These chaps are the peasantry contingent for the Lion Rampant First Barons War collection.
'tis finished at last. I'm going to call this done.
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| Camelot! Camelot! Camelot! (It's only a model...) Shush! |
The roof is a print from a paper craft HO scale railway model, reduced slightly in scale and varnished. The design began as an American wooden shingle type roof, but looks sufficiently like a medieval stone tile pattern it'll do fine. The windows I left blank, painting them in with a dark brown shade to look more like a natural shadowy interior. The whole was given a coat of Future/Clear/Pledge/Whatever polish with some very diluted sepia and black ink to give it a weathered 'recent rainfall' look.
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| Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time! |
In the Lion Rampant rules this manor would count as 'Superb cover,' giving a defending unit bonuses for cover etc. Hopefully I'll get it into action in a game before long.
With Friar Balsam and his copy of the Passion of Saint Tibulus (illustrated edition) safely in the care of his foot serjeants, Sir Oswald de Patton led his men-at-arms into action against Sir Jean to buy the serjeants time to retire with their charge.
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| The serjeants begin to retire from the field as Sir Oswald leads his men up the road and into combat. |
The men of Sir Jean's retinue were making good practice against their enemy. Sir Jean counter-charged Sir Oswald's men-at-arms with his own with every expectation of continuing the good work.
However, fate decided otherwise...
A short but vicious fight broke out on the approach to Cockham, the air filling with the hammering of metal on metal and the screams of men and horses. After a man fell on each side the opponents took stock of the situation.
Sir Oswald's men were still full of fight. Sir Jean's men... were not. With shouts of suavez-vous! they had it away on their heels, fleeing back up the road to whence they came, leaving Sir Oswald and his men standing pleased but baffled.
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| Er..? |
Seeing their leader fleeing the field had a dampening effect on the rest of Sir Jean's retinue. They stayed their hands, allowing Sir Oswald and his men to retire unmolested from the battle. Friar Balsam and his precious charge are safe.
* * *
That was unexpected. Sir Jean's retinue really piled on the pressure throughout the encounter, causing more casualties than they received, yet when it came to the crunch Sir Jean and his men were paper tigers. There's not much that can be done with a roll of two 1's on the Courage test.
With no other of his bands within charging distance of the serjeants escorting Friar Balsam, I called the game at that point. An odd ending, but satisfying.
Sir Oswald de Patton's men may have beaten Sir jean to finding Friar Balsam, but Sir Jean's men are full of fight.
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| Crossbowmen pick their way through the wood as Sir Jean leads his men into the village square. |
With Friar Balsam recovered from the byre and in their charge, the foot serjeants begin to retire from the field. Pressure mounts as Sir Jean's troops advance.
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Close by, Sir Jean's mounted serjeants are punching well above their weight, driving Sir Oswald's men-at-arms back twice at little cost to themselves. Their opponents are at half strength and beginning to falter...
A fine Autumn day saw Friar Balsam, Holy Order of St. Aimless the Confused, running for his life up the Almost Great North Road.
He'd been entrusted with a valuable copy of the Passion of St. Tibulus, a highly controversial work the existence of which had inflamed the already nasty war between King John and his Barons. The sympathetic Sir Oswald de Patton, of the Baronial Faction, is on his trail. Sir Oswald learned the King's men are abroad searching for the errant friar, and he seeks to give refuge to the holy man and peruse the naughty Passion for himself place the holy book under lock and key.
Meanwhile, Sir Jean the Unreasonable is hot on the trail of the friar, seeking to arrest him for heresy and take the holy book for his own gratification to ensure its heretical notions are kept away from the impressionable public.
Friar Balsam reached the village of Cockham in the Wood, known as the site of an ancient battle between Romano-British Christians and pagan Saxons. A structure on the village square both commemorated the Christian victory and served as a butter market. The church of St. Onan the Blind stood the other side of the square, but the priest was away visiting his mistress a sick parishioner and couldn't offer Balsam sanctuary. It behooved Balsam to seek cover from his pursuers.
So it is both sides enter the field of battle...
