Category Archives: War Of The Roses

Following on from last weeks blog, I seem to have made some progress with my painting but as we are still working (thank goodness) and busy posting and packing other peoples modelling supplies, I haven’t quite finished as much as I would like. The strange thing about the ‘lock down’ is that it seems to have sapped my energy and whilst I have more spare time at the weekends and evenings, I seem to have done less.

The second gun in the army – a nice field piece from Perry’s

So here is a quick round up of progress. I have now finished the second artillery piece for my army, completing the gunpowder section! I will add some tufts – I tend to do this as a session on it’s own and ‘tuft up’ a number of bases in one go. I have no plans to add any more artillery – I now have more than enough for the average game of ‘Never mind the Bill Hooks’. That said, at some point in the future I may add the heavy Bombard that Perry’s make, just for fun and because it will make a nice centre piece.

The Artillery section of my army.

You can see from the picture above that I am missing four light cavalry from the rear rank of my Light horse. These are currently under construction and will complete the two units that I have planned. As regards, heavy horse, I’ve completed three metal Yorkist Command of  Edward IV, Lord Faulconberg and Lord Hastings.

Yorkist command

This gives me 15 heavy horse but the plan is to buy the other Yorkist command pack with Warwick, Gloucester and Salisbury. I will then have 18 heavy horse. Two units of 8 and two commanders, again ideal for Billhooks!

Heavy Horse ready for battle.

The other sub project has been to finish the standard bearers. I intend to do a mini tutorial on Standards and how I apply them but I still have plans to add more. Here’s the couple that I have done using Little Big Man studio decals.

Banner men!

I have gone back and painted over the edges of the banners to hide the white edges but I notice that in the pictures of them in their units, I’ve managed to miss a few bits!

Warwicks Men at arms!

Norfolks Colours, I think but Faulconbergs men…

So My army is approaching completion. Just 4 light horse, 3 heavy horse and 12 more billmen and that will be it. Project completed. I wonder what I will do next?

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

We are still able to work safely and in a safe environment, following all Government advise to do so. If you need anything from our shop, please order as normal. The post is leaving us on time and as normal and we will do our best to turn all orders around in a working day or two as usual.

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here:

PERRY MINIATURES

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;

VALLEJO PAINTS

Happy Modelling!

I just could not avoid mentioning Covid -19 or the Corona virus crisis in writing my blog. In such strange times it would have seemed somewhat perverse to ignore what is probably the most momentous event to affect the country, if not the world, in my lifetime. However, I’m not going to record all of my thoughts on the subject here. There are enough comments, opinions and people minding other peoples business on social media and the mainstream media without me adding to the torrent.

I also have no idea how to pitch any comment. Anything that I write in a serious vain could be considered too preachy. A joke, and I’m not taking things seriously enough. That said, I cant help but try to find some humour in a very dark time. To put things in some sort of perspective, rather than my modelling output increasing, my painting hours have actually decreased over the last week, due in some part to lack of sleep and my mind being elsewhere as I firefight the next stage in trying to keep the business going through these difficult days.

Salisbury, Gloucester and Faulconberg in the process of being based

At least I still have a business – at the moment. Thanks to the incredible support of my small, loyal team, my suppliers, the fantastic postie ( I must get his name!) and of course, my very loyal and supportive friends and customers (often one and the same), we are still trading and sending out modelling supplies across the world. We will continue to do so as long as we are permitted to do so.

Everyday, for the last couple of weeks, we have been having a Grass Snake meeting at Arcane ( A grass snake meeting is a bit like a COBRA meeting, only shorter and less toxic) to work out with Julie, Hayley and Kevin how we will operate. Each day the plan has lasted until about 5.00pm when the latest announcement changes everything. For the moment, our latest plan is holding. Julie and I are working three days together, Hayley (AKA the Packaging Princess) is taking the two ‘quieter days’ and working on her own.  Kevin is supporting from home and in reserve should one of us fall ill.

Another gun crew nearly finished, ready to join the York army.

As I have been married to Julie for 40 years, we have practiced social isolation on a number of occasions and staying 2 meters apart at times has certainly kept one or both of us alive…There, I couldn’t resist a joke!

Gun crew ready for basing

So Arcane Scenery is still trading, along with other online retailers and if we can help you with your hobby, we are here to do so. Despite everything, I have found some time for painting. I’ve said before that I find it very helpful and allows me to tune out of the world and for a short time forget whatever is causing me stress. As you can see from the pictures, my War of The Roses army is still growing. I may even get it finished over the next few weeks!

