Vignettes et al

I've been using up some of the remaining castings I have, to create a couple of vignettes and another marker.

The first is a man at arms uttering a prayer for his own salvation at a wayside shrine; perhaps citing 'Charlemagne's Prayer' which was a popular one with noblemen and soldiers for their personal safety during the fifteenth century. The shrine is a model railway item from a Faller HO scale chapel kit. The marker portrays the earl of Salisbury, one of the English contingent leaders at Verneuil; the flag is by GMB Flags.

The other vignette is a mounted man at arms with retainers surveying the field of battle. Two of the foot soldiers are older Citadel figures from the Bretonnian bombard set, which was proably released originally in the 1990s, with the ramrod hand drilled out to carry a seperate flag - so that I can therefore adapt for either side (as pictured) whilst the other has been positioned holding the reins of his lord's horse. Again their attire is out of date, but they're nice figures that seem to fit well together as a small group

Plan is now to move onto to add some non-combatant/civilian types for the town and elsewhere.

More casualties

The rest of the casualty/disorder markers have been done.

Again a mix of figures from different ranges; the horse is a Perry AO range with the base cut off and the saddle added from plastic card - I realised after painting it that I'd failed to add a stirrup - too late now.

I've been rummaging through the rest of my unpainted HYW castings and have come up with a couple of vignettes that I'm happy with, to use up some of the spare figures and I'll do a few individually based ones too.

Casualties of War

For the Salute game I had intended to paint up some casualty figures, to denote unit disorder for the Impetus rules. Regretably I ran out of time and it was a shame as we ran short of markers, only having the very nice pieces that Darrell brought along - for which see here. So I've managed to add an initial ten casulaty bases and have a few more to do (when I get some more circular MDF bases from Warbases).

Figures are mix of Perry, Foundry and Citadel; some with anachronistic armour styles and some with rather old fashioned dress for the 1420s, but at the end of the day these guys are the dead and dieing! I fixed most to their bases and added the stones and sand before painting.

Should post the others soon.

Bosworth - the alternative to the royal wedding

In 1981 I'd avoided the TV coverage of the royal wedding and taken myself off somewhere. So to keep up my traditional response to such events, I spent last Friday at the new Bosworth Battlefield Centre. I say new, as it was actually upgraded and re-opened a couple of years ago and although it's less than an hours travel from my front door I'd not visited yet.

As I expected it wasn't busy (!). Little from the original exhibitions appears to have been retained - although for those of you who have been before those excellent 'Action Man' size figures dressed in finely made armour are still there (but I'm afraid I forgot to take photos of them). The centre is now more 'hands on' and interactive, as is the approach these days. Information is provided in many different formats; one being short films of charcters, some actual some fictional, played by actors in contemporary dress who, at the touch of a button, share their feelings and thoughts about the events before and after the battle.

The political events of the Wars of the Roses are briefly covered, as they relate to the lead up to Bosworth battle. Medieval life and warfare are also portrayed; plenty of reproduction weapons, artifacts and armour are on display. Theres also extensive use of the excellent colour illustrations from related Osprey books, those by Gerry Embleton and Graham Turner. These are displayed overized and it's amazing how impressive they still look at a much bigger size. There's replica armour to try on and an interactive task of arming a knight, even using the option of French terminolgy for the pieces. The battle has an audio commentary, supported by film of re-enactors and an animated display of the main movements of the forces of Henry, Richard and the Stanleys. There is then a considerable amount of space given over to the Tudors (all of them), which I suppose is probably as this is the main point of referecence for most visitors and particularly school children who study them.

The highlight for me were the rooms which covered the archeological project undertaken in the last few years on the battlefield site, which has resulted in the finds and the likely relocation of the battlefield site towards Dadlington, rather than Ambion Hill where the Centre is. This is covered in some depth and all the finds appear to be on display there, including the artillery shot, the boar badge and other metal items.

Outside the centre there is an established walk, which is currenly being upgraded and which is due to complete in 'Spring 2011' - anytime now really. The walk covers the old traditional site on Ambion Hill (possibly still where the royal army encamped on the night before the battle) but it takes you away from the revised site somewhat, through Ambion Wood and past 'Richard's well'. A new sundial and viewing point is under construction, which will give a vista across towards Dadlington and the revised battle site, but as this is about 2 miles away you only get a slight sense of the battlefield layout.

Overall it's a high quality museum and succeeds in giving a very accessible understanding of the battle and wars, indeed it's won a recent award as best small museum. I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours there and my only disappointment was that the shop didn't stock boxes of Perry plastics, so I couldn't use my Battlefield Trust discount to increase my stockpile - Nick at North Star should take note of a sales opportunity!

Two Captains

The captains from the last blog entry are painted and done; both represent leaders of small retinues, employed by their lords who themselves would have been indentured by their own greater lord or even by the king.