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| Sir Oswald to the left of him, Sir Jean to the right, Balsam's stuck in the middle and blue. |
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| Sir Oswald's retinue begins to roll. |
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| Sir Jean's retinue seems reluctant to budge. |
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| Eventually both sides begin to advance. The cheeky mounted serjeants seem to fancy their chances against the better armed and equipped men-at-arms. |
Sir Oswald's foot serjeants approach the village. The nearest of the two bands draws close to the barn and a copse of trees, both potential hiding places. Is Friar Balsam hiding in either?
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| The mounted serjeants have a point-or rather, several nasty sharp points, and the men-at-arms get the worst of the encounter. |
As the mounted men square up to each other the commander of the longbowmen begins to position his troops to fire upon the mounted serjeants once they get a clear shot.
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| A rustling in the byre startles a serjeant. Moments later a scruffy figure emerges into the light... |
Well, waddaya know? Friar Balsam was in the second potential hiding place. Now let's see if his friends can get him to safety...
To be continued.
And so battle is joined between the forces of the French Pretender Prince Louis, and King John's Loyalists.
The Franco-Scottish Knight Sir Jeckyl A' Pliance and the English Knight Sir Kit Breaker have been at odds all year. With Autumn coming on, they decide to meet and settle matters once and for all. The showdown is at the ford crossing a stream in the unremarkable village of Little Snogging. For the game, Sir Kit is 'insipid,' and Sir Jeckyl is 'blessed.'
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| The French approach from the west |
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| The English approach from the east |
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| The field of battle |
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| A hesitant French advance. Mounted serjeants swing north towards the open ground |
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| A more robust English advance |
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| Mounted English men at arms head for the gap 'twixt hill and river |
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| The French converge on the village |
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| English foot serjeants hesitate whilst Sir Kit heads confidently right for the ford |
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| To the north French mounted serjeants clash with English men at arms... |
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| ...and are thrown back, battered |
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| Sir Kit squares off against Sir Jeckyl. French crossbowmen skirt the village heading for the river |
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| Crossbowmen and archers exchange fire to the left. French men at arms recoil in centre. French serjeants and men at arms clash again on the right |
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| Crossbowmen close up to the river, men at arms clash again in the village, but the foot men at arms have cut off Sir Kit's escape. On the right the English men at arms take a beating |
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| A devastating volley of quarrels almost annihilates the longbowmen. The foot serjeants are repulsed from the ford. The English men at arms are taking a beating, too... |
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| The End. A last ditch attempt to break through the ford is repulsed once again with loss. In the village, alone and surrounded, Sir Kit goes down fighting. |
So endeth the first game.
What do I think of the Lion Rampant rules? On the whole, they're pretty good. They're easy to grasp and give a quick game. One rule I did change almost immediately was the Activation roll. Under the rules if one unit fails to activate, all subsequent units (if any) on that side automatically fail and the initiative passes to the other side. After FIVE failed activation rolls where nobody moved, I decided it was too much 'friction of war.' I'm here to game, not look at a static display...
Straight away I decided to limit the fail to the unit rolling. All subsequent units got their chance to move. This sped things up nicely, and I'll keep this house rule in future.
Progress (finally) on some of the remaining mounted men-at-arms from my original (30 years+ old) collection.
They've had their dip in dark varnish. One figure fell off the peg and into the dip, leading to several minutes of hilarity... not, as I tried to retrieve the slippery little bugger. That's him on the right.
All that remains is to base them up. I have another six mounted figures like these, but they need more work to get them ready since they have broken parts which need replacing. The same applies to a batch of foot figures, both serjeants and yeomen. One crowd that shouldn't take too long is a group of six falchion men. Under the Lion Rampant rules they ought to be twelve strong, so I'll just mix them in with other foot figures and count them as upgraded rather than buy a new batch.
Hopefully I'll get them all on the table for a game before long...
The mounted serjeants for Lion Rampant are now finished, varnished and based up. These are intended to be somewhat generic, but will probably fight for France to begin with. They came together quite nicely in the end in spite of my early reservations about the multi-part assembly.