The next batch of figures primed and ready to paint.

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here:

PERRY MINIATURES

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;

VALLEJO PAINTS

Happy Modelling!

My War of the Roses army is approaching completion, although the project is suffering from a bit of ‘creep’ with my habit of finding that just one more unit would be a good idea! The light cavalry were supposed to be the final unit that I would add. The challenge to my OCD/collectors habit was that the Perry Miniatures plastic box set gives you 12 light cavalry and I only needed 8 to make a unit. My solution to this dilemma was to decide to build 8 of the cavalry as mounted bowmen and then make another unit of 8 Scurrers by adding some metals to the four remaining plastic figures.

Perry Light Cavalry assembled

But first of all, I needed to get the plastics completed. I assembled all of the figures in the box first and then decided to paint them, six at a time, starting with the horses.

Primed horses

As you can see, I primed four of the horses in brown, one in black and the last one in grey. The different base coats giving an indication of the different colours that I would paint the horses! By the way, I use army painter rattle can sprays to prime my models.  When it came to the colours for the unit, I had decided that I would paint them in green and white for no other reason than I fancied this combination. History purists might find this cavalier approach ( Ooh! Good pun!) somewhat unacceptable, particularly as the colours are close to Henry Tudors’, who was a Lancastrian and the rest of my army is based on Yorkist commanders. However, I am painting units for the rules set that we are using’ Never Mind the Billhooks’, rather than creating a specific WOTR army and I feel comfortable in mixing and matching as I see fit. Lets just say that these troops are Cheshire journeymen happy to draw a bow for who ever pays them – in this case, Lord Harry Hotspur!

The four brown horses.

I painted the four brown horses more or less as Bays, using a mixture of browns and washes layered on using my dry/wet brush technique. The horse with the light mane was painted using Green Ochre – I would never have chosen this colour based on it’s name but it does work well! It was then a case of painting the livery in green or green and white.

The black horse

The Black horse was highlighted with black/grey and then very lightly with light grey. I used Buff to pick out some of the livery, again not because of any historical accuracy but because I liked the effect!

The white horse was painted in exactly the same way as I painted Richard III’s horse (see last weeks blog) and so I had my first six horses ready for basing.

Six Light Cavalry Horses ready for basing.

In next weeks blog. I’ll detail how I painted the riders and completed the unit, but for now here’s a picture of the first six figures that I have completed – The basing is still to be finished.

Mounted Bowmen

The sharp eyed amongst you will see that a Prussian Jaeger has sneaked into the picture! So with the six mounted bowmen completed it is onto the commander and standard bearer to give me my eight mounted bowmen.

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here:

PERRY MINIATURES

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;

VALLEJO PAINTS

You can find the Vallejo texture paste here:

VALLEJO DARK EARTH TEXTURE

‘Never mind the Bill Hooks’ will be available as a full colour supplement with the June edition of Wargames Illustrated. If you would like the current issue, click here:

WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED

Happy Modelling!

When the remains of King Richard were discovered in a car park in Leicester, (just down the A46 from us), there was a great deal of media attention, as you can imagine. As far as I was concerned, the nicest item that I saw to commemorate the event, was the model by Perry Miniatures. I really liked the thought that had gone into the model and the gentle humour in showing King Richard bursting out of the car park on his steed! I had wanted to get one from the moment it was released but had been obsessed with my Napoleonic collection and so had not added it to my lead pile. With my interest in the War of the Roses, and the new rules set that we had been play testing, I now had an excuse to get the model. I also wanted to paint something for the rules writer, Andy Callan, who has spent hours re-writing and fine tuning the rules set after each of our play tests, having had to put up with yet more ‘feedback’.

Preparing the models for painting.

So rather than one model, I bought two, figuring that it would not take very much longer to paint two of the same model. I had also decided to convert one of the models slightly, so that King Richard was holding a banner rather than his sword, showing off the title of the rules – ‘Never Mind The Billhooks!’. Just to give myself a bit of a challenge, I decided to paint the models ‘properly’ rather than my usual block paint and quick shade method. To start with, I cleaned up and primed the individual pieces, using a black primer for the base, grey for the horse and Plate mail for the figure.

The car park space bases!

