That They Would Be The Lord's People

     I pushed this post back slightly to focus on the stuff for the Agincourt game but I actually painted these figures about mid point into my slog of French knights as a bit of a palette cleanse and to empty some space on my to do shelf.

   Nothing major to say about these that hasn't been mentioned before, but with this unit being finished I can count the project as done. I might add some odds and sods for the project in the future, but for now a captain, unit of pikes, 2 units of musketeers and 2 units of horse, covers what I set out to do.

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Agincourt Refight - With Added Knights

   So, I said on the last post that the biggest issue I had with the first game of Agincourt we played was the lack of French mounted aristocracy. In the mixed bag of goodies I bought off my mate Neil, there was the best part of 4 or so units of knights, but for the game I only managed to paint up 2 units. 

   I have supplemented the unpainted knights with another box and a half (don't ask) of plastic knights along with some more Perry command figures for a bit more variety. Then, being the idiot I am, I painted other things right up to a couple of weeks before the planned date for the game and had to panic paint the 30 knights in next to no time*.

*I really need to stop having to do this

   My first two units of knights (from the last game we played) were painted in whatever colours I had to hand and were just painted to be bright, with no thought to accuracy or real heraldry. This time I've tried to base every knight on a real knight who was at Agincourt, which is where the book below came in. I was recommended Knights of Agincourt by someone on twitter (Raglan I want to say?) and it has been immensely useful, with simple renditions on who was at the battle (for both sides) and what their shields looked like.

Charles, Duke of Orléans

Charles I d'Albret, Constable of France

Jean II le Meingre Boucicaut, Marshall of France

Louis, Count of Vedome

Edward, Duke of Bar

The rest of the flower of French nobility;

   There is no real methodology behind which commanders I chose to pick out with banners, other than I picked the 3 main named commanders, Vedome because the model I had from Perry had sculpted on heraldry and the Bar because his banner is a fish . . . As mentioned before, the knights are all Perry Miniatures, either plastic or metal, and the banners are from Freezy Waters.

Also, can I mention how much I dislike white metal lances as my parting shot . . .

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Agincourt Refight

   One of the projects that was hit hard by covid was my 100 years war project. The Agincourt game had already been rushed to make sure it hit the table*, which is lucky as it turned out to be the last I managed to play before we were hit with the first of many lockdowns. I did finish the game with loads of ideas, for a start I didn't have anywhere near enough French Mounted Knights** but a couple of months of painting it meant that I needed a break from the project and with how the rest of the year panned out, I never went back to it in any real meaningful sense. Until now.

*rushed because of a deadline not because I knew what was coming

**which was something I knew going into the game

 

   So for a refight of Agincourt my hit list of what I need to add goes like this; 

• More mounted French knights, top of the list, no questions asked - minimum of 2 more units but ideally another 4+, but ultimately we will see what I can paint in time
• Henry V and some serious banners for him
• If I go as high as 4 more units of knights then I might need more English archers (but might just use some WotR archers from my Lancaster collection although I am still undecided whether to boost the archer numbers)
• Finish the last few infantry I had bought for the project (think it's only about another 20 men?)
• Lastly, if I'm giving the English a big block of banners and important men, then I should do the same for the French
• Ploughed Fields - already started

So, that's the plan but what have I done about it?

Henry V and his banners;

• Sir John Codrington carrying Henry's personal banner
• Sir Thomas Strickland carrying the Cross of St George
• The banner of St Edward

   I have to say on these that the banners (and I wish I could remember where I bought them from so I could block their webstore in my browser to stop me doing anything stupid in the future) were horrible. The art is gorgeous on them but they are decal banners*** and had aged really badly. I've fixed them as best I can but they do not stand up to close scrutiny.

***always a bad sign

   Slightly cheating, I did also finish two more units of French infantry that I drafted a post about but then never posted, so here they are below;

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A Highland Quarrel

   The last bits I needed to paint from the 1st phase* of the Jacobite Rebellion project were the cannon, associated limber and an ammunition wagon for the cannon. The crew have already been painted, so at this point it's just the horses and constructed bits left to go. The figures are from Front Rank as they just do gorgeous limbers.

*can you tell it's escalated?

   So, I said 1st phase earlier as Gripping Beast had a sale a couple of weekends ago which included their Front Rank ranges, so a pair of lowlander units were purchased at a slightly earlier time period than planned - other projects should probably be getting priority after finishing these. Then not long after I had placed that order, my mate Neil, discovered he had too many troops for this period and has agreed to offload some troops that would be appropriate for the Royal Ecossais and the Irish Piquets. We shall see how quickly they get painted but the anniversary of Culloden is only 6 months away and on a Sunday, so a perfect gaming day . . .

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Back In Old Cold Germany

   I'm pretty sure I declared that I had finished all the infantry for my WW2 Winter German project and yet here we are. While I didn't actually NEED them, I had long converted the metal winter German squad box that Warlord produce, for no reason other than for a bit of variety. I also don't have time to fit these into my painting schedule as there are far more important projects, but, again, here we are . . .

   These are just the contents of a single Warlord Games metal Winter German box, and the thing I liked about them was the lack of a solid uniform. The plastics need to be fairly similar so that everything in interchangeable, but with these metals we have a mix of long coats, white over coats, white over trousers and everything in between. Mixed into squads they should look the part*

*the photo is a tad bleached out

Now I'm sure I had I had more pressing projects to do . . .

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He Also Made A Covenant Between The King And The People

   Again, during 2019 when I was just buying boxes of Warlord Games English Civil War plastic boxes whenever I saw them cheap or had points to spend online, one of the boxes I picked up was of cavalry. The plan for the box was to split it evenly between Royalist and Parliamentarians to boost each side to 3 units, however, with the Royalist gaining two units of dragoons, I felt like I needed to give Parliament two units of cavalry back.

   At the start of the summer when I was painting a lot of horses, I remembered I had this box, and as I was starting to build it, it dawned on me that it would make sense to make the riders Covenanters. The addition of the famous bonnet (which I had bought spares of) felt like enough in my head to prove the point and off I went. The horses were painted in big batches during July, but the riders have waited until now.

   Depending on my needs for the particular game, these will give me either the cavalry wing of a smaller Covenanter force or a boost to the Parliamentarian cavalry, boosting me to 4 units which could still be improved upon, without costing me too much in metal figures.

   This just leaves a single unit of musketeers to paint and this project is done. I still need to go back to the Jacobites/Highlanders too but I have other projects that are demanding attention.

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Jehoiada Then Made A Covenant Between The Lord And The King

   In what tuned into less of a flurry of Scottish themed posts than I had planned to end the month on, due to work levels and general real life, but I have been trying to keep painting in whatever free time I can slot it into* and then I only just realised I forgot to post anything this weekend.

*these projects won't move themselves

   This is the pikeman unit for my Covenantors with the Earl of Buccleugh's banner. Nothing particularly different from the first musketeer unit except I've given the officers a bit more colour in their clothing - but not too much that they stand out in this unit.

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