Wars of the Roses Northern Campaign, 1461

I have been so busy painting and gaming, I've not actually managed to update my blog for ages!  Well I thought I would hang off until I had something of interest to report back with, so here I am at long last with an update on my Wars of the Roses plans.

As some may remember, I have been re-creating the Wars of the Roses (WotR) at some length, in fits and starts, for some time.  My last big outing resulted in a climactic battle which handed victory to the Yorkists under Edward IV, and saw the Lancastrians flee to exile.  After the monster-sized battle of Baunton that concluded that one, I felt I wanted to tone things down and reduce the scale a little, to make it a bit more manageable.  

As the campaign moved into the 1461-1465 phase which saw the Yorkists trying to establish their rule and putting down rebellions across the North of England, it seemed to me like a good chance to make it more 'local'.  I also had the notion of creating a fictional lord and following his personal little 'narrative' as he fought to become a more powerful noble over his rivals - true WotR stuff, basically.

I had to leave it for a while, as I simply couldn't really work out a good campaign system to adopt.  I tinkered around with a couple, read Donald Featherstone & C S Grant, and struggled to figure out how I wanted to approach things.  Nothing was really quite how I wanted it, but then I came across something rather out of the blue - more specifically, out of 'Miniature Wargames' (with Battlegames) Issue 377, from September.  It had an article by Jim Webster which outlined a system of using playing-cards to produce a playing area of various regions, added in some character-personality profiles, and rules for how to conquer a little mini-empire.  The article specifically dealt with the fall of Late Roman Gaul, but he himself pointed out that the system he used was first thought up for Biblical warfare (back in Issue 368 of the same magazine.)  I loved the idea, and since it had proved adaptable enough to cover two periods already, I knew it could be tweaked enough to do for the WotR.  

I've played around with some medieval adaptations of the rules a little, and am now satisfied enough to give it a go.  The next while should see the blog back in use as I explain how I've set up the world, run through the game in practice, and then finally return to the tabletop.