The Grand Old Duke Of Norfolk's Backlog?

   I'm still carrying on with a backlog army in the form of the Yorkist Duke Of Norfolk for the War of the Roses. As I am painting them I am really getting the urge to put them on the table, but as I explained in the last post about this army, this is very much a painting project to just clear some backlog at the moment.

   This post should be the last of the 'basic' army - the last unit of leveried archers, another couple of units of foot knights (one not shown but it has the flags) and a unit of billmen. Looking back at my Lancastrian armies, I used a lot of the fully armoured models as billmen to balance those numbers out, so there is a risk the two units of knights are actually billmen.

   I have since found a pack of metal billmen that I don't remember buying and aren't on my backlog spreadsheet, but they are built and sprayed and will be painted at some point soon.

  I also need at least half a box of the Perry Mounted Knights, but as they are my least favourite models to paint - even if they are fun on the table top - I'll hold off buying them until it looks like I might actually use this army. I must keep the backlog in mind rather than add to it.

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Late Re-enforcements?

   Nearly a year ago now, I started building and painting a project that I bought in 2020 - my War of the Roses Yorkists. I built two sprues, sprayed and painted one, then lost focus*. With very little gaming going on and my real relaxation focus being on running, I've really slowed down in my painting, but as I'm also not really buying, that doesn't feel like quite the same issue. I've decided to just have a push on getting units and armies out of my backlog without any real care of what they are - if I can paint 7 units from 7 different armies, that's still 7 units off my backlog**.

*I'm really bad at this

**although, I'm going to try and do groups of units if I can

   So, in December last year, I had a mini stress about why the Yorkist side of my WotR project hadn't been finished as mentioned in this post. The second and third batches have been built and sprayed, sitting on a shelf next to my painting desk, being moved out of the way every time I've done anything - so these are a prime candidate to just get painted***.

***if it means the rest of the project gets a bump, that's a happy result

   Like the last batch, these are the Duke of Norfolk's (John Mowbray) infantry with their red liveries. I think I only have a single batch of regular infantry left in this project, plus various foot knights - so many foot knights?!? - but I will aim to get another sprue of from the Perry brothers to do some unliveried archers too in the future. 

Foot Knights

The mixed peasants

This project is starting to feel doable - hopefully the next post won't be late 2026 . . .

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The Duke Of Norfolk Arrives

   I'm all over the place at the moment with my projects* but I had a two and a bit hour drive for work and for some reason my brain decided it wanted to stress over why I hadn't started my War of the Roses Yorkists from a planned purchase in 2020(!). As I normally do for a historical period, I bought enough figures to do about 24-30 points for both sides, with a slight weight towards the army I thought I would end up using more often as I know I have an opponent who would be painting those up.

*as per

   Back in 2022, I ended up stealing some figures from this project to get my Lancastrians up to a slightly bigger than planned points size for a couple of games and while I've not replaced those figures yet, I do have enough in this backlog to get an army on the table, and the more I think about this project the more I want to get a game in in 2025**.

**Hopefully, Wayland Games 2.0 comes online asap

   I've gone back through my notebooks and collection of Freezywater flags for the Towton period of the war and it looks like I didn't have an exact plan on who I was going to painting and had a list of options. I then initally decided to paint the Earl of Essex's livery on my troops, but with it being Green and Black, it is a tad close to my main Lancastrian colours, so I've decided on the Duke of Norfolk with it's plain Red.

   This is my first batch which is a single sprue of troops made up of 8 archers and 4 billmen. There will be a couple more batches of these and then I can start on the various sprues of foot knights. Not looking forward to having to replace my mounted knights but that's a separate issue.

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Medieval Wagons

   Have a called a post this before, I feel like I have? My drive to add wagons to every army hasn't diminished in the slightest as I think they add so much to the feel of a game even if they aren't part of the game itself.

   I've had an open basket with Colonel Bill's for a good few months that changes weekly as I have different ideas. In it I've had a couple of wagons for my crusade era armies to allow a escort scenario, ACW wagons to boost that project, various other medieval or dark ages wagons, then at SELWG  a couple of weeks ago, I noticed Colonel Bill was there, so I had a quick look at the shelves while my little boy was distracted by his grandad and made some decisions.

   It was the agricultural loads that really got my attention and with a bit of going back and forth with what wagons sizes each era had to match loads (sadly I couldn't fit the looted goods into a medieval wagon) I picked up an ACW wagon*, a pair of mules and a pair of medieval carts.

*future post

   It was only that night as I unpacked my bag that I noticed I had forgotten to buy any animals to pull the vehicles and another order had to be made online. . .

   I decided to mount the mules on a single base rather than separate figures like I tend to do. I think this makes a better looking scene and probably makes them more useful in game too, so it's something I expect to do going forward with any others.