It's getting high time I got some figures on the table. We're halfway through April and I haven't fought out a single game yet. It might have to wait until next weekend since I'll be busy all next week. I get my second Covid vaccination on Monday, so we'll see what happens.
The next batch of figures for Lion Rampant are on the painting block and undercoated. These are a dozen mounted serjeants, which I'll paint up in generic fashion although I suspect they'll mostly deploy as part of a First Barons War French contingent.
These figures are by Blue Moon Manufacturing. They come in three separate piece - horse with rider's lower torso, rider's upper torso, and kite shield. No lances were supplied so I cut my own from wire. I'm... not a big fan of these figures. Getting the top half of the rider to sit properly in the lower took a good deal more cutting, filing and fiddling than I can normally tolerate. In spite of my best efforts some figures had gaps where the fit wasn't quite right, necessitating a spot of filling.
Fitting the lances and shields were marginally easier. However, the castings are crisp and clean and should paint up nicely. I'm looking at getting another batch to make up a castle garrison retinue.
If anyone wants to see how it should be done, head over to PanzerKaput's blog, where he has a number of First Barons War units painted up in superb fashion.
The second and last batch of crossbowmen are now off the painting block and ready to make a thorough nuisance of themselves on the vasty fields of France or elsewhere when required
My wife's birthday is coming up in a few weeks, so I'll put the Lion Rampant stuff aside for a while so I can concentrate on painting the Doctor Who figures I bought for her a long time ago. Once they're done she'll have all the Doctors from Hartnell through to Matt Smith. I'm not sure if anyone's produced a Peter Capaldi or Jodie Whitaker figure yet, but I suspect it'll only be a matter of time. I keep getting tempted by the 7TV rules for gaming 60's and 70's TV tropes. Can anyone tell me if they're playable solo?
The first dozen crossbowmen are off the painting block.
These are a mix of the old figures I got with the original batch, and the new Essex ones bought at Christmas. I painted them in mixed colours for a bit of variety with a preponderance of red and yellow, which could represent the Earls of Winchester or Norfolk. The next batch will be blue and white livery to represent a number of English lords' retinues, French/Flemish for deployment in England or France.
It's been an annoying week in some ways due to computer problems. Last summer Windows 10 performed a MASSIVE update, my machine hasn't worked properly since and it's getting worse. Measures are in hand to rectify this, so on to other things.
I just finished this book - After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War 2 in Europe. It's a fascinating and well-researched work on the spluttering final kick of the Nazis. It has a lot of alternate ways to use late war figures and gear. Fancy deploying the German-equipped anti-Bolshevik 'Russian Liberation Army' against die-hard SS divisions in Czechoslovakia? Or play out a number of what if scenarios where the Western Allies - particularly Patton's army - decide to push as far as they can into Occupied Europe before the Russians arrive?
The next batch of figures roll off the painting block to join the retinues.
I'll be the first to admit the fleur-de-lis designs on the shields and pennants don't bear close examination. I find my painting skills have declined of late. At least they're fine for the 'three feet rule' standard I paint to anyway.
According to the retinue lists in the Lion Rampant rules I'll need as many mounted men-at-arms again for a French retinue, but the rules are highly flexible and you can field other warrior types easily enough. There are plenty of small actions mentioned in the book about King John covered in the previous post that have a different balance of types, especially crossbowmen.
Our local library reopened a few weeks ago, and whilst browsing the shelves I came across this title. King John and the Road to Magna Carta by Professor Stephen Church.
It's an excellent read, although I suspect Church has a sneaking sympathy for the embattled King John. The book covers the period from John's birth to his death from dysentery. His own father King Henry II gave him the nickname 'Lackland' because the then-two-year-old John wasn't a factor when it came to drawing up significant land grants for the King's children. As king, John lost his territories of Normandy and Anjou in what is now France to the wily King Phillipe, and spent a heap of treasure in various futile attempts to regain them. The taxation he inflicted upon England sparked the barons' revolt, the creation of the Magna Carta and John's eventual demise in the middle of a civil war.
