The Retinue nears completion

As I gear up towards a club weekend gaming the Barons War, I made a bit more progress on my own retinue. I had already added a couple of crossbowmen and serjeants to round the units out. This time I added a few more peasants and some serjeants with spears and large shields.

I'm pretty happy with the retinue. I have quite a few options which will give me some flexibility in designing forces. I still have a unit of slingers to add as well as some mounted serjeants. Then I may start on a second smaller retinue.

The beauty of the peasants is that they can be used in any retinue or even as a stand alone force as outlaws, hmmm maybe a Robin Hood force? The other thing I did was create some morale tokens with spare shields and dice holders. The first 8 I did were in my Baron's colours.

On Thursday night I actually got to play a game instead of umpiring. It didn't go well as Sean's peasants ran off with the prized goose we were fighting over. A few photos from the game.

Expanding the retinue

So after completing my Baron, William de Vesci and his banner man, I decided to expand his retinue. I also made the decision to use a themed colour scheme. I went with a dark red and cream to match my Baron. My thinking is that these troops will all be retainers from his estates. For more professional troops like veteran serjeants I will use figures already in my collection.

The first additions are 2 groups of serjeants. The first carry the bill and the others are armed with the falchion. I have one of these earmarked as a serjeant at arms when the retinue expands further. I already have 2 serjeants with bills in this colour scheme so that is handy.

Serjeants with bill

Serjeants with falchion

I've got another 2 serjeants with falchion on the painting table as well as a group armed with spears and larger shields. For some ranged firepower I completed a group of Crossbowmen and archers. The crossbowmen are a mix of Fireforge and metal figures from Footsore. For the archers I wanted them in some armour as the rest in my collection are all unarmoured. For these I used spare bodies from Fireforge with the bows from Wargames Atlantic peasant levy.

Crossbowmen

Archers

So that is 22 figures added to the retinue. I've another 7 figures which are being based up and another 9 in various stages of being painted. 

I've ordered another sprue of peasants as I want to equip them with slings, this will allow me to cover all the options. There is also another sprue of mounted serjeants from Conquest miniatures on its way to add some mobility to the force. Now I need to cut up some teddy bear fur in various shapes for fields.

Border Reiver 2025

On Sunday the club put on a Chain of Command game for the Border Reiver show. Sean did a superb job and managed to get through 2 games on the day, with the Americans and Germans taking a victory each.

Sean's new Chateau was a superb centre piece to the game. The game did seem well received with plenty of visitors. I though, took the opportunity to have a mooch around the show and pick up some loot, mainly around my latest project of the Barons War.

I picked up a 3d printed cart and trade goods from Iron gate scenery, walls from Last Valley, bases from Pendraken as well as some grass tufts, dice tray, paints and weathering powders. I also picked up a box of Fireforge serjeants as I obviously needed more of them.

Back at the club I ran another learning game of Barons War. Same terrain, different scenario and the battle fought in a different area of the table. It was also the first use of mounted troops on both sides, they didn't last long.

Now I await some dry weather to get some figures painted.

William de Vesci

William de Vesci, Baron of Alnwick, born in 1205, the son of Eustace de Vesci, a Magna Carta surety. I picked William as my leader for games of Baron's War simply because I actually work in Alnwick, so it feels close to home. I also quite liked his shield design of a dark red background and a white cross.

For a figure I went for one of the commanders in the Footsore range, which also came with a banner man. Much prefer the idea of a metal figure over plastic for my Baron.

William de Vesci, Baron of Alnwick

For the banner I just took an image of a suitable cross and added it to a dark red background. I simply just painted over it once I had printed it out. I also did a second, simpler banner to add to a command group if I decide to have my force led by a serjeant of arms in smaller point games. The figure is a Templar infantryman from Fireforge miniatures.

Mitch also provided me with five pieces of wattle fencing that he had 3d printed, he had already done a load for himself which we used in the last game. I decided to add mine to modelling sticks to help differentiate them from his.

These are very nice and have asked him for some additional pieces. I also umpired another game last week, only took a couple of photos as we had a first time player. All the action ended up at the other side of the table.

It's market day

With plans afoot for a mini campaign day at the club, we will need enough terrain for 3 tables. We currently have enough for 2 tables, so time to add a few more items. With the frames I had left I put together another 3 market stalls. I added some trade items I picked up from Oshiro models along with some pieces I already had painted up.

I'm quite happy with how these have turned out. I will need to pick up some more trade items to complete the other 2 stalls. Also with it being the Border Reiver show this weekend, I intend to pick up a few carts and other items of clutter to fill the table.

Browsing on the Facebook group page I came across an idea for creating some militant monks, using the bodies from the Gripping beast plastics. Luckily I still had a couple of frames and decided to put 6 figures together using spare heads and weapons from the Wargames atlantic peasant sprue.

I painted them in various browns and greys to represent a monks garb. All I had to do was remove the Arabic knives from their belts, though I did miss one.