I've added a couple of items to the bases for interest. I've been trying to come up with things that can be put on to vignette bases. In wars of the next century drums and damaged artillery pieces look good, but for the medieval period I'm a little more restricted, so it looks like all the ideas I've used here with be seen in different forms on other bases in the future. The wayside shrine is a Noch model railway item, the dog is from Warlord Games Celtic range and the fencing is homemade (cocktail sticks, wire and thin plastic strips).

Glad to have got these done, as they've been knocking around for some time - probably about 15 years!

New Plans

My original plan for after the Salute game was to return to my Burgundians. However bouyed by the great feedback etc, I'm now going to get the remaining castings I have for my 1420s HYW armies completed - whilst restricting myself to not buying any new castings - so I can draw a line under them. Hopefully this will be all done in the next couple of months.

This essentially amounts to painting some odds and ends, including some vignettes, a few more longbowmen (based as skirmishers), a contingent of brigands/armed locals (who I can use on either side) and casualty markers - the latter which I failed to get done for Salute and which we were in need of during the game on the day.

So first up, I've been fiddling with old Citadel castings to create a couple of men at arms en route. Like many others I'm a great hoarder of figures and these have been knocking around for years on the basis that "they'll come in handy one day", and so to justify my magpie-tendencies their day has arrived. These are inspired by Sire Godfrey's figures on a similiar theme. They are composites; old Citadel medieval figures (whose attire is of an earlier HYW period but never mind) on Perry horses with weapons and personal baggage items culled from other figures and a bit of sculpting putty added to assist them sitting better on the mounts. The barrel on the back of the left-hand mounted figure has since been replaced by a small plastic chest that I found I have. The chap on the right will be repainted (except or the horse).

I'll post them up when painted.

Verneuil at Salute

Well, we managed to put the Verneuil game on at Salute on Saturday.

Despite the facts that: Darrell Hindley and I had liaised by email and phone but never met until an hour before the show opened; the terrain and figures had never been laid out beforehand as a dry-run; that I had miscalculated my metric to imperial conversions and so we couldn't fit the fourth terrain tiles across the width of the table and had to live with a narrower terrain layout; that all the players from the Lance & Longbow Society hadn't previously met and that everyone forgot to bring any dice with them! Despite all of this, we chatted...we played..we chatted some more....and amazingly...we won "best demonstration game at Salute 2011"!!!

The win was a real surprise to all of us and topped off a great day. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding experience, although an immensely tiring one. The specific logistical procedures at ExCel means that the set-up and take-away times are very protracted. This meant a Friday afternoon arrival to set-up and an overnight stop for me with all the terrain and many of the figures. The evening stay was compensated for however by the generous invitation to join the folks from Perrys, Rendera and Immortal Minis for dinner.

I did manage to see the proverbial tip of the iceberg of the other very attractive games. At the trade stands I only spent some 'loose change', which was a positive and the plastic was only called for to pay for a subscription to the forthcoming 'Medieval Warfare' magazine, which I'm looking forward to receiving next month.

There appeared to be a steady flow of interest in the game during the day; lots of questions (particularly on how the town walls had been constructed) and many kind, complimentary words passed on the game. It was good to briefly catch up with familiar faces and to be able to put new faces to names from this blog and other gaming forums.

For the game, we set up the alternative scenario, as outlined in Michael Jones' academic article, with the Lombardy mounted men at arms in the centre (rather than on the wings), with their charge being anticipated as the key tactical moment for the battle. Darrell led the French foot, George Moriatis the Lombardians and Nick Palmer took the Scots, while Nigel Cook and I were Bedford and Salisbury respectively. We used basic Impetus rules, which seemed to work well with Darrell, George and Nick's guidance re the finer points (as I'd not played them before). Nigel also acted as our very own 'Jean du Waurin' and kept a chronicle of key events (in his little black book) as the game progressed. Briefly the English decided to stay put in their strong defensive position and take on the force of the cavalry charge. The Lombards initially inflicted casualties, but with some judicous dice rolls the English line held as the charge lost it's impetus (sorry for the pun). The French and Scottish wings of foot, screened by crossbows, gradually advanced. As with the actual battle Narbonne's contingent got ahead of Aumale; although we discovered this was primarily due to everyone overlooking to move the unit whilst Darrell was otherwise engaged around the show! The English longbows failed to make much impression on the advancing Franco-Scots and the game was nicely poised with both sets of the men at arms ready to come to grips, when we ran out of time. I suspect that the greater numbers may have told in favour of the French in the long run?

I hope that the game creates some good publicity for the Lance and Longbow Society and my thanks go to Dave Landchester for allowing us to put the game on, to Darrell for helping with the organisation, his extra figures and the motivation, and to the guys on the day - perhaps we can reprise it again in 2011 at another show?

My personal highlight from Saturday (of the little I saw) were the two '3-up' mounted men at arms by Michael Perry - they look fantastic and here's hoping they make it to the finished stage for the end of this year, as it'll make my wife's life much easier for the Christmas pressie buying . I'm now motivated to try and finish off all the outstanding figures to get my HYW armies completed, before moving on with my Burgundians.