Henry, 1st Lord Scrope of Masham

Henry, 1st Lord Scrope of Masham, was born on 29 September, 1312, in Masham, England. Henry figured prominently in all the wars of Edward the Third, and in 1350, was summoned to parliament as Baron Scrope of Masham. He fought at Crecy, Poitiers and Najera. He died on the 31st July 1932. The Scropes of Masham were a cadet branch of the Scropes of Bolton family, hence the use of the white difference or cadence mark over the Scrope arms of azure, a bend or.

Anyway, scene set (real history, by the way, fact fans!), I actually chose Henry as he had a nice simple coat of arms, and I was able to download his flag (free, gratis, and for nothing) from the rather excellent krigspil.dk website. If you want a flag for pretty much any period, then check them out before spending any money.





I based these on a 30mm un-lipped base (i.e. a slightly larger version of the bases like those sold by GW), which handily is within a gnat's crotchet of the same thickness as my standard bases for the rest of the army. I think I'll base all my commanders like this. If I'd planned ahead a little better, I'd have put the banner-bearer on the other side of him so that I could stretch the flag out to the right and it wouldn't look (to the casual or uninformed viewer) like I'd painted his bend or going the wrong way!

The main reason I did him now, as opposed to later, is that I've been finding it rather more difficult than expected to get nice horse-flesh colours on the mounts of my hobilars. However, the English summer is doing its rainy best, so I'm off for another attempt.

Archers

Managed to find a few moments (i.e. it was raining) and got these fellows polished off this afternoon. As mentioned before, the green and white livery is that worn by troops raised by the Black Prince.




Next up, some hobilars:


I also came across an article in the paper today, mentioning a website www.medievalsoldier.org which carries a database of the soldiers who fought for England against the French between 1369 and 1453.

TTFN

Mustering musings

Being on a real Impetus kick painting up my HYW miniatures from Corvus Belli, I realised last night after posting that I haven't shared my intended army list. I've roughed out a 500 point list, and then sub-selected a 300 point list from that. There may be some tweaking (I may swap out the Hobilars and the Levies for some Cannon), but for now, here goes:

Command:
Average CS, Fair Commander
32 pts

Cavalry:
1 x King and Household
1 x English Men-at-Arms
1 x Hobilars
82 pts

Missile Troops:
5 x Longbowmen
115 pts

Melee Troops:
2 x Dismounted Men-at-Arms
1 x Welsh Spearmen
1 x French Levies
71 pts

Total = 300 points

On a side note, I probably won't get much further on those archers for a few days as I'm off to another Blood Bowl tournament this weekend. Given the lack of a podium finish with a super-competitive team, I'm going to go for the ultimate joke team - goblins. I had fun painting these guys up a couple of years ago, and will be aiming for the Stunty Cup instead of 'real' victory.

In fact if you look here, my team is in the gallery on the Stunty Cup site. Scroll down to the seventh picture, I think.

Green and White

Beautiful wife was sorting through photos of beautiful son (18 months tomorrow!), so I got started on a base-worth of archers. I've chosen a green and white colour scheme in honour of the archers raised by Edward of Woodstock, the 'Black Prince', from Cheshire in the mid 1300s.

Just a quick snap from the workbench:



"But Stephen, one of those archers has a hammer, not a bow!"
"That's right, Skippy, but someone has to drive the stakes in to keep those naughty French aristos at bay!"

I was sorting through the great pile of sprues of CB figs in my lead pile and found him in the 'Armed Peasants' pack and thought "Ah-ha!" I hope it works out...

In harness, and ready for action

I'm a happy geek! I got my first base of English dismounted Men at Arms / Knights / whatever you want to call them completed and based tonight (thanks, Jet, for the basing advice).

It's late and real world work is going to be heavy going tomorrow, so that's it for now, I just wanted to show off my handiwork. Not perfect by any means, but for a first go, and as a gaming piece, I'm pretty chuffed. Just another couple of hundred to paint!

These are Corvus Belli miniatures and are 15mm scale, based for Impetus.

From the front:



and behind:



and an crossbow bolt's eye view:


A little bizarre, perhaps, but my favourite is the trumpeter; I really like the linen colour I got on his coif.

The painting is under way

Not being a great photographer, the pictures I'm going to post mightn't be the best (any tips that don't involve buying fancy kit would be gratefully received).  I did promise to share, though, so here goes:

A mixture of undercoated Corvus Belli foot knights, along with a monk and trumpeter from the command packs. I've used GW's 'Chaos Black' spray undercoat, more from habit than anything else.

I love the detail on these figures and, at about 34p/fig, perfectly reasonable to my mind.

Swelling the ranks

Although I mainly play fantasy games (Bloodbowl, Elfball and occasionally Aeronautica Imperialis) because that's what the locals play, I'm a historical gamer at heart. I just love the medieval period in particular - all that chivalry, heraldry, castles, courtly love, peasants being kept in their place... And of course, lots of Frenchy-bashing ;)

The rules that I've settled upon are called Impetus, by Dadi and Piombo. They're for large-element based miniatures, so each unit can be a mini diorama. I've never quite got the hang of more than simple basing, but I'm hoping to work on that as I get stuck in to {drum roll} my major project for 2009!

This will be to paint, base (and get to play with, dammit) two 300pt armies (one English, one French) for the Hundred Years War. I figure if I do both sides then my gaming buddies have no excuse not to give some proper historical gaming a go. I'm going to use Corvus Belli miniatures throughout, except for one base of welsh spearmen from Feudal Castings (an idea I nicked from Jet's top-notch 'Geektactica' blog) and the final figures arrived last night, which was a real geeky pick-me-up after an incredibly long day teaching followed by parents' evening.

Now all that remains is to paint all couple of hundred figures! Oh, and to make my task 'easier', I've never painted anything smaller than 28mm figs before; the gallery I plan to put on here may end as more of a reassurance than inspiration ("At least my painting looks better than this guy's - what is he painting with, a toothbrush?").