I have my eyes on more wagons from Colonel Bill's now that I've had some in my hands. Maybe something for my Ancient British to add to the Laager, or those crusade wagons I had an idea for. So many ideas.

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The March On Towton

   2022 has been a bad year for panic painting at a deadline and this week has been another example of this* with the last of my WotR Lancastrians on the painting desk for a game Wednesday just gone and another on this Sunday.

*hoping this is my last panic paint of the year but who knows

   I was aiming to not quite match my opponent's collection but to at least give him the chance of getting as much onto the table as he could, while giving me the easiest way of splitting my army in two as I knew I'd be sharing my troops. With the additions below it meant I'd have two retinues of 3 units of archers, 2 units of billmen, a unit of each mounted and dismounted men at arms and then a unit of something else on horse.

Duke of Somerset's dismounted men at arms and banner

1st unit of Somerset's billmen

2rnd unit of Somerset's billmen

2rnd unit of liveried archers for Somerset

Proper last minute painted mounted men at arms

   I'm planning on being much more relaxed now with my painting and seeing any deadlines well ahead of time. I've got, I think, only 1 game planned where I need more than a single model or unit painted before it, anything else is just me picking a collection and working through what I have**.

**None of which will have a game organised until they are finished . . .

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Duke of Somerset

   With our last club game set in the Wars of the Roses being a success and both sides talking about a rematch or two, it was inevitable that we'd end up in an arms race before we could get them back on the table. I know my mate, Neil, is painting more Yorkists so I set about looking at my backlog and seeing what I had left I could add and seeing what I needed to buy to fill the gaps.

   The more I thought about it, the more I suspect if I keep adding troops in Andrew Trollop's livery, I'm probably pushing the one warband theory too far, so it's at this point I've decided to mix in a second commander - the Duke of Somerset - this will also allow me to split the army between two players more easily.

   The first troops finished for this bit of the project are a unit of archers and the mounted command figures - the Duke himself and his standard.

   I've got another 4 units to add to this army - digging into my Yorkist backlog to achieve the figure count (which will need to be replaced in the future as I like to keep armies for both sides of a conflict - but I might add another unit of mounted knights to keep the second player happy.

I'd better get painting.

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WotR Mounted Peasants

   In what I'm going to start calling Cav-uly because I know what my painting queue looks like, the next units to be finished are a couple of units I said I probably wouldn't be buying for a while, light cavalry for my Lancastrian War of the Roses force - namely a unit of Sowrers and a unit of mounted archers. One of each so I could see how they were on the board, but they might be a useful basis for an ambush game in the future*.

*and there is no guarantee I won't buy another box before the game anyway

   As you might be able to tell, I painted the horses in the same batches I painted the middle eastern horses from the last post, and then the next post or few (also cavalry) were then mixed in as well. I also added another one of the metal mounted men at arms I had in my back pile, because by the time you are painting 36 cavalry from various projects, what is one more?

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Special Delivery?

   These three wagons are from a couple of different companies, the 4 ox drawn wagon is from Perry Miniatures, while the other two are from Front Rank.

   Again, like the last wagons I've made a conscious effort to fill them up with things that either an army might need on their travelling or stuff that might be going to market and the armies that they will share the board with are coincidental. The loads are from 3 or 4 different sources by my reckoning, although I couldn't name most of them - I tend to add anything that looks interesting like these onto the back of orders for other stuff.

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War Of The Roses - Panic Edition

   With about a week to go on the War of the Roses project to go, my mate Neil mentioned that he'd like to see me have a unit of mounted troops on the table. Ok, I replied, I did own a box of mounted men at arms, but I wasn't going to promise anything.

   So I got on with my last* planned unit of archers** but the thought about knights kept niggling at me and before I knew it I had a unit of the Perry plastics built and ready for spraying, along with a metal one that I'm not 100% when I bought but that would make a good character. I wasn't sure if I'd get them done, but quite frankly if they aren't built then they definitely can't get painted.

*which turned into two

**for the game

   It turned out I did get them done . . .

   Then over the weekend we were comparing what we had to be able to plan the game properly and Neil listed what he had and I realised I was another unit of archers short, so between jobs I dug out the very last archers I'd built and sprayed last year*** and started panic painting. Below are my last two units of archers - when I put them on the board I used all of the white and green liveried ones as regular archers and everything else as tenant archers.

***which made this project a lot quicker

I can't count this as a finished project as I know how much I have left to do, but it's good to see the project at a playable level.

It ended up being a really fun game, so glad I put the effort into getting them done***.

***Not that you can see much of my painting in this photo

   Now do I need some light cavalry for this army? And maybe some European mercenaries? Or do I look at getting my Yorkists moving?