The base was quite straight forward to finish. I simply gave it a dry brush with Vallejo Black grey, 70862 and then followed this with a lighter dry brush of Light grey 70990. It was then just a question of picking out the markings on the car park spot in off white 70820. I could have used yellow – there are two painted models on the Perry web site that I was using as a reference (copying….) – but I preferred the white markings.

The horses being painted

The horses were first painted or rather wet/dry brushed with Light grey 70990 and then Silver grey 70883 as the first coats. I wasn’t too worried if the priming coat of uniform grey was left in the deepest of the creases. The wet/dry brush is my best description of the technique that I used, The paint brush wasn’t loaded with paint but neither was it wiped off, as with a usual dry brush. I also made sure that the ‘high points’ on the model were well covered in paint. I then used the same technique to paint the horses with a coat of off white, but this time, using a drier brush to leave the shadows in the darker colour. The horses manes were painted in Black grey 70962 and the horse furniture in flat Red 70957. The decoration on the horse furniture was done using Brass 70801.

Completed horses on the bases

I then touched up the details on the horse, using Ivory 70918 for the hooves, Platemail for the bit and hooves, black for the eyes and I lightly dry brushed the mane and tail with a neutral grey to bring out the detail. I then carefully black lined the model to sharpen everything up. I really liked the stark appearance of the Perry’s painted model and so I followed this example. For this reason, I didn’t worry too much about highlighting or shading the red – I like the extreme contrast against the white horse!

Painting King Richard – highlighting and details to do next!

It was then onto King Richard. As mentioned, I primed him with army painter plate mail and then gave him a good coat of Dark Tone or Black ink. Once this was dry, I dry brushed him first in Plate mail and then in silver.  At this stage I then started the slight conversion to one of the models and carefully snipped off the sword and then drilled the hand so that I could insert a standard. I also needed to very slightly bend the arm but this was done without a problem. It’s always a good idea to go gently and ease the model in the position that you need – by it’s very nature, the metal will flex if you are careful. The details on the models were then picked out. Red for the belt and leather wear, Flesh 70955 for the face, followed by a skin wash, and then highlighting with another coat of flesh and then light flesh 70928. The hair was Chocolate brown 70872 with a flat brown 70874 hightlight and then a wash of brown ink. The details on the sword were picked out in brass.

King Richard completed and on his horse!

The next challenge was to make the standard.  It turned out to be simpler than I thought. I photo copied the standard for King Richard that comes in the Perry Miniatures Foot Knights set and used a Dymo electric printer to print the title. This was cut to size and stuck onto the flag, which in turn was cut out using a fresh scalpel blade. I then used watered down PVA to stick the flag onto a cut down spear and the job was done!

Never mind the Billhooks!

The standard King Richard…without a standard…

The finished model with the standard is for Andy and I have the original with the sword for my cabinet. Incidentally, I did make two standards – one was the Billhooks version and the other a normal Royal Standard – I think that the Billhooks version looks best on this model!

I am very excited about the release of the ‘Never mind The Billhooks’ rule set. It will come as a free full colour 24 page supplement with the May issue of Wargames Illustrated. I have now seen the draft rules, and they look great. I can only hope that other Wargamers have the same fun and enjoyment that we have had when they finally get their copies!

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here  unfortunately, we are unable to supply the metals:

PERRY MINIATURES

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;

VALLEJO PAINTS

‘Never mind the Bill Hooks’ will be available as a full colour supplement with the May edition of Wargames Illustrated. If you would like the current issue, click here:

WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED

Happy Modelling!

My War of the Roses army is approaching completion. I now have most of the infantry that I am likely to need whilst playing our rules set ‘Never mind the Bill Hooks’. In fact I can actually muster two small opposing retinues if necessary. There are two gaps in the roster though; Light Cavalry and Artillery. I went for the easy option and started to paint an artillery piece. As usual, my manufacturer of choice is Perry Miniatures and as the rest of my army is made up of Perry Plastics it made sense to continue to use the same source. Of course, other manufacturers figures are available!

Artillery!

It was a straight forward task to file down the flash and casting lines on the pieces. Some of the Metal Perry castings can be troublesome in terms of mold lines and excess metal but this pack was well cast and not a problem. I then undercoated the gun in black primer and the crew in grey primer. To paint the wooden carriage of the gun, I followed the article for painting wood contained in the last issue of ‘Painting War #9 – Holy War’. On the face of it, it seems like a bit of a long winded way of producing a wooden effect but I think that it is well worth the effort and time and I am very pleased with the effect.

