Wallachia - Under Vlad the Impaler 2

Wallachian Army - Part 2 The Generals

With just 27 mounted castings left over from the EBay purchase I looked carefully at them to decide if I felt they would be suitable for creating the three generals elements. I have already ordered a new Vlad Tepes and two Boyars from Donningtons just in case along with some other figures for this army. I managed to sort out what looked like nine suitable castings and put the remaining eighteen castings to one side. These are bits and pieces and I don't think they will be any further use for this army. I am very pleased with the ERM castings http://shop.eastridingminiatures.co.uk/renaissance-eastern-europe-43-c.asp in the end and for a total outlay of £58 I have achieved the core of the entire mounted part of the army with bits left over on EBay which if sold will reduce my outlay to almost nothing. I still need to paint up the Voynuks and Auxilia but I can use the troops in my collection for the hordes and archers if necessary.

Generals always need flags and in this era they need heraldry too. For the flags I adopted Vlad Tepes personal arms and made a standard in MSPaint. For the other flags I saw that there was a pattern in Wallachian national flags starting with their use of the red flag with its eagle. Late rulers used this flag in white and also blue so that solved my flag problem quite quickly.

Information on Wallachian shield designs is very limited and the WRG book by Ian Heath has some designs for mounted nobles but clearly states that theres no records of any colours used. In the end I resorted to copying the shields in the colour photos from the Warhammer Historicals Vlad the Impaler scenario book. 

The figures took me a total of three days to complete because being generals elements I went OTT and tried to make them as nice as possible.

Here are some pictures of the finished three generals elements.

Vlad is Code VL1 and the standard bearers are code VL6 I mixed and matched the mounts

Wallachia - Under Vlad the Impaler

Wallachian Army - Part 1

Earlier this month a saw a part finished Wallachian Warhammer army for sale on EBay. I dont normally buy on speculation especially since it was clear that the army was incomplete and unbased. I put in a bid and was pleased to see I won the lot for £58 including delivery. Below are the pictures from the EBay lot which clearly shows what I was buying on a whim.

A total of 32 painted foot, 4 painted guns, 34 painted mounted and 51 unpainted mounted troops. They were mostly ERM castings. Along with the lot was the Warhammer Historicals Book for Vlad the Impaler. The Warhammer book is now on EBay as its of no use to me which hopefully means I will be able to recover some of my initial outlay on this lot in due course. Whilst the painting isnt what you say was done to a master level its certainly more than good enough for my needs. I spent three days removing the painted castings from their bases and had to replace the tails on three horses and refix one horse to its base using a belly pin drilled through the base and horse. A quick sort through of the figure types meant that I could create 13 elements of Wallachian Light Horse and another 3 elements of light horse in a different sculpt. There were also another 6 unpainted castings to match these in the lot. I decided that I could probably match paint the group with my own painting and painted them up in a couple of hours to try and get a similar style of painting.

I completed the rebasing earlier this week and am now pleased to shown the end results below.

13 LH O elements

3 LH O elements

This is the batch of 6 castings I tried to match paint.

2 Reg Art O elements

3 Irr Ps S elements going on EBay

2 Surplus Reg Art O elements to go on EBay

6 Surplus Irr Ps S elements to go on EBay

The remaining unpainted castings.

Theres enough unpainted mounted castings to create the 3 generals elements, 5 elements of nobles and 4 elements of mercenary knights with a few castings left over. This means that I only need to buy suitable figures for the missing infantry elements to complete this army. I already have lots of figures in Project Lead Mountain but I might just buy the Curteni figures I need rather than use poor substitute castings. UPDATE I did buy the Curteni figures from Donningtons so I will have this army to complete some time during this year subject to the Poles being in the front of the queue.

Having spent the last two days painting the Wallachian Nobles I can post the completed elements on here as an update revision. It means the long row of 15 black castings at the top of the picture just above these words are now painted having started out as in the picture below.

Wallachian Nobles Irr Cv O ERM VL6 castings

Early and Later Polish - Part 5

Feudal & Medieval Polish - Part 5

QR Miniatures PA1 & PA2 Early Polish CinC element

Peter Kershaw let me know about QR Miniatures from Poland a little while back and I have already blogged some of their castings. Since I decided I am building both the Early and Later Polish armies I needed to ensure I had sufficient correct looking figures to form the core of the army. I sent off an order to QR on 2nd April 2017 and within a short while I got my order back. I already have lots of suitable castings to paint up for the Early Polish mounted arm so I decided that part of the order would only have a few castings for the Early Polish army to create the command elements. The figures are very crisp and required very little cleaning up. They come as single piece castings and have separate spears which means you will have to drill out their hands. I discarded the spears because I wanted to have longer spears to act as standard bearers and they were a bit flimsy for my linking. Each command element is colour coded because they are Irregular generals and this is necessary to ensure the correct dice is used when rolling. Here are the four completed generals elements.

