It is all the fault of those Perry twins! I keep on seeing blog
posts, forum entries and magazine articles about their plastic Wars of
the Roses figures and I want them.
So before buying any I thought that I had better start to understand these "wars".
Books
So,
what books do I have. Well I hoard books so I already had some. But of
course why read those when I could buy new books. So I bought two books
on the military history of the wars. First John Sadler's "The Red Rose and the White". Then Philip Haigh's "The Military Campaigns of the Wars of The Roses".
Read them in double time. Both very good, Haigh has the edge in writing
style and detail but Sadler tries to bring in more of the first hand
experiences of the politics and the fighting.
Then I
pulled out the Terry Wise men at arms book, the WRG Armies of-the middle
ages book, the army lists (WRG, FOG, Impetus). More army and troop type
information.
So I have enough knowledge to be dangerous, now I need to start building an army.
What Side and When?
These
are a complex series of wars. People change sides, change alliegency,
they even change their titles as the wars go on. I first leant towards
the Yorkists, after all Edward IV was never defeated in battle and they
wear cool colours (more on that later). But, I don't have an opponent in
mind yet, so best to collect both sides.
Now the side
changing and treachery comes in to help. Warwick, the arch Yorkist,
changed sides in 1469 and was suddenly a Lancastrian (actually I think
he was always on his own side and changed his allies). So collect both
sides for 1469-71 and you have a larger Yorkist army for the 1455-64
war. Genius!
Another plus for this particular phase of
the wars is the presence of Burgundian supplied mercenaries on the
Yorkist side. That gives me an excuse to use the Perry Mercenaries box
to add in pikes, crossbows and handguns.
Figures
As
is usual for me, this has been opportunistic. I went to Colours 2011 at
Newbury and found Dave Thomas selling the Perry Plastics at 15 quid a
box. So I bought two of the WotR infantry boxes and a mercenary box to
get me started.
Once home I started to assemble them. I
actually enjoy assembling plastic figures and these go together like a
dream. The parts in the two boxes are interchangeable, so you get great
variety.
After assembling a few figures I sat back and
thought about actually organizing the little chaps. Many troops were
raised as retinues for the various nobles so I decided to work on a
number of these. How many figures? For no real reason I settled on large
retinues (for kings and the main magnates like Warwick) of 24 figures,
standard retinues of 16 and small ones of 8 or 12.
I
cannot find a definitive view of the relative proportions of bows, bills
and men-at-arms in the books or online so am going for 50% bows and a
3:1 ratio of bills to men-at-arms.
Basing
It
is going to take me a while to get these painted and it would be good
to get some gaming done early on. That means that I need to be able to
use the figures for skirmish games. So they need to be on individual
bases. Whilst thinking about this I came across Warbases.
They have movement trays that will take figures mounted on UK 1 penny
coins. So I collected all of the 1p coins in the house and started
sticking the figures onto these. I have covered the coins and bases with
PVA and bird cage sand before painting. Once I am ready to move to big
battle systems (I am open minded about rules as long as I can base
things my way) I can pop the figures into suitably decorated movement
trays.
Next ...
For the next
post I will share my thoughts the retinues that I plan to build, the
colour schemes involved and get started on painting. Pictures will be
posted of my progress.
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3 comments:
Check out the Coat of Steel and Crown of Paper rules by the Perfect Captain (just Google). They are great. I also recently took the WOTR plunge - always wanted to do it and the Perry figs swung me into action.
The Perry miniatures are great to paint. I bought quite a lot. I am currently building the Lancastrian/Tudor host for Bosworth field.
Recently (Sept 2020) Wargames Illustrated magazine (UK) had a fantastic supplement with one of its magazines: a short set of rules called 'Nevermind the Billhooks' which gives a great set of rules to play most Wars of the Roses-type skirmishes up to medium sized battles. There are a set of counters, tokens and cards that can be printed, cut out and stuck to card, or you can buy excellent quality ready-made ones from Wargames Illustrated.
In edition 402 of the magazine, they added a few pages of rules so you can play rabble (yes, you read that right, rabble, not just rebel) armies as well. This is a great addition, you can factor in Jack Cade's 'peasant' rebellion, plus 'Robin of Redesdales' uprising in the North. As rebel / rabble armies would be a mix of civilians (eg disgruntled farmers, bakers, townsmen) and soldiers (eg 'harnessed men' with some basic armour and edged weapons) there's great room for modelling and painting. Some older Perry Figures could be used too, such as Agincourt 1415, because older styles of armour might still be found among poorer men who couldn't keep up with the latest expensive fashions. I think Fireforge Games now do a box of 20 hard plastic 'folk rabble' as well, but it's a good opportunity to use some of the many civiian figures available from manufacturers like Black Tree Design / Eorbis, Front Rank, Casting Room Miniatures etc.
I tried using the Crown of Paper / Coat of Steel, but found it quite complex to be honest, though I intend coming back to it, it looks great once you get the hang of it. My dream would be to have a board-game campaign over say, a year, with the actual battles then fought on tabletop with 28mm miniatures.
https://www.wargamesillustrated.net/never-mind-the-billhooks/#:~:text=
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