WOTR Artillery – first coat of Vallejo Chocolate brown 70872

You start by painting the wooden parts of the carriage in Vallejo Chocolate Brown using the normal painting technique and cover as much of the black undercoat as you can but where possible, leave the black metal barrel of the gun and other metal parts. Next you start to dry brush the carriage using Flat brown. This stage can be done with a fairly heavy dry brush and you will cover most of the Chocolate Brown.

Next heavy coat is flat brown 70984

Now use Flat Earth as your next dry brush coat. This time use a slightly lighter coat and less paint on the brush. You just want to catch the details and grain of the wood. This is followed with Orange Brown. Once again, this is a light dry brush and you are just picking up the highlights.

Added dry brush coats of Flat Earth 70983, Orange Vrown, 70981 and yelow ochre, 70913.

The final dry brush is done with Yellow Ochre. You need to be using a really dry brush and a light touch. I tend to focus just on the edges of the model. The magazine article suggests a further highlight using flesh as the top highlight. I decided that I was happy with the finish that I had and stopped there.

The finished gun. Black re painted – I need to go back over the wheel rims with steel.

I then went back over the barrel and ironware on the cannon with  matt black to cover the over brushing that I had made whilst dry brushing. I also then gave the wheel rims a dry brush with gun metal to represent the paint chipping off these due to use. The gun is ready for action.

Gun crew block painted in their black and red livery.

When it came to the crew, I decided on a straight forward red and black scheme for their livery and didn’t get to hung up on the accuracy of this. I just wanted them to match my ‘red faction’ of my retinue. I did consider painting the Gun Captain in a different colour as he would probably be independent of the Lords household, but in the event, went with with the easy solution.

‘sabot’ base under construction

Crew in position – you can see that I’ve painted the crew with quick shade.

On to basing. I created a base that would allow me to remove the crew individually as in the ‘Never mind the Bill Hooks’ rules, this is how hits on the gun and it’s effectiveness is measured. With each ‘hit’ on the gun, you remove a crew member. So once the crew were mounted on 20mm x 20mm MDF bases, I created ‘sabot spaces’ for them on a larger 80mm x 65mm base. See the picture for details. I used some spare thin strips of wood and MDF to make the frames and super glued them into place. This is a bit lazy, I like to use PVA for gluing wood but I was in a hurry to get the base done. I did pay a small penalty for my idleness. I managed to get super glue over my fingers and as a result, even though dry, I couldn’t use the touch unlock facility on my i-phone as the glue blotted out my finger print!

Base coated in texture paste – Vallejo Dark Earth 26219

Once the base framework was completed, I coated it in Vallejo Dark Earth texture paste and then followed my usual basing method.

WOTR gun completed!

This involves painting the base with my favourite coloured emulsion paint ‘Delhi Bazaar’ – Vallejo is too good to waste on bases! Once dry, it is a case of dry brushing with lighter mix and then adding some scatter and tufts. If you would like to know how to get pots of emulsion to match your Vallejo colours, have a look at my earlier blog here:

DONT JUST DO IT…B&Q IT!

So another unit is ready for my Army, next up, the light cavalry, although I suspect that they will take a bit more than a week to complete!

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here:

PERRY MINIATURES

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;

VALLEJO PAINTS

You can find the Vallejo texture paste here:

VALLEJO DARK EARTH TEXTURE

‘Never mind the Bill Hooks’ will be available as a full colour supplement with the April edition of Wargames Illustrated. If you would like the current issue, click here:

WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED

You can find the Painting War magazine here:

PAINTING WAR #9

Happy Modelling!

This weeks blog is just a progress report on this weeks modelling. I am somewhat consumed by my War of the Roses army but progress is slower than expected, partly because the model of the Mary Rose that I am working on has been a pleasurable diversion from ‘grinding out’ more billmen!

Mary Rose – washed with Strong Tone

As you can see from the picture above, I have used similar techniques to paint the ship as I would one of my figures. I gave the hull a couple of light washes with Army painter Strong tone ink. Once this had dried, I gave the ‘deck’ ( it’s actually a representation of the rope grid that was there to prevent boarders – in the event it is thought that this prevented the crew from escaping when the ship capsized.) a dry brush with Vallejo Old wood, lightened with Iraqui Sand. I also gave the rest of the hull a very light dry drush with the same mix. It was then a case of carefully picking the guns out with matt black.

