Antidiluvian New Medievals on Horizon

Recently announced forth coming releases from Antediluvian Miniatures are some additions to their historical offerings in their 'Wars of the Bruces' range. Announced are as below, Scots Spearmen;

Great looking sculpts from Matthew Bickley and with more to come, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next in these most useful mini's.

Sir Roderick Stewart of Callander

Another couple of figures finished off to go with my mounting number of medieval skirmish types, this time in the form of the fictitious Sir Roderick Stewart of Callander (ie me :-) ) and his trusty retainer.

The knight is of course a Copplestone character figure, which originally gave me the idea of the character, due to his head gear sporting a tower device.

The standard bearer is a Perry GW Dogs of War standard bearer with a head and shield swop. Again used due to the tower device on his standard.

The Coat of Arms on the standard and the badge device on the pavaise are of my own Coat of Arms, which I quite fancied putting on a figure just to get myself on the table as it were. The standard is really to large to go with my lowly standing and I would be in trouble with the Lord Lyon if I appeared on the field with a four foot standard but hey, if all the big-wigs can get in on trying to show of with a bigger banner than they were allowed, so can I.

I might re-do the standard as it has come out a bit fuzzy and could do with jazzing up a bit, but it will suffice for now.

Rouvray Skirmish

First game of the year at the FDWC for myself and something a wee bit different. Dave K asked if I was up for a game on Monday and I suggested a Medieval Skirmish, something easy and not too long as there were a few club duties to perform early on so time may have been an issue. So pulling out the trusty Retinue Rules ( a rule set which are older than some of the club members) and a nice and easy scenario in a mini version of the Battle of Rouvray (sorry we just like pickled herring - honest), we were sorted. Pete joined us on the day to throw a few dice and jeer at the fishy defenders.

The forces consisted of a pretty heavily armed and armoured Scots contingent of 23 descending on the encircled English defending their herring, numbering a meagerly armoured 18.

The game went quite simply (we were using a simplified version of the Retinue rules which we have used before to speed things up) with the Scots advancing pretty quickly and the Men at Arms getting in the way of their bowmen in the process. The defenders fire took out three of the Scots MaA's pretty quickly with some pretty nifty dice rolling from Dave and managed to give the Scot's leader a bit of a limp wounding him in the first round of shooting.

The attackers return fire while they advanced was pretty dismal all told and once the MaA's and assorted ruffians reached the wagons, the bowmen advanced into the fray to lend a hand. 

To cut a short story even shorter, Pete and myself's dice were pretty atrocious and we couldn't hit the side of a fish wagon and by round 10 or so, the defenders were outnumbering the attackers with the none of the attackers without some form of wound and several had been disarmed and were fighting with their side arms, it was obviously not going to happen for the Scots, recreating the outcome of the historical battle quite nicely. So the Scots beat a hasty retreat to lick their multitudinous wounds. The only success being the doughty Falstaff had been laid low by one of the Scots MaA's in the midst of the melee, which is something that we did manage to achieve that the real counterparts didn't.

A nice, simple game and lot's of fun for a quickly put together bash. Looking forward getting into this in the coming month's and getting more figures painted up and have some more scenario's too.

Hollow Crown Playtest

A Scots Schiltron 'on a roll'

Not having been able to get to the club for a fair while I was hankering to get a game in and when Dave Imrie (Saxon Dog fame) approached the powers that be at t'club to see if there was any interest in bodies playtesting the Hollow Crown rules, a fair number expressed an interest, myself included so a perfect excuse (as if one was really needed) had presented itself.

So last night was the duly appointed night of battle and Dave, Jack and Ian Hale (the progenitor of the rule set) brought themselves along to FDWC and kindly put on an a very interesting game with Jack and Dave bringing a grand pile of their rather tidy looking troops to do battle with.

So Dave K, Kev and Craig on one side taking a battle each on the 'Rebel' side and myself, Andy and Alan taking the 'Right' side each taking a command and with suitable traits in hand did battle using the rules 'Hollow Crown' which are still a work in progress but rapidly developing going by what we saw last night.

Dave had parcelled up the troops as a mixture of Scots and English troops on both sides so as not to cause any bickering (you know what wargamers are like with that sort of thing, but more importantly so each side got to see the abilities of all the troop types

Dave, Craig and Ian Hale look on as the troops are deployed

All in all the game was a roaring success for all combatants with our respective combats and shooting etc being over looked by Jack and Dave and Ian making sure all was circumspect and above board.

Things hot up across the battlefield as the forces close

Kev starts his advance on my command

The game though for all intents and purposes was split into three with the respective battles pairing fairly naturally, things did get a bit entangled as you would hope with any medieval battle, but in summary the game went my troops on our left stood and shot at anything that moved and hoped to soften up the enemy enough to withstand the inevitable crash of two schiltron's, Kev managed to skillfully blunt the worst of this with only one of the schiltron's being pretty messed up, but loosing his supporting Scots bowmen and skirmishers before his larger of the two blocks crashing into my line and making a big hole.