  

Much to my surprise the ongoing task that is Project Lead Mountain keeps giving up more options to create other armies. I still have lots of Medieval knight castings to paint so a quick root through the box produced 15 Essex horses and 14 riders. I wanted a distinctive 15th rider to become a general and I had a rather fearsome looking Minifigs knights with crested helm and axe in the spares. The Later Polish army has the option to take a 4th Regular Knight General commanding Bohemian regular Mercenary Knights. Its only a small command and both the general and the knights are optional but if taken the general can only command the Bohemian knights and no one else. If he isn't taken the knights can be commanded by any other Polish general. The figure codes are lost in the mists of time but do paint up very well and I dont mind mixing Minifigs and Essex riders is they are all on Essex horses. I didn't like the Essex mounted standard bearer as originally cast so I cut off the standard and replaced it with a metal spear.

Mixed Essex & Minifigs Medieval Bohemian Mercenary Knights 

Both the Early and Later Polish armies can use Lithuanian cavalry Light Horse and the Later Polish list gets the option of taking a Lithuanian general to command this contingent. I already had two odd Lithuanian light horse elements which I had picked up off EBay for next to nothing late last year as part of a job lot left over from someones Teutonic army sale. They were Essex castings and I ordered some more EMED22 castings to match these and since I wanted a LH general I ordered a pack of XMED13 and XMED14 for him. It means I still have some left over castings but as the old saying goes you never know when these will come in useful. Potentially you can take 21 Lithuanian LH including their general and also take 2 Tartar LH S if you want. I know that I shall probably never need that many LH elements for the Polish army so decided to only complete 9 elements including the general. If I need any more I can also use some of my Hungarian castings to bulk them out and the Hungarians already have a few Tartar LH elements so I didnt need to paint any of those. I decided it was easier to match paint the additional castings to the original four castings as I liked their finished effect.

Essex EMED22, XMED13 & XMED14 Lithuanian Light Horse

Yuan China Invades Hungary

The Hungarians Hand The Chinese Their Heads

Bob at Essex Warriors wanted another game of DBM today and told me he wanted to try out his Yuan Chinese again. I had fought them back in August 2015 at 500 AP. I decided that since I have not have much in the way of tournament games recently I would reuse my Challenge army from 2016. The Later Hungarians are an interesting army and my list design isn't the usual version you see in tournament play. 

For the previous blogs on the Hungarians go to:

http://drewjarman.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/last-practice-game-before-challenge.html

and also read up the blog on The Challenge 2016.

Peters army consisted of three commands totalling 64 E/ 59 EE/29.5 B

C1 25 E/21 EE/7 D [25% - 5.5 EE]

C2 21 E/ 21 EE/7 D [25% - 5.5 EE]

C3 18 E/ 17 EE/6 D [25% - 4.5 EE]

Set up was unusual in that we were both Cold Ag 2

Aggression rolls were 4+1+2=7 for me and 4+1+5 =10 meaning the battle was going to start at 5 pm with Peter as the invader. The difference of 3 in the Summer meant there was a strong wind which was blowing in the Chinese faces all game.

I tried to get a Waterway but failed meaning that my flanks were at risk so I elected to place a BUA on a 1.5 FE Hill, placed my baggage in the BUA surrounded by the TF I had purchased in the list to protect the baggage. This game me the option to place the BUA in the flank sector and protected that flank. I placed another two areas of boggy RGo. Peter Placed three Half Feature Gentle Hills.

The game proceeded at a reasonable pace and I managed to close up the table at the centre line and prevented Peter from exploiting his superior mobility and get round my flanks.

The first combat was a 6-1 when Peters blades destroyed my right flank warwagon much to my consternation. I threw my Szeklers in and quickly two two elements so had to reinforce them on the right flank to tie down his troops on that side. Pushing forward with my heavy infantry opposite his cavalry line and one of his two bow commands in the centre whilst I lined up the CinC with his knights opposite his other infantry command opposite his ordinary bowmen. 

His bowfire into the wind was totally ineffective and I closed in to attack with the Banderium and promptly bounced off. Stood there for another turn taking fire before going in again. This time I held firm but it would be another three bounds before I finally got the dice rolls to sweep away his bowmen. Nipping around the flanks I killed an odd auxilia that had become isolated meaning that this infantry command was only two elements away from breaking. 

Over on the far left Peter managed to ride down my fast light house from the left wing meaning I was forced to commit the sub-general to fill the hole. Thankfully despite being overlapped and hit in the rear his luck held and I slowly started to punch through the centre. Odd casualties elsewhere finally broke Peters left flank command meaning that I was two elements away from breaking his army. The Armati pulled a cavalry element from the saddle and the last element required to break the army happened when I got an odd auxilia.

All in all a fun game for me and the 10-0 DBM score over 11 pairs of bounds does not show how finely balanced the game was for most of the day. I had to work hard for my 30-2 BHGS win and it reminded me how much I like this army.

Here are the pictures I managed to take during the game. The final picture shows the CinC and Royal Banderium columned up ready to start its attack on the open flank of the second Yuan foot command which proved unnecessary as the army had already broken. I had also managed to filter the Szekler light horse to the rear of the Yuan position and was about to loot his baggage which would have also broken the army.