A Douglas and a Percy

My first two knights for Lion Rampant are a Douglas and a Percy.  The castings are Donnington New Era and very nice they are too.  The heraldry especially for Percy was more than tricky and to be honest I need to improve a bit there.  I’ll get there with practice or less complex designs I suppose.

Anyhow the psychological barrier is broken and I’ll now press on a pair of knights at a time.  

Here they both are with their pals.

100 Years War Progress

I recently spent a pleasant afternoon painting my 100 Years War collection, radio play in the back ground, you know the sort of thing.

Most pleasing of all I’ve managed to get my hands on some Steve Shaw medieval Scots courtesy of eBay.  I’m a big fan of Steve’s work and his figures are not easy to come by these days.  

What I wanted in this case was a Scottish contingent for my French and that’s just what I got-plus a couple of excellent Highlands and Isles command figures.

Here they are, rather heavy in Douglas’s, (dubh glás = blue black) and Otterburn oriented but they will do the trick nicely.  As you can see they are equipped with long spears to front up a Schiltron as a unit of seargents led by knights.

I’ve nearly finished the English archers too and some Donnington New Era foot knights including the Ear of Oxford.

The big painting challenge is going to be the mounted knights.

An Irish Retinue for Lion Rampant

It’s great see all these old Steve Shaw figures finished and ready to use as I’ve had them for decades.  It occurred to me that with a bit of swapping round of unit types I can field an early version to tackle the Vikings and the Normans and as well as a later one.  Not only that but I can also produce an Islemen Retinue.  Anyhow here they all are: 

Irish Raiders for Lion Rampant and 100 Years War Retinues

I’m doing OK on retinues for Lion Rampant but as usual I’ve gone for the exotica, Samurai and the Bronze Age respectively. With the best will in the world these are variants rather than the rules as written.  With that firmly in mind I have bought two retinues from Donnington New Era, English and French for the 100 Years War a classic match-up. I’ll start painting them soon.

Meantime I have a bunch of the old Feudal Castings medieval Irish to hand including the now out of production Irish cavalry-lovely figures.  Most of them are painted so a little re -basing job and I’ll be good to go.  I'll opt for the retinue of the King of Leinster Art Óg Mac Murchadha Caomhanách, who we see below.

On the flat the Irish could not stand up to the massed armoured cavalry of royal expeditions from England or assembled from the colonial nobility.  All of which tends to make for a dull game.  

That said under many rules it is perfectly possible to field an Irish army that operates somewhat like a Roman legion, with double ranks of Gallóglaich, flanked by auxiliaries, fronted by skirmishers and with the cavalry in reserve.  For me, there is no fun in that, I have Roman armies and a fair idea of how the Irish tackled well-armed opponents, I think there is a better option.

All of which brings me back to Lion Rampant which I think will well reflect the small wars of raids and ambushes that now and then became small battles. Here is the retinue.

The nobles as sergeants.

Other marc slua as mounted yeomen with javelins.

Two bands of Kern as Bidowers.  More foot to follow.

And as you can see we are back in business courtesy of Imgur and the good advice available on the Wargames website which does what it says on the label.