Kev's schiltron's advance in grand style

My Battle, 'they come on in the same old fashion,
 and we met them in the same old fashion'

In the centre, our 'glorious leader' being a bit rash, launched his bowmen, Men at Arms and Bill at the enemy line who in return did what I was doing and stood and shot them to shrebbins as they advanced and then launched his schiltron at the Men at Arms once they had been stripped of their supporting troops, only to be counter charged by the centre's secret weapon, a sizable unit of Islesmen who tipped the combat which raged for a couple turns before turning the tide.

The Islesmen in the centre about to charge home into the
 enemy's centre's schiltron
 (and save the honour of our glorious commander)

Though by this time what was left of Andy's very exposed Bill had been all but disintegrated in front of Dave's largely intact command.

Over on our right, Alan struggled to get his schiltron's across the battlefield due to some very obstreperous woodland which slowed him down and were only just coming to blows with Craig and Alan's forces with the pretty much intact line's on both sides crashing into each other in what looked like to be a bloodbath for both sides.

The largely intact schiltron smashes into the right of my command
 and has the desired effect

With time beating us but things really looking not to good all in all for the 'Right' side, we called a halt and tidied up and discussed the fore going and had a general chat.

Great fun was had by all and Dave and the crew picking some constructive critique and noting a few new situations and with notes suitable taken, all happy all round. Looking forward to another game or three, just to test the rules of course.

Thanks To Dave, Jack and Ian for putting up with us and putting on a very enjoyable game and letting us play with the very nice troops (you can head over to Dave's place Saxon Dog for some much better pictures of his troops in all their glory, I don't know if Jack has a similar laudable blog to see his fine troops I'm afraid) and I look forward to see the rules progress.

More Claymore Castings Islesmen/Highlanders

Claymore Castings - OT25 Islesmen/Highlanders

Some more very nicely done Islesmen/Highlanders have just been released from Claymore Castings to go with the command group recently done, again designed by Paul Hicks.

David of Claymore Castings let me see some of these pre-release at Claymore 13 and they are very nice in the flesh too.

Though these are released as part of the Otterburn range, due to the nature of the troops, particularly if you want to use them as Gallowglass, they can be used right up to the 17th century with suitable weapon swops. Certainly into the early 16th century in Scotland.

David has also promised Kern and the like to be added to the range but the ETA for these is unknown currently.

Claymore Castings Schiltron Figures

Claymore Castings Scots Schiltron x2

Tonight at the weekly club meet, David Imrie kindly dropped round and dropped off my pre-order of a couple of the new Schiltron Units from Claymore Castings, fresh out the injection moulding machine.

First impressions of seeing the figures in the flesh are very good.

The detail of the Paul Hicks sculpts is some of his best work (generally getting better as he gets older...don't we all) and the animation of the figures is first rate.

The figures being from virgin moulds is practically flash free and they require almost no cleaning up. Size wise they are pretty much 28mm toe to eye and are there fore comparable with Gripping Beast or Front Rank sized figures but half a head smaller than say the current Perry mini's though of a similar style.

I'm pleased to get these early and I'm looking forward to get these painted up and looking menacing, though I'm going to be a good boy and not get too distracted by the new shiny and continue with my progress with my Berbers first, to a point anyway.

As far as the use these nice figures will get put too is still not completely formed past a Scots Common type army for Harlaw kind of period or even, though at a bit of a stretch style wise, for the Scots in France at the beginning of the 15th Century. Certainly with a couple of different command groups and standards they could be comfortably be used for Scots at home and abroad over decent 50 year span. Though the figures are designed around Otterburn 1388 and do have a flavour of that period, us canny Scots make-do-and-mend, and make sure we got our money's worth so you can justifiably use these figs into the Agincourt period.

I'm looking forward to see the next releases due from the range in the fullness of time and will be looking to expand this new venture into a whole new project. Hurrah! more lead-fulness.

New Scots Medieval Figures

Just seen these Scots Medieval figures over on Dave Imrie's blog; Saxon Dog.

Dave and Andrew Taylor have got together and commissioned Paul Hicks to design a range of Medieval Scots of 1388 to 1402 ilk, for the first release with English types to follow.

In Dave's words;

" Andrew Taylor and I have been planning a range of 28mm Medieval Scots for almost two years. We have now decided to show the progress. Here are a few images of what has been sculpted so far. We hope to have these ready for release at Salute 2012. Sculpted by the talented Paul Hicks. "

Great looking figures, and up to Mr Paul Hicks usual great standard, and look to be a treat to paint and will no doubt be popular. Definitely a useful figure range beyond the scope they are intended for and beyond.

I wish them well in this venture, as it shows great promise and with a subject matter close to me heart I'll certainly be supporting it!

Pop over to Dave's blog Saxon Dog to check out more of the nifty figs.