War Of The Roses – Page 8 – Steve’s Hobby Blog

Whats on the workbench 15 January 2015

Too much! Well, it’s the start of a New Year and the time when New Years resolutions are made. As usual, weight is involved, only in my case as well as trying to shed a few pounds from the usual over indulgence during the Christmas break, I have resolved to shed a few pounds of lead from my hobby stash this year… I suspect that this may be as successful as my attempts at dieting, as I cant help but binge on new models as they are released! But to try and keep me on the straight and narrow, I’ve developed a few themes from last year that I intend to try to stick to and to be fair, the current back log on my work bench does reflect this!

I’m just putting the finishing touches to my Lion Rampant Retinue. The following two pictures show progress on my Expert Archers.

Expert Archers – Perry Plastics

The first unit is complete and ready to go into battle! I’ve chosen the blue and white colour scheme as a nod towards my favourite football team, Tottenham Hotspurs! It’s a shame that it doesn’t coincide with the original Hotspur’s colours, the Percy family’s Harry Hotspur, who used red & yellow. Blue and white are also the colours of Richard, Duke of York, so they wont be out of place when I use them to build my War Of The Roses Army. I guess that means I am committed to the Yorkist cause, but as Richard III was found in a car park just down the road in Leicester, I’m happy to represent his family on the War games field.

Expert Archers – Work in progress

The second picture shows my second unit of Expert Archers. As you can see they are not quite finished. The picture does give you an idea of the painting & basing process that I use. The archers to the left with the dark brown bases are nearly finished. I just need to highlight the blue leggings and to brighten up the helmets and they will be there. The final stage is to dry brush the base with a couple of highlights of chocolate brown & Iraqui sand mixed. Then I’ll just add my usual assortment of grass & bushes. The archers to the right with the lighter bases have just been block painted and the bases sanded. They’ll need a coat of quick shade and then the same treatment of highlighting and basing. All being well, the units will be done for this weekend.

40th Battalion Somersetshires Work in progress.

Next on the work bench, the 40th Battalion is just missing it’s command group. I’ve got as far as painting the flesh & black and they are on their Renedra bases. My Napoleonic army will continue to grow this year. I plan to paint a further 5 battalions of infantry, 3 cavalry regiments and at least two more artillery batteries. Getting these done before June is a bit of a push, given my painting speed and other interests but so long as I keep pushing on, I will have a decent force to fight our planned Waterloo re-enactment!

DeeZee Lion standing

DeeZee Glyptodon

DeeZee Pterodactyls

The next project on the work bench is painting my DeeZee range. We have just released the standing lion and the pterodactyls so it makes sense to paint up some for display at Salute! The Glyptodon is an older model but the painted version that I have is showing signs of wear and tear, so I could do with another one to replace it. I like to paint a variety of subjects and I also think that it’s good to paint my own products so that I can understand how best to go about it! However, the truth is that I just like the models, which is why I have the range in the first place. I’ll prepare a blog article explaining in depth what is happening with the DeeZee range and our plans for the future. As well as the Deezee range, I am also working my way through the Lucid Eye range of cavemen, lost tribes and explorers. Next up are the Cro-magnon, but I am just waiting for the new pack of hunters to be cast before I start on these!

So that brings me to my final project. Muskets and Machetes in the Caribbean. This is a bit of a ‘sleeper’ but I add the odd model in now and then in the vain hope that we will sort ourselves out and adapt the Muskets and tomahawks rules set to allow our gaming group to explore the battles that took place out in the Caribbean. There is plenty of scope for Jungle skirmishes, beach assaults, small sieges as well as full battles. Well Duncan from Trent Miniatures has just commissioned this superb Chasseur Pioneer of the St Dominique Regt and let me have one of the first castings! The figure will eventually form part of a Command group but in the meantime I had to have one to add to my Caribbean force!

Trent Miniatures Chasseur Pioneer

So that’s it for now, on with the painting!

What’s the use of Bidowers?

Well that was the question I asked myself when putting together my Lion Rampant retinue. With just 6 men in the unit, an armour value of 1 ( 2 when shot at) and a points value of 2, I couldn’t see why I would bother having these in my retinue. The fact was that I had never heard of a Bidower before, come to that, neither has Wickipedia. A google search revealed the following link, which was sort of useful:

Bidower

So why would I have them in my Lion Rampant retinue. Well, after a number of battles facing these units, I realised that despite their cheap cost, they were very useful indeed. For a start, they move on a 5+, and they move quickly, 8 inches a turn and are not slowed by rough terrain. Add to this that they can Skirmish ( shoot and move), cant be targeted from over 12 inches and have the ability to evade. If they do get caught in hand to hand they are going to be slaughtered by most units on foot. However, in rough ground they can hold their own against mounted men at arms, even dragging them into combat ( on a Fierce Charge) on equal terms.

I soon learnt that they were very useful indeed, particularly after they had badly mauled my unit of Foot knights and killed my Leader ( now named Kenny, as he seems to die in every battle) before I could close with them and finish them off. The result is that I have now included a unit of Bidowers in my army. OK, it’s another 6 men to paint but it will give me just a little bit more flexibilty in battle.