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Calling In The Liveried Troops

    This post is a quick one to show the next two units for my Andrew Trollope War of the Roses project. The second units of liveried archers and billmen*. Nothing hugely special to say about them as they are from the same boxes as the last few figures and painted in the same way, but they get me really close to completing this project before the looming the deadline.

*inc my 6th missing Man at Arms

   An interesting side note here and something I have only learnt since painting these troops is that while the flag of Andrew Trollope is white & green halved with white harts on it, it seems like his troops wore white and green halved tunic (but the opposite way round to the way I've done it) and the emblem on the tunic was a blue peacock . . .

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The Return Of The War Of The Roses

    I think it's been pretty obvious from past posts that trips to historical places tend to get my creative juices flowing, so if I was to mention that I went on a day trip to a castle (Baconsthrope) built during the Wars of the Roses, it should be no surprise to anyone that it got me thinking about that collection.

   The last time I posted about this time period was early 2021 when I said I was going to try and get two sides done for a game in May of that year - which didn't happen for me. I also said I would be painting up warbands and then mixing them to make units - but in hindsight at this scale I don't think it makes a lot of sense, so instead I'll be doing 24-30 points of Andrew Trollope and then maybe adding units from other lords at a later date.

The bits that I painted in this batch to make up the numbers.

Then, below, are these figures added to the others (minus the Men at Arms) to create two separate units of troops, one bowmen and one billmen. I've used the same recipe as last time which is why everything blends in alright, although this time I've written it into my recipe book.

I've been painting at a decent rate again over the last couple of weeks so the next batches will be along soon.

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World War Of The Roses

    This post has been written a bit earlier than I planned it to, but I've had a week or so of a complete lack of hobby mojo (not obvious from my posts) so I decided the best thing to do would be to look at something fresh for a bit before going back to my Britannia AD43 project.

   A couple of weeks back, I came across a group of posts on Twitter talking about something called the World War Of The Roses and it intrigued me.

   As you can see from the picture, I helpfully downloaded from Twitter, the aim is to have as many games set during the Wars Of The Roses played over the weekend of May 22-23rd 2021 as possible. While I didn't have anything painted up for it, I did have two armies bought and in line to be next, so why not set myself a deadline - of nearly a full 6 months.

   I've decided to go with my painting plan of doing mixed batches of troops but taking it to the next level and doing the whole of a single retinue in one go - although over a batch or two to keep numbers down. I'm going to mix the size of retinues from 6 up to maybe 16-20 depending on the lord, so some colours and badges will be more common in the army than others.

   This first retinue is Andrew Trollope who I picked because I liked his heraldry and his name - how could you not. He was a Lancastrian which is also the side I am starting with (and also the side that I have bought the most for as I think one of my gaming group plans to do a Yorkist force of their own in the future), although I do plan to continue my normal thing of painting armies for both sides as it always means I have the ability to get a game in.

   The aim is to get two side painted as and when time allows - although I suspect it'll be fairly quick as the figures are fairly easy to paint - and then bulk out each side as the deadline gets closer. I'm sort of hoping this might end up being a fairly big project.

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Battle of Stoke Field

   The last battlefield post in this sequence, this time it's the battle of Stoke Field, the last battle of the Wars of the Roses, with Henry VII defeating the Yorkist pretender, Lambert Simnel, and securing the crown for the Tudor dynasty.

   This battlefield has been partly built on in subsequent years, so is nowhere as impressive as some of the other sites we visited, but is well worth a stop in if you are passing through. Here are the pictures:

The (limited) view of the battlefield - I think there was a better view from the other side, but it was just too hot by that point.

The Red Gutter, the site of the Yorkist rout

   I've got plans for a post on Hadrian's Wall, Vindolanda and the Roman Army museum planned next me painting done.

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Battle Of Towton

   The battle of Towton was one of two battlefields that we had no plans to visit at all, until we saw they were on the way to the next place we were going anyway. Towton, fought in the War of the Roses, has the reputation for being the bloodiest battle on British soil and it was the first battlefield I've been to in the UK that wasn't just a field but was a trail of events and places. The sheer size of the battlefield is basically the overwhelming feature of it, something I've only seen at Waterloo before.

   So, again, trying to avoid being a bad version of Wikipedia, here are my photos;

Looking towards the Lancastrian deployment lines from the Yorkist lines

The field the action moved to

The climax of the battle before the Lancastrian rout and subsequent massacre

    I came away from this battlefield brewing with ideas. I have a few boxes of Perry WotR infantry in my shopping list as I think a box will do the bulk of a single side for Lion Rampant, but I'm going to hold off buying until I have a few more projects moving on. Going out is dangerous.

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