Mounted Men at Arms progress report.

On my last blog entry I mentioned I would be starting work on a box of mounted men at arms for the 28mm Wars of the Roses project, in actual fact I have started work on two boxes! My original intention was to paint up the two six man Yorkist units of Sir Godfrey Howard in green and white and also Sir Walter de Cobham in black and amber. I have done so, but also decided to paint up two units in neutral colours, these can be used to represent lesser nobles in the campaign game. As all the foot knights and Bill men are too in neutral colours, it will be easy to allocate forces to both the four main factions and the lesser factions.

I always start with the horses, and have included some photos of the completed mounts for the yet to be painted knights. They will be flocked at the very end, once the riders have been attached.

The two Yorkist faction mounts can be seen in the two front rows and the neutral in the remaining two rows.

The knights themselves are currently impaled on cocktail sticks awaiting arms, heads and a coat of paint. The 'Sword and Spear' rules have also arrived, I have read through them once, and like what I see. Certainly a novel way of working out initiative and activation of units. Once I have properly read and digested the contents I will write a full review.

War of the Roses Leader figures now completed.

These figures were a joy to paint, being of course Perry and metal, ensured their quality. They should look just fine leading the troops into battle. I have made a command base which contains two figures, firstly Henry VII and his standard bearer and Richard III also with a standard bearer. Some of these figures will double for leaders of my Campaign game retinues.

All the leaders lined up, sixteen of them and two heralds.

Travelling down the line.

The two twin bases of Richard and Henry.

Looking back along the line.

I put stickers on all the bases to remind me who each model represents.

Next on the painting board is another box of mounted men at arms (knights) as the two Yorkist retinues are currently devoid of any mounted knights. Once done, I shall have enough figures painted up to have a decent game of Lion Rampant or indeed any other rule set covering the period. I have ordered a copy of  Sword and Spear (2nd edition) as it has had some excellent reviews and sounds like it will suit my game style perfectly.

War of the Roses leader figures - progress.

In last night's paint and chat session with the Table Top Commanders, more work was done on the horses as well as preparing the riders.

All the leader figures and their horses. Margret of Anjou and Warwick the Kingmaker are part of the horse casting.

The leader figures need a coat of paint next.

War of the Roses Leader Figures.

I was reading my copy of Lion Rampant yesterday and realised that I didn't have any leaders for my retinues yet. My very good pal Graham, who incidentally started me down this path with a gift of three boxes of Perry Miniatures, had also bought 18 leader figures, all metal, from the same company and they were presented to me at the same time. That was back in late July of this year.

I  located the box, happily sat in the to do pile, fortunately I had primed them in the Summer along with lots of other metals, for future painting in the colder months when spraying outside was not really an option.

There are various members of the royal family, plus other notables from the period. I shall select four of them to be my retinue leaders, they can have dual personalities, which I think lots of them did anyway!

I started by gluing the horses to Renedra bases, all single except for two double bases which will hold King Richard III and his standard bearer also King Henry VII and his standard bearer.

Two of the horses come with figures already moulded on, they are Margret of Anjou sat side saddle and Warwick 'The Kingmaker,' the latter in a very striking pose.

The two double bases can be clearly seen here.

The horses were painted one of three base colours, Mocha, Burnt Sienna or Terracotta Clay after which all were given a coat of Burnt Umber transparent ink, which gives them a subtle selection of chestnut shades.

So the base colour and ink is now applied, still lots more to do of course, highlighting, all the tack, saddles, socks etc. but progress all the same. I intend to complete the horses, plus of course the two figures actually moulded onto the horses. The riders will be done afterwards, I normally drill up through the crotch area and insert cocktail sticks. Sounds painful I know! However on this occasion I think the metal figures will actually be too heavy for that method. The figures all conveniently come with their name on a piece of metal that stretches from ankle to ankle. I may be able to use that to anchor the figures using Blu-Tack.

Finally, whilst in a local store I noticed some A5 size ringbound notebooks (8 inches tall by 6 inches wide). I had the notion to pick up a couple to use as journals for my different projects. I do of course write this blog and make You Tube video too, but really fancied the idea of using good old pen and ink on paper as well. I even dug out my old cartridge pen containing real ink!

