Lord Hastings' Archers

The mud is applied with some grass and tufts. I added some more mud over the grass so I didn't lose that muddy field look.

I also went around with the Tamiya weathering brush and put a few dirty smudges on elbows and knees. This worked well on weathering up the paper standard too.

It not wise to stand next to a standard in an arrow storm.

 

While I was at Warfare 2024 I had the chance to visit the Athena miniatures stool and meet it's creator, Otto. When I look at the latest archer bases my eye instantly goes to the Athena sculpts. So I wanted to pick up a few more.

To my suprise, Otto knew who I was and had also heard of this blog. In fact he knew quite a lot about me and loved my cartoons. When I started to praise his archer figures he told me he was an longbow archer himself and had posed for the sculptor with the bow. This explains the excellent realistic poses that capture the high powered weapons better than any other company. It's the high angle draw with the contorted bodies that stand out in the massed ranks.

Excuse the blurry shot, when I started to take pictures of some different sorts of arrow, he told me he made them. Otto's knowledge of medieval archery really shows in his miniatures.

I will be ordering more I think once I have painted what I have.

Towton

 

Archer Retinue for Lord Hastings

Hopefully I can paint this standard for another unit. I have one more archer and bill unit to go, before Hastings' Battle is complete.

Lord Hastings receives more support today in the form of a unit of archers. There was meant to be eight to a base but a couple more were pressing ganged at the last moment.

The commander takes advice from a veteran.

The figures are a mix of Athena, Foundry, Perry and Forlorn Hope miniatures.

Most of the armour is painted using Vallejo's gun metal, but there are a few painted with the Chrome paint too.

An officer keeps an eye on the firing line.

Update: The Vallejo mud is now applied. I was so eager to get the mud on, I forgot the archer arrows. These are a great little extra that the Perry's have included in their plastic sets.

These 'ammo' arrows are great for adding detail to a base. I added four to the two bases and stuck them Infront of archers without quivers.

I also added my brush bristle arrows too to give the sense of a battle.

Learning lessons from the previous bases, I sprinkled some mixed herbs and grass into the wet mud and pushed them in. I think this gives the impression of a trodden field a little better than before.

I did find that as the mud dries it does shrink down and reveal some of the higher bases. These bases can be covered with grass flock later.

The odd polearm was cut up and pushed into the mud.

Lord Hastings by Graham Turner.

Warfare 2024 Game

Just recovering from a long weekend spent at Warfare 2024 playing 'A Rum Do'. This was Prince Rupert's Gaming club's participation game and was this time set at sea.

It involved Prince Rupert's ship trying to pick up a spy from the isle of White. To do this the captain had to work out passwords so as not to alert the two parliamentarian ships in harbour. If he failed, the guard ships would stand to, if he failed again they would open fire.

The really clever bit I thought were the ship templates where the captains of the ships could allocate resources. This took the form of moving guns from port to starboard etc, controlling speed, manning fires and keeping a record of the ships hit points. These game elements were done by the use of pegs in a silhouette of the ship.

I had missed a lot of the games play testing so was none the wiser on the first day of the event. I soon picked it up though as it was nice and simple. It was really interesting to see the different tactics used by players in the game. I think the best games are when children play it as you can see just how much fun they are having.

The spy makes her way to the dock with valuable information of the location of the king. It's not good news for Rupert as it reveals the castle is too heavily protected for a rescue attempt.

A Parliamentarian captain runs to his ship.

The club also sported it's new shirts for the first time. It was nice to look more professional and tied us together more as a group.

A clever cribbage style system was used for keeping tabs of the state of the vessels.

It wasn't just the enemy ships Rupert had to worry about, a shore battery too stood guard over the bay.

The game played really well and the ship template idea was pure genius I thought. Unfortunately we didn't win any prizes this year as there were some truly amazing games in the competition. I think the first prize went to a mega Starlingrad game. As most of the other games were on the other side of the hall, we missed the giving out of prizes. They had been given out long before we realised we had missed it all. 

Regardless of this disappointing oversight, we all had a great couple of days laughing together and spending way too much.

Logo designed by Richard Brown. I was telling him how clever it was to use dice in the Rupert's standard. That's when he pointed out their numbering...1,6,4,5. Very nice.