes of Perry Miniatures I think I need.  I believe I now have a grand-total of something like 475 figures for WOTR - alarming!  

For the battle coming up I will field one 'Bloody Barons' unit (eight figures, taking each figure as a 'base') per 1cv of strength-points in the campaign game 'Richard III', so this means I should actually only need about 350-odd figures.  The need for more is still there because of the varying livery colours I've got (Warwick, for example, isn't present so all his lads will sit this one out in a box!)  I think it's one of the drawbacks of starting out in the Medieval period, in that once figs are painted you are kind of landed with the consequences of whatever livery combination you picked.  Thankfully I'm now building up a collection to the stage where I can basically stage a major battle like this one, fill my available table pretty much to capacity with correctly-painted miniatures, and still have some unused spares.  

For what it's worth, my 'work in progress' list looks something like this:

Edward of York
1 Household & 2 Retinue units (Blue & Murrey liveries)
Duke of Clarence
3 Retinue units (Blue & Murrey)
Lord Herbert
3 Retinue units (Blue & Red)
Earl of Rutland
1 Retinue unit (Blue & Murrey)
Henry VI
1 Mounted Unit ('white armour' - no liveries)
1 Household & 2 Retinue units (Blue & White liveries)
Duke of Somerset
3 Retinue units (Blue & White)
Earl of Salisbury
2 Retinue units (Red & Yellow)
Duke of Norfolk
1 Retinue unit (Blue & Yellow)
Edward of Lancaster
1 Household & 2 Retinue units (Red & Black)
Duke of Buckingham
3 Retinue units (Red & Black)
French Mercenaries
2 Mounted units (None), 1 Crossbow unit (French), 1 Retinue unit (Blue & White or None)
Newcastle Levies
2 Levy units, all Longbowmen (None)
Scottish Mercenaries
2 Levy units, all Spearmen (None)
Burgundian Mercenaries
1 Handgunner unit, 2 Pike units (Burgundian)
Irish Levies
2 Unarmoured units, Kerns (None)
2 Levy units, all Spearmen (None)
Norfolk Levy
3 Levy units, all Longbowmen (None)

A 'typical' unit is one captain/Man-at-Arms, three Billmen, and four Longbowmen.
A mounted unit is six models. (Or possibly eight - I haven't decided yet.) 

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