With the next battle on our group’s list being 2nd St Albans and some recently-purchased Perry plastic sets, it was time to add a few more pieces for this particular episode of the Cousins’ Wars.
We’ve now played the game using Midgard Heroic Battles, and it turned out to be an absolute cracker.
It’s hard balancing historical scenarios where one side was at a serious disadvantage (as the Yorkists were in this battle) but we managed to pull it off.
Tom WD from our group made a short video report of the game which is worth a look if you’re interested in how Midgard works for late medieval gaming.
If you’ve not seen them, you can also find some sample Midgard lists and notes for Wars of the Roses here.
Anyway, back to the toy soldiers! While I’m definitely a Yorkist at heart, the Lancastrians needed some attention. You’ve got to have some baddies, right? The Duke of Somerset, Duke of Northumberland and Anthony Trollope were required for this bash. Fortunately I was able to put the Yorkist Earl of Norfolk on the construction list as well, alongside a few flag bearers to add into some of my existing units.
Having sourced their banners/ standards (from Perry Miniatures sheets in the boxes and also Freezywater Flags), I stuck together some of the Perry plastics for the command groups, mixing parts from the Men at Arms box with the command sprue from the main bill/bow one.
I also needed some extra bill and bowmen, assembled as usual from the regular Perry sprues. I really enjoy these figures – very clean, unfussy poses with a lot of subtle variations.
A few metal additions were also made to add variety with some Crusader Miniatures WOTR archers that I had been gifted by my friend Paul W. Although part of the Crusader range, these aren’t Mark Sims sculpts and are quite a good match with the Perry plastics.
Our commanders were all undercoated with silver spray before a wash of thinned-down GW Contrast Black Templar. This gives a wonderful blue-black steel tone without taking too much off the shine, though I did highlight with Army Painter Shining Silver.
The Duke of Somerset was a pretty big cheese in the Lancastrian camp, so I decided to do him with a herald as well as a banner bearer – meaning I had to paint Beaufort’s coat of arms twice. Should have thought about that first!
Banner bearers had their hands drilled out and a pole made from a shortened Northstar wire spear. The cross pole was added in while sticking the banner together with pva glue (it’s held in place by the flag rather than being glued onto to main pole).
All the two-man command groups had a 40mm round base (2mm MDF from Warbases as usual), but Somerset was granted a 50mm base by Henry VI (clear favouritism!)
Following our game, we were keen to get even more WOTR in, so will probably play Ferrybridge and Towton as separate games in the near future. That’ll give me the excuse to add even more commanders, though I might try to avoid heraldic surcoats for a bit!
mogsymakes 