Saturday, July 06, 2024

Lord Hastings' Levy



Both these units are men from Hastings battle, I just couldn't resist seeing what the bases fighting would look like.



Inferior Levy, a mix of Fire Forge torsos and Perry heads and arms. A few old Foundry figures in there too with some Grenadier sculpts. A pretty ad-hoc bunch, but they are levy so it makes sense.


To help with the Levy look there are a couple of unarmoured men in the mix.
Another Hastings banner.

Hopefully all the light armour will help give the unit a poorly equipped levy vibe. A  levy soldier at the rear considers fleeing before it's too late... typical!


The figures were nice and easy to paint, being mostly padding and metal armour. I chose to use ink washes on them as this is very speedy and rather than use the Dip, I varnished them in Matt varnish. I left the metal armour unvarnished, so it retained its shine. 
I find the Dip really useful with metal miniatures like my ACW collection. However these War of the Roses armies are mostly plastic so are unlikely to chip.
These closeup pictures really capture the horror of what it must have been like. I can't imagine anything worse than being tightly packed together, hacking and stabbing your way through the enemy. It was also a time of no shields so you would have to defend and block the oncoming blows as you fought. If you fell exhausted you would soon be finished off with a bollock dagger as you were trodden underfoot.


Due to the crush of heavy armoured bodies, I think a muddy base would look good with these.

 Update: I added a couple of spare figures to the throng. One being a standard bearer which just brings a bit more colour and heraldry to the base.




Even with the extra standard, the back ranks are still thinking about saving their skins.


The other figure is a fully armoured man at arms. Well someone has to show this rabble how it's done.

The banner is a Yorkist one (Humphrey Stafford) which is the only thing that really matters. I find these little extras really make a difference and give a much more medieval feel to the units.


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