For the Lion Rampant player the book contains numerous ideas for scenarios in England, Ireland, Scotland and France. Not all conflicts involved major powers. Quite a few came from disputed inheritances, royal-authorised land-grabs and sheer opportunism enabled by a weak or weakened neighbour.Plenty of fodder there for a good campaign or series of linked scenarios.
Another batch of foot serjeants rolls off the production line.
Now these are done I'm into repair-and-replace territory. Since I got these figures out to work on the air has filled with the soft patter of broken spears and lances falling onto the work table. Some of the things are so delicate now a mere glance is enough to break them. I have six mounted men-at-arms in the process of having their lances replaced. First off I cut away the sad remnants of the cast weapon then replace them by stiff wire. I have to use a spot of Milliput to rebuild the arms and hands holding them, but the end result is much sturdier. Once that's all done I'll give them a spray of black undercoat.
I'm almost at the point where I can field a couple of retinues on the tabletop. Then I can get a trial game in. Watch this space...
The first batch of foot serjeants is complete and based up. The green bases look a bit too pale so I may go over them again.
Another batch of twelve serjeants is on the painting block now. So many of the remaining foot figures have broken spears, after painting the serjeants I'll have to go into repair and replace mode. Given how old these figures are and the sometimes rough life they've had I'm only surprised they've lasted this long.
A snowy day, and more progress on the First Barons War project. The 1st Earl of Winchester's retinue joins the growing host for Lion Rampant.
Saire de Quincy was 2nd Baron de Quincy of Bushby and 1st Earl of Winchester. He was one of the authors and guarantors of the Magna Carta, and as such became a prime target for King John’s notorious malice in the First Barons War.
I've almost completed the first batch of foot serjeants. They only need basing up. I may tackle a mounted contingent of men-at-arms next. Mounted figures are not my favourite when it comes to painting.
And now for something not entirely different... I found this meme on Twitter and had to smile, since it applies to so many of our gaming and modelling community.
I really do need to spring clean my Man Cave. Yesterday a teetering pile of... stuff... slipped and drove my painting block right off the table. Several archer figures and men-at-arms nearing completion were unceremoniously detached from the nails and scattered on the floor. Thankfully no spearmen were involved, otherwise I'd be looking at having to replace several broken spears.
Slow but steady progress on the Lion Rampant retinues this past week. The first batch of archers are finished, and the foot yeomen need their base work completed. I'd just about finished them when one figure's spear decided to part company with the rest of the casting, so requiring some tedious cutting and filing to replace it with a wire substitute. I'm afraid I might need to do the same to others as this project progresses.
It's a bit difficult to determine what the figures bottom-left are wearing. From one angle they're un-armoured, equipped with a nasal helmet and a jerkin over some kind of tunic. From another angle they could be wearing chainmail. I painted them up as un-armoured foot yeomen, but equally they could be foot serjeants.
Immediately behind them is a row of undercoated figures including three foot serjeants. These do have clearly defined chainmail. Behind them again on the painting block is a batch of foot men-at-arms halfway through the painting stage. I do like 15mm figures, as I find they and 10mm figures are easier to paint than larger or smaller scales.
Once the foot are done I'll turn to the next batch of mounted men-at-arms. The Early English retinue list shows two such units, two foot serjeants and a unit of archers. The French list has two units of mounted men-at-arms, one each of mounted and foot serjeants, and a unit of crossbowmen. It's entirely up to the gamer how the forces are composed, though, but I have enough figures of all types to stick to the lists.
My Lion Rampant project is making headway. Today I finished basing up the mounted and dismounted men-at-arms in service to Hugh Bigod, 3rd Earl of Norfolk, along with a unit of French and one of mixed English men-at-arms on foot. I have a dozen or so archers to base up, before returning to paint another batch of men-at-arms. Normally I dip figures in Future/Clear floor polish then follow with a coat of matte varnish. In this instance I thought just gloss alone would give them a nice bright 'larger than life' look on the tabletop.
The basing is vinyl tile adhesive smeared over plastic card with sand pressed into it. Colouring was done using green acrylic ink diluted with floor polish before a wet brush of light green acrylic paint.
