Troops on the table!

Today I got to send my figures to war at last in my new gaming garage, with my good friend Jamie.

We played out a fictional skirmish set in 1477, with the French occupation of the County of Burgundy and the subsequent rebellion led by certain members of the nobility. In this scenario, Simon de Quingey led a force of Burgundians and German mercenaries to intercept a larger French force under Gaston du Lyon - he had to hold out until Guillaume de Vaudrey arrived with reinforcements.

We played the game using my own homebrew set of rules, which went pretty smoothly I think.

I was able to take some photos during the game, and can give you a brief rundown of what happened. Perhaps in the future I can write up some more detailed battle reports. The photos came out really well, though I really need to hurry up and paint a backdrop so we don't have to see the garage walls!

Here's a pic of the game on turn one, with most of the French having just entered stage left. The Burgundians have taken up good defensive positions behind the fences and hedges, and are awaiting for de Vaudrey to arrive (he can be rolled for from turn 3 onwards). There's a clash of light cavalry about to happen on the left flank. There are also a few more French infantry units yet to enter the table, and they have a large heavy cavalry unit which can also be rolled for from turn 3 onwards. As it happens both sides reinforcements turned up very late in the game!

The Burgundians and Germans held their positions well under the leadership of Simon de Quingey. They had one artillery piece which managed to slow down and disorder the French infantry advance very effectively. The small cavalry clash went in their favour to begin with, but surprisingly the outnumbered French horsemen did manage to push back and drive off their opponents. When the first French unit reached the fences and attacked the German mercenaries it could have gone either way - they were outflanked by more Burgundian horsemen but held their ground, the cavalry retreating. They were then reinforced by a second group, but things went against them and they were routed, with Gaston du Lyon himself being taken out of action! The Germans had been badly shaken though, and both sides wondered where their reinforcements had got to.

Burgundians line the hedgerows

The artillery prepares to fire

The French infantry advance is disordered

The disorganised assault begins

Fierce fighting which could go either way...

Eventually de Vaudrey arrived on the Burgundian right flank with a large force of German pikemen. The French cavalry reserve entered the field opposite them at the same time. Rejuvenated by the new arrivals, most of the Burgundian line now surged forward into the open field. The French cavalry attempted a charge against the wall of pikes but were perhaps predictably driven back, and with too much of the infantry line having been broken or shaken, and their commander felled, things were turning against them and they quit the field. A narrow victory for Burgundy! 

The long-awaited reinforcements arrive

French cavalry hope to turn things in their favour...

The Burgundians and Germans surge forward to victory!

A new gaming space

Something I've been working on this year.... is a new gaming space. A wargames garage!

Still got some tidying up to do, but it's ready to host some games now. I hope to get the French and Burgundians on the tabletop sometime soon.

It can hold a 10x4ft table, which is about the right sort of size for the games I have planned. Shown here is just a 8x4 setup, you can see the space for two more terrain tiles.

The next big challenge is to see if I can get good quality photos of games in action. I plan to paint a backdrop to make things look prettier too.

I'm going to really get stuck into terrain building this winter. These terrain tiles are ones I built years ago, the first time I'd done it, so I was learning as I went.. They'll do for now, but I'm going to replace them with some better designs.

Another advantage to having a permanent setup is I can do lots of solo gaming to playtest my own homebrew rules. That's not something I've really been able to do before when it required moving furniture around in a small living room to just try out a game!

Back to the baggage train

Just a quick update. A while back I shared an image of a gun with a two-horse limber. Since then I've added traces made from twisted wire. I'm very pleased with how this turned out, both twisting the wire to make authentic looking rope, and how they've attached to the horse harness.

I've also made a similar two-horse wagon setup. Both of these are from the Perry Miniatures American War of Independence range, with the gun obviously replaced by a more suitable 15th century piece. Looking at 15th century manuscript art it seems wagon technology didn't really change much over the centuries, and the ones in the AWI range seem perfectly suitable for the medieval period. Interestingly there are lots of examples of wagons and limbered artillery in the Swiss Chronicles. I was keen to use these setups with two horses in tandem, as they will be much easier to paint than a full four-horse setup with them two abreast!

Another French infantry unit!

At long last I have completed my next unit of French heavy infantry. Like the previous one I finished over a year ago, it consists of 30 men with polearms, including both fully armoured men-at-arms and more lightly armoured troops. It could perhaps represent men-at-arms of the ordonnance companies dismounting to lead 'lesser' troops such as francs-archers in an assault. But really it could be used to represent any sort of French infantry as required!

Now since that last unit I have had two sets of figures commissioned and sculpted for me by Yannis of Talos Miniatures. This is exactly what they were originally intended to be used for - advancing polearm troops in (mostly) livery jackets to fill the ranks of these large units, so I don't have to rely on using the same few metal Perry sculpts over and over again, and with the right combo of poses and clothing I wanted. Now many of these sculpts have actually found their way very happily into more 'stationary' posed units already, but this was the original goal. Here's some pics of all the Talos sculpts in this unit - the heads are mostly from Perry Miniatures (but not all of them), and the polearms and sidearms are from a variety of sources (many of the glaives sculpted for me by Yannis). I've managed to include duplicates of four of the rear-rankers, with different heads and weapons to avoid them appearing as clones.

Note that some of the most recent commissioned figures aren't here - they are on the painting table awaiting to be assigned to more upcoming units!

My absolute favourite is the chap with riding boots and blue sleeves - being so photogenic he had to go in the most prominent position at the corner of the unit! He's a really amazing sculpt.

Besides the Talos sculpts these are mostly Perry metals, including some conversions - there's actually only two Perry plastics in here.

And here they are side by side with the other unit, and facing off against some German pikemen.

Slow progress

Just a quick post to show some things on the workbench right now.

Slow but steady progress is being made on the next unit of French infantry. This is not all of them, just a selection - it will be a unit of 30 when finished, and I've just now started on the last batch. Will include many of my commissioned sculpts (but only two of the most recent batch in this unit, one of which you can see here). 

Here's something that's been sitting around for a while now - a two-horse artillery limber. The limber and horses are from the Perry Miniautures War of American Independence range, and the gun itself is from Avanpost. I plan to make some traces out of twisted wire. My thoughts on making limbers for the late medieval period can be found on a previous post here.

And finally here's a little handgunner conversion I am really pleased with. The body is a 3d print from Warsteel Miniatures, with plastic Perry head and arms, with a hand-swap. I sculpted a crude bag out of green stuff which seems to have turned out ok. I think the post works really well!