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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Battle Of Marston Moor

   Carrying on with the theme, the next battlefield we visited was Marston Moor. A lot of the battlefields on my list that I want to visit end up being a slightly blurred medieval but can't remember why the battle was fought in my head, but Marston Moor is a name where you know exactly what was going on. A big English Civil War battle with all the big names present.

   Again, I'm not going to try and compete with Wikipedia so here are some photos;

The Monument

Looking towards the Royalist Lines

Looking towards the Parliamentary lines

   Most battlefield visits leave me at least planning how I would refight the battle on the tabletop, for example after visiting Naseby I bought Pikeman's Lament and ordered my first box of ECW troops. After this battlefield I ended up ordering some Warlord Games Scots Covenanters which will feature in a later post - hopefully.

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Battle of Flodden

   I've not been doing a lot of painting recently but I have had my summer holiday and we did some brilliant things while away that I think are blog worthy, so I'm going to do a short series on where I went while I try to do some painting in this heat.

   First up is the Battlefield at Flodden. Like my battle of Naseby post, I'm not going to go into the history as Wikipedia will do a much better job, but suffice to say it was James IV vs an English army left behind while Henry VIII was off in France. Here are some photos;

 The battlefield monument

The battlefield from the English battle line

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Bulking up 4th Company

   I've still not managed to get a game of 9th edition 40k in yet, as my gaming didn't quite take off after lockdown ended in quiet the way I hoped it would, but I'm still quite hyped about my Primaris. These two squads are the last of the bits I've had sitting around waiting to be built, another squad of Intercessors and a squad of Aggressors.

I've given the Intercessors stalker bolt rifles which are the heavier stand and fire version of the bolt rifle, hoping these guys will camp on objectives.

I made my aggessors veteran as it seemed to suit their fluff being an elite unit thrown into the worst fighting, whether or not a make them vets in the rules will be a different matter. 

   I've got ideas on where I want to take the 4th next, but I really need to get a game in before I go nuts. Plus I have other ideas for the chapter too which will probably come first.

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The Dutch Navy At War

After about a month of little to no hobby I finally managed to finish a project* and get a game in using them, in this case, my 1:1200 Dutch fleet. Like I said in my last posts, tis fleet has been on the backburner for so long that it had stopped being funny, so getting started was a brilliant feeling. I got to the point that I was really enjoying knowing I had an afternoon rigging a ship, which is something I didn't think was possible. So the last ships I needed to finish were: 

 *for the moment 

The three 54 gun ships

The correct ship with this name (I noticed that I had misnamed a 64 gun ship by accident)

The last pair of ships.

Hofnor is the only non-historical name in this fleet - named after a schooner (Jestor) in the Alan Lawrie stories I'm reading at the sec.

   Then last week, I headed round my mate Neil's house one evening to give my fleet a baptism in fire. My fleet was slightly bigger than Neil's British, but his fleet were generally heavier ship for ship, so it made for an interesting game. We used his Quick Play Naval Rules for the engagement as they feel like an age of sail battle without bogging you down with rules.

I messed up my deployment badly, so spent the first turn trying to get my ships into the semblance of an order of battle, before we hit each other at the start of turn 2.

It was first blood to HMS Captain (74) firing on HNLMS Admiraal de Ruijter (68) but she was soon ganged up on by both HNLMS Admiraal de Ruijter (68) as she pulled past and HNLMS Erfprins. With little HNLMS Ajax (24) getting a cheeky raid in before learning why a small ship shouldn't fire on their betters.

We ended the game on a draw as both fleets were about to begin manoeuvring for their second go past. Thanks again, Neil, for the game, I really enjoyed myself.

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The Aurora Knights

   I started writing a post about my home brew space marine chapter just over 4 years ago, but every time I got it to a point it was almost ready to go I had something else to post and it got pushed back. The long term aim was to make a full company of marines that I could shape a history for through various games and, hopefully, the odd campaign, and then 8th edition and Belisarius Crawl came along. . .

The Background

   The Aurora Knights are a 23rd founding chapter (late 37th millennium), founded as part of the Sentinels group of chapters tasked with defending the Eastern fronts of the Imperium from the Ork and Eldar menace.
   The chapter's homeworld is the strategically placed, but lifeless planet of Ciuda'ura. Due to Ciuda'ura's lack of population to recruit from the Aurora Knights were instead given the privilege to recruit from any peoples the chapter deems itself to have 'saved' which has led to tensions between the chapter and other Imperial organisations, in one notable case with an Imperial Navy fleet that the chapter demanded a tithe of officers from after responding to a distress call.

