War of the Roses 3 The battle of Barnet with Hail Caesar

 Finally a face to face game with my nephew, we dug out our war of the Roses figures and I dragged up some 25mm hundred years war archers, we also ended up with Warwick and Oxford playing on both sides as I have collected both sides whereas Des in a typical display of Lancastrian prejudice only collected the Lancastrians. I set up originally with Barnet and Monken Hadley and realised I didn't have enough buildings so on the morning of the battle I quickly built and based coated 4 more meaner buildings with smaller footprints, in the end we changed the set up but it's given me most of the dark age village I've been planning for a while!

We set up with three battles on each side Oxford on the Lancastrian right,Montague in the centre and Essex on the left all under Warwick,with Monken Hadley on the Lancastrian left and Old Ford Manor House on their right.  The Lancastrians were heading south towards Barnet, the plucky Yorkist under Edward were heading north with Clarence in the centre, Gloucester on the right and Hastings on the left. We were using a warhammer ancient battle scenario I had found years ago and printed out, so that there was a  special rule for fog and treachery. 

The Yorkist side had the  first go,Hastings battle declined to go Clarence's veered off in the fog Gloucester's left most unit failed to identify who was in front of them and attacked and caused casualties to the bill and bow unit who returned the favour, it wasn't going terribly well!

 

 

We both advanced as much as we could, shot arrows and (largely ineffectualy) cannons, I initiated a  number of actions that I  came off worse with and found I needed to support my rock hard men at arms or even they didn't last long, lost my left flank,almost destroyed the other flank but by then it was too late! It was great fun,  in retrospect we got a lot wrong but Hail Caesar is forgiving enough to give us a decent game in spite of that! No doubt the new buildings will feature in a blog post, however I have 1st St Albans to think about next ,another Hertfordshire War of the Roses battle,at least I  have enough buildings!

All the best 

Iain 

Napoleonic 6, French dragoons 28th Regiment

 We have another Napoleonic French dragoon unit ,multipose plastic from Perry Miniatures, lovely figures which I've enjoyed painting. 

Same as before, primed black and then painting the colour as a highlight. I painted these horses and 36 others in an evening with a kind of wet brushing, fast and dirty and then clean the tack up with black at a later date, thought that might be of interest to you Keith as I know you have one or two horses to do!

The close ups are pretty harsh but I'm happy enough with them, this takes me to three dragoon regiments, red,yellow and orange facings so far, I think I will do one more,probably pink but not for a while, I have Austrian Napoleonic cavalry on the painting table but some French Napoleonic hussars have swaggered onto the painting tray. I'm also assembling lots of Austrian cavalry and infantry, mostly plastic, so a little less painting but all still hobby time!

All the best 

Iain