Mary Rose – Decals added

The next stage was to add the decals. Well, what a fiddly job. It took about three hours in a couple of sessions to get these on. I used the Vallejo Decal Medium and Decal fix to help with this job. There was a reason to do this job over a couple of nights – I was very concerned to make sure that one side of the ship had dried thoroughly before handling it. The decals are so small it would have been easy to unseat them whilst they were drying.

Sails – dry brushed

In between fixing the decals, I went to work on the sails. I dry brushed them with a mix of Army Painter Skeleton bone mixed with white, gradually increasing the white until I was happy with the effect. I then gave the sails a wash of Army Painter soft tone ink mixed 50:50 with the Army Painter mixing medium. The mixing medium helps to dilute the colour and helps the ink to flow over the larger surfaces of the sails. Unlike when thinned with water, it doesn’t pull away from the edges.

Sails – Spars painted

I’ve then painted the spars with Vallejo new wood and it was back to the hull. When fixing the decals I realised that parts of the hull should have been painted white. This would have been easier to do before applying the decals but as I said in a previous blog, I had tended to ignore the instructions and just did my own thing! This particularly applied to the paint scheme. I have broadly followed the picture but where it has suited me, I have used ‘artistic interpretation’ to emphasise details or just to get a nice finish.

Mary Rose – hull about finished.

So with the hull and sails about done, the next stages will involve fixing the sails to the hull, painting the stand and adding the rigging. However, I was happy to pause there as the Billmen on my work bench were glowering at me and demanding that I get back to finishing them!

Bill men ready for basing.

As you can see, I’ve nearly completed another unit, with another 12 underway. My army is approaching completion. To celebrate, I bought a Perry Miniatures Artillery piece…

Artillery!

Once the Bill men are complete, I’ll add this to my army and I am nearly done!

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here:

PERRY MINIATURES

Happy Modelling!

It doesn’t take much to distract me sometimes. In this case, whilst on an ‘enforced’ shopping trip at Lidl, I spotted that they were selling some Airfix ship kits for just £4.99. A bargain! But could that price be an excuse for me adding another kit to my stash? Well, one of the kits was the Mary Rose and as I am interested in the War of the Roses at the moment, the Mary Rose was close enough to the period to justify my interest – and it would look nice in the display cabinet. So the Mary Rose kit, along with the ‘Victory’ (‘might as well pick it up – it could work with Black Seas… and a tenner for two kits…you cant go wrong.!’) were added to the trolley.

The Mary Rose under construction

Despite the more pressing nature of finishing my WOTR army, I decided to break away and build the Mary Rose kit. I quite enjoyed the change from making Perry’s WOTR bow and bill men and it looks as though Airfix really have upped their game. The kit went together beautifully with the minimum and sanding and no filling. In fact, I became a bit over confident and did the usual bloke thing of straying from the instructions. As a result I missed out a couple of pieces but no matter, nobody will notice…

Mary Rose under coated

Once assembled, I sprayed the main hull with a Leather brown primer and the sails in Skeleton bone.

Mary Rose Sails

I then painted the decking or the deck covering with Vallejo ‘Old Wood’ and then painted the masts with Vallejo New wood. I should point out at this stage, that I had done no research regarding colour scheme, or for that matter, anything else. My only reference was the box art and the painting instructions supplied with the kit. I just fancied building a kit for a change! Incidentally, the kit does include paints, glue and a nice brush, so it’s a lovely little starter kit.

Mary Rose with decking painted.

It was at this point that I realised that I had a play test of ‘Never mind the Bill Hooks’ looming and I needed to finish off a couple of extra Archer units. So the Mary Rose was pushed to one side and it was back to the Archers!

More arrows please!

In fact I have completed two more units, making 4 Archer units for my army now.

Yet another bowman unit ready for battle!

The ‘red faction’ of my retinue!

So with a photo shoot of my army due, I’d better get on with the Billmen units. I will get back to the Mary Rose, it was fun to just to do something a little bit different during the Christmas break that didn’t require too much thought. But, I will finish the Mary Rose before I start another project – honest…..

Bill men on the work bench.

THE COMMERCIAL BIT

Almost all of the paints, miniatures, bases, basing materials and anything that you are likely to need for your hobby are available POST FREE from my shop here:

ARCANE SCENERY

Perry’s WOTR plastic range are here:

PERRY MINIATURES

Happy Modelling!