Using the ink pen I attempted to make it look a little like the writing of the time, probably not very well, but it will do and I enjoyed writing as opposed to typing for a change.

On the next page I simply set the scene with a single paragraph to put myself and any other reader in the mood for what would follow. It will simply contain lists of the figures I have painted, which retinue they are for, maps and diagrams of battles as the campaign unfolds etc.

Zouaves Completed.

The primed regiments of Zouaves, shown in an earlier post, are now completed. Next up will be some casualty markers incorporating a pod for a 5mm die.

The five completed units, three Union and two Confederate.

I have taken the unusual step of actually naming two of the regiments as opposed to leaving them generic as I normally do. This is the Louisiana Tigers carrying the State flag, for the Confederacy.

Here are the 146th New York Volunteers (Garrard's Tigers) for the Union.

On the painting board now are some casualty figures, a mixture of men and horses.

Some test figures at the bottom.

Foot knights and some 1/72nd scale.

As promised I have taken some photographs of the completed foot knights for the War of the Roses armies. They sport non of the faction colours and so can be placed with whichever faction is required for a particular battle. There are seven units of six men, plus a couple of spare. This has come about as I have used the four fully armoured command figures from the two boxes of WotR infantry to make more units. I still have two or three more boxes of the infantry as well a one more box of foot knights so should end up with 16 or 17 units of foot knights in total, more than enough for my needs.

I have put in a few banners from the various box sets, they may or may not be relevant to the War of the Roses, but if I like the flag, then it gets used!

Quite a formidable looking force.

I also had a sort through my painted 1/72nd scale figures, as you know from previous blog entries, I have a ton of unpainted figures in this scale, all of which I intend to paint up over the coming year. Some of the figures can be used for different rule sets as they are all single based, when I first returned to the hobby, and didn't realise there were other scales now available, or even considered war gaming, I just put the minis on pennies. I have added some photographs of some Crusader figures, they could be used with Hail Caesar, L'art de la Guerre or even Saga.

A host of mounted knights and men at arms.

Certainly a good starting point for a future army.

I also have a large number of Feudal Japanese in 1/72, these came from the board game by Zvezda and Richard Borg entitled 'Samurai Battles.' It has a board and terrain tiles etc. as well a good quantity of 1/72nd scale figures by Zvezda, so they are of a good quality. They come with bases that are used in the game as movement trays, but they can just as easily be detached and used for other rule sets.

Here are just a few of the units I have painted up. The archers in the foreground have some rather large arrows on their base, the idea being, that each time they fire an arrow is removed. A neat way of showing when they are out of arrows!

I think there is a lot of potential games to be had with these figures and their colleagues still stored in boxes.

Back to the Black Powder Challenge!

After a couple or three week hiatus from the American Civil War in 6 mm project, I am returning with five regiments of Zouaves to paint up, the plan is for three for the Union and the other two for the Confederacy. They are all mounted on lolly sticks and are kept in place with Blu-Tack which is a Plasticine type substance that is used in the UK for putting up posters etc. on walls without damaging the surface.

I have done some research and found the Louisiana Tigers had a blue top, white pin-striped type trousers and a red hat/fez. Obviously, I won't be attempting pin-stripes and the trousers will be plain white. The other Rebel unit will have a red top, white trousers and a red hat.

For the Union, 146th New York Volunteers (Garrard's Tigers) seem to be wearing a pale blue top and trousers with a hat of white/red. I don't normally like to identify a particular regiment and prefer them to be generic to allow their use in any battle of the war, but will make an exception for the two above named units, one for each side.

The other two units will be in a green top, red trousers and hat and finally, a sky blue top and trousers with a white/red hat.

In the period I was away from the 6 mm project I managed to complete a total of nine units for the War of the Roses project. One unit of Bill Men, two units of archers and the first six of twelve units of foot knights. The Bill men and foot knights are not wearing the colours of any of the four main factions and so can be recruited into the retinue as required.

I will take photos of them and post them soon.