I am gradually building an Irish contingent for my WOTR army. The idea is to have a decent number of troops to allow me to re fight the Stokes Field battle ( or a representation of it!) and also to be able to field a full Irish Army should I decide to use the new ‘Celtic Fringe’ rules that will appear in the forth coming upgrade of Never Mind The Bill Hooks.
I had already painted a number of Kern for my Bill Hooks army to use as skirmishers. They can be very useful in the game for harrying other skirmishers and generally causing mayhem if they can hide in cover. To read a bit more about how I use my Kern skirmishers and how I originally painted them, please click on the link below:
You will notice that my first batch of Kern were painted with fairly faded yellow shirts or ‘leine’. I based my colours on the pictures that I had seen on line. I have since done a bit more research and it would seem that perhaps I have been a bit conservative regarding the yellows used. It would seem that the Irish very much prized the colour yellow and using saffron, dyed their clothes with quite a strong bright yellow. I was particularly influenced by this video:
In addition, some of the pictures of re enactors that I have found show a much brighter yellow than I had previously thought was used. So with this in mind, I decided to paint the next batch of Kern using a deep yellow highlight /top coat. Here is the result!
I have primed the figures with Army Painter Desert Yellow. Painted the shirts with Vallejo Yellow Ochre 709136, washed the figures with Army painter soft tone ink, re highlighted with yellow ochre and then applied Vallejo Deep yellow 70915 to finish. To add variety to the figures, I’ve been quite liberal when it came to choosing the colours of the jackets, based on the information in the video above. Incidentally, if you would like further information on the use of saffron, the following article is very interesting:
It’s also well worth clicking through to the rest of the blog for more information regarding Irish arms and Militaria. I now have 66 figures for my Irish Army, with another batch on order. The plan is to have two units of 12 Gallowgalss, two units of 12 Kern with double handed weapons and four units of 6 skirmishing Kern with either bows or spears. There will also be two command bases. I also fancy making a unit of light cavalry or Hobilars based on this picture.
Technically, there were no units of Irish light Horse or Hobilars by the time of the WOTR but in my war gaming world, I’m not going to let reality get in the way of having fun….I just need to find the right models to convert. Watch this space!
You can see the range of Crusader miniatures that we think are suitable to for the Wars of the roses, along with the rest of out Never mind The Bill Hooks range here:
You can find all the Vallejo Model colour paints here. If you don’t want to browse, just enter the paint number into the shop search bar;
Happy Modelling!