Perry Plastic Knights

Just a quick photo update of the figures I bought at Claymore 2012 - or some of them, at any rate.  These are the two boxes of Perry Plastic 'Mounted Men at Arms' - and very fine they look too!  I've gone for about two-thirds with lances (although there are enough parts for you to do them all that way, if you choose) and a third with hand-weapons like swords, axes, hammers, etc.  That's Twenty-four figures in total, which is enough for anything from about 6 bases in something like Impetus or two units in Hail Caesar or the like, without it looking at all unrealistic.  

I've decided I'm going to spray the horses down with a brown aerosol (the riders aren't yet glued on) and the knights can then get painted/sprayed metal along with a few bits of barding (horse-armour, basically) and glued into place before the final touching-up.  I'm making an effort to adopt more of an 'army-painter' method throughout, as I always tell myself I'll just do it by hand and then come to regret it halfway through!

Medieval Army in 6mm

Happy New Year!

After a prolonged silence and related xmas/new-year shenanigans, I have been busy working away in my spare hours to paint and plan. I have been painting quite a volume of 15mm SYW figures over the last few months, so now I have been indulging in some various periods, what with a change being as good as a rest, and all that! So, here are the results of my labours: primarily, my Baccus 6mm Wars of the Roses armies are done up, providing me with DBA/Impetus forces for many late-medieval battles of a historical and fictional nature!

The full host: 27 bases all told!

Mounted knights - the flower of chivalry, plus some ludicrously over-bannered generals!

The mass of the footsloggers - Longbowmen, all in retainer livery (fictional, but as records are so vague, who cares?)

A little close-up of some of them (a black undercoat hides a multitude of sins!)

Billmen to back up the Longbowmen, who outnumber them about 2:1. A little forest of bills, halberds, poleaxes and all manner of terrifyingly pointy bits of metal!

A further close-up. As a lot of other people on the web seem to have done, I have clipped the six 4-long strips of troops into eight 3-long, to fit the 60mm x 30mm base.

The nobility on foot - a mass of men at arms in 'white' armour. Far too many for WotR forces, but they'll be handy for dismounted knights in the HYW French army.

Disgraceful common villeins! City militia in Spear-wielding masses, plus some contemptible mercenary crossbowmen.

The Full Crowd - A fine spectcle en masse, although this lot will spend more time fighting each other. I have no decent campaign rules at hand, plus I have only just had my first experimental try-out games with Basic Impetus, to get a feel for it. Marvellous!

(Oh, and stand by for my attempts to sell various old miniatures in the new year, as part of a big cleanup! I will post links and details, if anybody feels like picking up a clutch of troops to strengthen their own forces!)

New Arrivals

Ah, the arrival of much-anticipated figures! I won't post pics of the new lead mountail I have waiting for me, but I have pressed on and painted a few bases of 6mm Wars of the Roses figures. So, here's a little eye-candy for you!

Here's the full crowd so far of ten bases plus a commander. (There's no overall scheme, I'm just painting them as the mood comes to me!)

The rank-and-file, Retainer Longbowmen. I've painted one set plain red, and another blue-and-white. I'm not basing it strictly historically, just on what looks decent and plausible!

The General, plus bodyguard and herald, mounted on a 2p coin. Retinue Billmen in the background.

Men At Arms - possibly the fastest to paint, thanks to the 'white' armour with no heraldic colours on them! Makes them look far more scarily business-like, I think. No banners are made yet, but that's my next task.

Mounted knights. I bought these mainly to give me the option of later-HYW battles, plus in my fictional Lavancia campaign things will have a HYW-WOTR flavour, and there's always space for some hard-charging cavalry in any army of mine!

Finally, a close-up of the billmen. Second-most numerous troops on the field, being outnumbered by Longbowmen roughly 2:1.

Painting continues, so updates - and ultimately a battle will follow, as soon as I have the time!

Planning Projects

There have been some new developments afoot, which I thought I'd relay on the blog. The ACW campaign is still on the go, although 'real life' has compelled me to tidy my board away right now and make some space. Soon, I'll return to it! In the meantime, as the blog is meant to cover all my wargaming activities, I thought I'd bring news of a new project.

I pondered a new period for a while, and spent much enjoyable time planning out what I was going to do. The options it finally came to were a pair of Thirty Years' War armies or a set of Wars of The Roses troops. I finally plumped for the latter, and then spent time mulling over scales and daydreaming as I shopped cheerfully around online. I was going to do it in 28mm, then 15mm, then 28mm again, then not at all, then 28mm, then 6mm, then 15mm. An absolutely crazy process, but highly enjoyable! In the end I selected 6mm, not least because in these days money is tight, time tighter, etc. (I'm sure you know how it is!)

What finally swung it was the Baccus 6mm armies and deals. To put it in perspective, a sum of about £30 would have bought me a pretty decent set of figures in 28mm, which I could probably have made a few units with. The same sum in 6mm could buy me an entire army!

My aim isn't just to 'do' the WotR entirely, but to at least partially do it in another form. For some time I've been running a medieval campaign of my own (unpublished on the internet, but written up in my notebooks) for the "Kingdom of Lavancia" as I call it. Lavancia is a fantasy realm in the Late Middle Ages, torn apart by fractious Dukedoms and noble houses. It was initially used by me for my old DBA 15mm Hundred Years' War armies, but I've rather gone off this option. DBA is actually quite poor for doing the HYW, as the variety of troops drops away and a lot of DBA's fun is lost. Plus, bases of four men I painted years ago tend to look a bit underwhelming to my eyes now, after appreciating the impact larger bodies of troops can have!

So, my initial campaign will continue but I'll be widening the timeframe an almost imperceptible amount from the Agincourt, French Conquest, Joan of Arc phase of the HYW and adding in the WotR. I'm also switching away from DBA, as I have recently come across Basic Impetus. It looks more interesting, still admirably simple, plus it requires very few bases to field an army. I can, with only a few tweaks, field the armies listed for HYW English, French, York, and Lancaster. It all sounds pretty good, so I'm all set to go and recount here my full army-collecting progress! The order has been placed, and I'm currently awaiting delivery.