Wars of the Roses Project - Retinues for the Lesser Nobles.

Having now completed the retinues of the four main factions for my campaign game set very loosely in the North of England, attention turns to representing some of the lesser nobles in the campaign. I had an extra box of mounted men at arms as well as two boxes of infantry. The final troops of this project.

I have already painted up a box of twelve mounted knights in neutral colours, they where to be used to represent the lesser nobles, with hindsight, I should have created some new colour schemes. Instead I have split this box of twelve into three units of four figures, two additional figures can be added from the aforementioned neutrals to make the unit up to the required six figures.

Keeping the theme of football teams I have chosen the following...

Red and white for Stoke City or Sheffield United if you prefer, I prefer the former as a tribute to my buddy Steve Clay. Photos have been taken in artificial light as it has been so dark and overcast for the last week up here in Yorkshire.

Next up are the black and whites of Newcastle United or Grimsby Town, again for a friend across the Humber, Andrew.

Finally, and because I love the colour combination of green and yellow we have a contingent from Norwich City.

I have continued to work on my campaign map, on a sheet of A4 I now have all the towns, estates, castles, roads, rivers etc. drawn out. With my drawing skills it is certainly no work of art, but it is functional and will serve my purpose well. I can now see the routes nobles and their retinues would have to take to move around from one area to another and also gives me a rough scale for movement purposes.

I now need to get hold of some foam board or similar to create castle/town walls to use in some of the scenarios that will occur during the campaign. I don't intend to model a full castle, just a couple or three wall sections with a tower and a gate to put at one edge of the table as a representation.

So it is onward and upward, I am really enjoying this project and now with enough troops to actually have a decent sized battle, one is currently set up on the table. You can see the troops in the distance in some of the photos. I just wish the weather would play ball and actually give me enough light in the man cave to take decent photographs.