Organisation
   Broadly Codex compliant.

Recent History
   The Aurora Knight's recent history has been a checkerboard of fortune with multiple victories under their belt and honours being attached to their name, with only their tithing being a blemish to the chapter's reputation, they answered a call requesting aid from the Dalin system. The Dalin World's Liberation has been covered on this blog already (Dalin World's Liberation) but suffice to say it ended badly for the Knights with the loss of their homeworld, nearly half of their marines and most of their gene-stocks.
    The aftermath of the failed campaign was a chapter that was woefully under equipped in terms of men, equipment and even ammunition, with no real way of replenishing the lost men as their gene reserves were so low it could take a millennia to replace the reserves, the chapter felt the best it could do was go out honourably in a bang and not fade into obscurity. With this in mind the Aurora Knights salvaged what they could and headed towards where ever the fighting was heaviest, never throwing away their last men, but knowing that holding back was futile. With extra marines tasked with collecting gene-seed during battles and care taken to recover any lost equipment the chapter hoped to keep itself fighting for as long as possible so that when word reached them of the Lord Commander Guilliman's plans for the space marines they were down to barely 300 fighting full space marines and over 150 neophytes
    In the last hundred years to the present point, the influx of new resources that were supplied to all space marine chapters has seen the chapter rise to nearly 700 men, far closer to their full strength than would have been believed at the start of the century, of which nearly all of the chapter are now of the new Primaris breed. The chapter has chosen not to settle on a new planet but maintains a presence around it's old homeworld on an orbital station named the Tagma.

Back to the paint station
   That's the cut down version of what I was going to post. I'm sure the company that I almost finished will get onto this blog at some point but first lets look at the new stuff and what has changed as I now view them as two separate projects.
   When 8th was released I picked up a copy of the rulebook, got my old armies out and set up a couple of games, and broadly I enjoyed the edition with some caveats.
1. Sorry to any 40k players but the scene at Wayland Games that I saw from the outside was not appealing. There was a guy on the day of release who had bought his copy from GW at midnight and had spent the morning writing a 'broken list' to smash people on the 'get to know 8th' day that the staff at Waylands had organised. Since then I have seen all the lists that are obvious min-max lists with no flavour bar smashing face and this is all something I have no interest in getting involved with.
2. 8th was also the edition that my mates who had played 40k generally got on with other stuff, either due to a dislike of the changes or just because other games had changed the way they played.
3. By the time I really looked to get back into it, the two points above and the sheer amount of supplements needed to catch up put me off and 30k has mostly scratched the warhammer itch anyway.


   So, here we are on the verge of 9th. What has changed? The supplement levels haven't changed, the scene at Waylands is unlikely to change but I do have mates looking at the game again. So, 9th edition has been ordered (just the core rules, we are going to use old points until we decide to invest in the other books needed) and we have set up a learning day where we are all going to bring 500 point armies - big enough to have units to move around, small enough that even players who have sold armies off can put something together.
    What does all this have to do with the Aurora Knights? All the buzz has got me looking at the primaris models I have bought over the last couple of years and I decided that what I was making the older marines do, didn't fit the new style, and ultimately, the chapter has changed. If the bulk of your chapter is made of men who don't share your heritage and training, merely have the same ancestral gene-seed, they are going to bring new ideas and influences, so I decided to embrace this concept and have the chapter be reborn.
    The chapter icon has changed from a gold fist with the company colour in the background to the Imperial Fist icon - due to real life practical reasons - with the fluff being that it ties them back to their ancestral legion more. The red secondary colour has been dropped in place of the company colour being more prominent. The chapter also paints their left knee pad black in memorial of the losses of the Dalin World's Liberation campaign and the dark days that followed it. I have also included a white wing motif on the same leg if the marine has crossed the Rubicon since the induction of Guilliman's primaris marines.

 Strike Force Lieutenant (HQ)

  Two units of regular Intercessors (Troops)

 Unit of Hellblasters (Heavy)

 An Impulsor transport tank.

Normal service will resume but I'm enjoying this minor detour via 40k. I'll report back with my feelings on the new edition.

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