And flexibility is badly needed in my retinue. Having chosen the later English retinue from the Lion Rampant rule book, I have found that although they are good in a pitched battle, they can only fight in a tight defensive formation. The bowmen need protecting from any marauding foot or cavalry units by my Foot Knights & Sergeants. So I have made the Foot Sergeants a standard unit ( allowing them to form Schiltron) to save the 2 points need to add the Bidowers. I’ll still need to fight on the defensive & try to lure or goad my opponents to advance within arrow range but once the two expert archers get to fire they cause mayhem among most of the opposition units.

So it’s back to the battlefield tonight with my new look army to see how it can cope with the new tactics that I have planned! The picture at the top of the page shows my latest finished unit, the Foot Sergeants and here is the army that I will field tonight. The archers & bidowers are still temporary units made up from some very old figures that were kicking around in my spares box! They will need rebasing & touching up before they become permanent additions. However, the plan is to replace them with archers from the Perry’s boxed set. The next batch is on the work bench as I write!

The Lion is Rampant – Again!

I mentioned in my blog earlier that I had signed up for the Wargames Illustrated Magazine’s Lion Rampant day, to be held on 31st January 2015. Although it seems some way off, I thought that I better start putting my retinue together and of course practicing the game. As I am somewhat focused on collecting English Armies (and their Allies!), I thought that I would start with a typical English Warband. In the LR rules this breaks down to: a unit of 6 foot men at arms; a unit of 12 ‘expert’ foot sergeants and two units of 12 ‘expert’ Bowmen; a total of 42 figures to assemble and paint.

I could save a bit of painting time by having two units of 6 foot men at arms but this will make the army quite fragile. However, in the short term it will speed the process of having my own retinue finished. The beauty of the English Retinue is that I think that I will be able to build most of the figures using the Perry’s Wars of The Roses Plastic boxed set, which has 40 figures, a good mix of which are either archers or Bill men (foot sergeants). So for an outlay of £12 for the rules and £20 for the figures, I’m in the game!

For those of you not familiar with Lion Rampant, it is one of the Osprey Wargames mini rules, written by Daniel Mersey. It’s one of those clever rules sets that does what it says, it really is straight forward and simple to learn, easy to play and has enough subtlety to keep players engaged. As I have previously noted, this type of skirmish game is a great way to explore a historical genre before you pile in and build a huge army. Even better, the small war bands allow you to mix & match different troop types. So if my English Army doesn’t work for me or if I fancy a change, it wont take too much effort to produce, say, a Templar war retinue.

The game itself is a bit like Saga Rules, but without the Saga board – all the action takes place on the table and combat is resolved quickly by rolling either 6 or 12 dice. A simple attack & defence mechanic determines how many casualties are inflicted and then it’s down to morale – which unit has the stomach for a fight! The fog of war comes in the order system, you roll a dice to see if a unit will activate or not. If it activates ( Moves , Attacks etc) then you go to the next unit. If not, your opponent gets the turn. This soon opens up opportunities or causes problems, depending on which side of the table that you are on! Of course, the other fun comes from the scissors, rock, paper effect of matching one type of troop to another.

So, I have painted my first unit, the foot men at arms. It’ a bit of a motley crew -4 of the figures are Perry plastics, and two are spare metal figures that I had lurking in my lead mountain! In fact I think that both were figures given out at past Newark wargames shows, one of which I painted some years ago & just needed rebasing. Painting was fairly straight forward, I spray undercoated the figures in Plate mail, gave them a dry brush with silver, painted the cloth & leather bits ( Scabard & belts etc) blue or red for a bit of colour, and gold for the sword pommels, brown for any wood. Then a good wash of black ink, brought out the detail before re highlighting the armour. Basing is done using Sandy paste to level up the figures on the renedra 20mm plastic bases, then extra sand added & painted in chocolate brown & highlighted & dry bushed with Iraqi Sand. I finished off with a liberal dose of tufts and flowers…. Here’s the first unit :

The Lion Rampant!

I’ve managed to wean myself off of playing Black Powder for a few weeks! It can get a bit stale playing the same rules set, although I am addicted to Napoleonics for the time being. That said, I have wanted to build a collection of army’s and have been looking for inspiration elsewhere. I have been very tempted by the American War of Independence, as I like the look of the Muskets & Tomahawks rules but the thought of painting more redcoats doesn’t appeal whilst I’m still working on my Napoleonic army.

A recent rules set arrived in stock that did take my fancy and it would give me the opportunity to start another different army from a different period. The Rules set was ‘The Lion Rampant’, a medieval skirmish rules set. Skirmish games are a great way to get you into a period and allow you to play with just a few figures. The Lion Rampant is ideal in this respect as you need about 30 to 50 figures and you have a reasonable retinue with which to play the game. I think that with a box of Perry’s Foot Knights & Mounted Men at Arms I will be able to make a decent retinue. I’ll also have a look at the options from Fireforge games. Their figures have been tempting me for some time now!

So when I was invited to play a game at the local club, The White Hart Gamers, I jumped at the chance. As I thought, it was a straight forward rules set that allowed easy play, just right for a club night game. We played on a 4×4 foot table with 4 retinues all doing battle. It ended with all four leaders meeting their end in glorious combat! In fact we probably overplayed the game but by the end of the game, we were all familiar with the basic rules and enthusiastic enough to sign up for a campaign day in January next year. So I have another project to add to my list. In the meantime, if anyone out there is looking for a new game to play, I can very much recommend the Lion Rampant! Here’s a few pictures of our game.

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Category Archives: War Of The Roses

Whats on the workbench 15 January 2015

What’s the use of Bidowers?

The Lion is Rampant – Again!

The Lion Rampant!

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