Progress on both the Mounted Men at Arms horses and the Campaign Map.

Continued to work on the horses yesterday and they are close to completion, apart from the armour. I show before and after the transparent ink is applied. I should have really done this prior to painting the fancy blue horse tack as it has touched it in places, but that can soon be put right. I have gone with a colour scheme to match the already painted archers, this will clearly show which faction the unit belongs to. I will then have two of my intended factions almost complete. I still need to purchase two boxes of  Men at Arms on foot, to give me some units of foot knights to bulk up each retinue and of course I still have two boxes of Mercenaries, as yet untouched.

 

Saddle cloths and some of the riding tack painted.



Three of the knights are wearing tabards over their armour, so I painted them up to march the archers.

Now with ink added for a richer colour to the horse's coats.

Hopefully, the camera shows the difference the ink makes.



Then the campaign, it has been going around in my tiny brain for a week or so, I did read a similar way of making a map on another blog so thought I would also give it a try. First of all using a pack of playing cards, I extracted the four Kings and 21 other cards at random. I then shuffled the 25 cards and laid them out in a 5 x 5 grid.

The red suits are Lords/Barons with Lancastrian sympathies and the black suits are Yorkists. The four Kings represent areas with a castle, giving me four major factions for the campaign, two of each persuasion. The cards came out pretty evenly spread of black and red cards and I am considering making some areas larger by incorporating picture cards of the same suit into single area. Such as the Lancastrian castle, denoted by the King of Hearts, has both the red queens taking up that whole corner, that would be a super estate, same for some of the other castles with picture cards adjacent to them. The other cards represent the value of the estate so an Ace is low quality, probably high moor land or similar whilst a 8 or 9 is an area rich in agriculture or similar.
The next task was to take the layout of he cards and create a table in Word, I than looked at a map and chose names of various small villages in the area, some are real and some fictional to use as the names of the areas. I also found a Medieval Name generator and used that to create the current incumbent of that region. Finally, depending on a regions wealth, the incumbent live in a Hall, Manor House, Fortified Manor House or of course a castle.

So below is the current map, top line highlighted in grey, is the name of the region, below it is the value of the land. Next come the current Lord followed by which of the two houses he nominally supports and finally his abode. Other information needs to be added of course but this will do as a starting point.

Thorngarth	Burn Howe	Garthdale	Flixthorpe	Stainby
12	4	7	9	5
Walter de Cobham	Richard Pierrot	Christopher Chamberlyn	Charles Hyde	Arthur Symons
York	York	York	York	Lancaster
Castle	Hall	Manor	Fortified Manor	Hall
Pickerton	Knapton	Egton Low Moor	Nether Silton	Witton
10	8	2	10	12
Esmour Talbot	Godfrey Lovell	Richard Wadham	Andrew Daye	Ralph Lytton
York	Lancaster	York	Lancaster	Lancaster
Fortified Manor	Manor	Hall	Fortified Manor	Castle
Leymoor	Hammerton	Wheeldale	Sailsworth	Hauxwell
10	12	10	3	5
Denys Sutton	Godfrey Howard	Edmund Dye	Ethelbert Fitzherbert	Stephen Boteler
York	York	York	York	Lancaster
Fortified Manor	Castle	Fortified Manor	Hall	Hall
Hutton Wiske	Foggerhill	Waplington	Langthwaite	Ellerbeck
3	4	9	1	10
Bernard Hache	Phillip Derring	Aubrey Cotterill	Gauwyn de Montecute	Luke Fonteyn
Lancaster	York	Lancaster	York	Lancaster
Hall	Hall	Fortified Manor	Hall	Fortified Manor
Kirbyholme	Colsterdale	Exelby	Rudston	Shefton
10	9	1	12	10
Reynard Vawdrey	Geoffrey Olyver	Elias Draper	Benedict Foxe	Thomas Renfry
Lancaster	Lancaster	York	Lancaster	Lancaster
Fortified Manor	Fortified Manor	Hall	Castle	Fortified Manor

So I am quite pleased with both the progress of the Mounted Men at Arms and of the abstract campaign map. I will hopefully do more work on both during today.