King Richard III Army at Bosworth Field - Part 2

My take on King Richards Army - Part 2

After taking the weekend off to play in the 15mm DBM Doubles tournament called Venta Silurum in Corntown, Glamorganshire where I came joint 5th using my Sargonid army in its first ever tournament I have just completed all three Battles Stiffened Bill's contingents which I had to stop working on last Friday.

Since Richards army was divided into three distinct parts I decided that once I settled on a list using the DBMM Revised Edition army list that each Battle would be painted historically where possible.

First up is Richards contingent. I purchased Donningtons New Era figures at Salute. He sells show only Battle Packs of 24 figures, so I purchased a pack of dismounted Men-At-Arms and a pack of Retinue Billmen which was enough castings to create 12 elements of Stiffened Bill's. After changing my list design I realised I needed 15 elements but thankfully Project Lead Mountain managed to come up trumps to supply the 12 missing figures I needed. Donningtons codes on their website are listed here. https://shop.ancient-modern.co.uk/wars-of-the-roses-143-c.asp If you want battlepacks Damian will supply them to order via mailorder if you contact him first. After cleaning up the figures I ended up with 48 figures which I then mixed up to increase the variety. I picked 12 more armoured looking figures for Richards Battle and since they were not wearing tabards I picked out their plumes and halberd tassles in Royal Blue and Scarlet to ensure they were instantly recognised.

Norfolk's livery is all red with a small white rampant lion on the left breast so I painted the remaining 32 Donnington figures left with scarlet tabards and the small representations of this badge where they were wearing a tabard.

Lastly is Percy's Battle. In my list design this is the smallest command so I only needed to source 12 castings out of Project Lead Mountain. Thankfully I have some leftover oddments of Naismith/Roundway castings from previous projects in lots of different poses. They fitted in perfectly with the army despite the smaller average casting size. Percy's livery is red and black with a small white crescent badge also on the left breast. I have no idea which casting codes these figures are as they came from all of their medieval ranges.

Since I had 8 leftover Men-At-Arms from Essex that I had used to create Richards dismounted Royal Bodyguard I painted these up as generic dismounted knights to get them out of the Lead Mountain and into my Medieval army collection.

So apart from the Northern Border Foot which I still have to paint up the army is now ready to put on the table top by using other elements from my existing collection.

As a teaser here is the army fully deployed using Mikes Models Spearmen for the Northern Border Foot.

Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field

My Representation of Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field

Having completed King Richard the Third's element I still had left over castings in Project Lead Mountain for the War of the Roses period. The castings are old Gladiator Figures that I purchased three owners ago. I don't plan to create a totally historic Tudor Rebels Army for 1485 but it was fun doing the research to create these specific elements.

Whilst Henry was basically put into a position of trying to contest the throne of England by his Uncle Jasper Tudor in 1485 he had no legal titles. He was formally the 2nd Earl of Richmond at the 7th Creation and had been awarded arms by his uncle King Edward VI. These arms were identical to Jasper Tudors arms, who was Duke of Bedford and Earl of Pembroke, except for the small charges arranged around the blue border. When Henry Tudor was attained in 1461 he lost the right to carry these arms. The title was then awarded to George Plantagenet in 1461, [8th creation] when he was executed in 1478 it then passed to Richard Duke of Gloucester - later to become King Richard the Third. So at Bosworth Field there were in effect two Earl's of Richmond present. 

Last of the Hussite Warwagons Done

Project Lead Mountain Keeps Giving Up Gifts

As part of a Hussite junk purchase off EBay I ended up with a badly assembled Essex Warwagon without crew or horses. I took it apart and assembled it properly and raided the spares box for some crew and motive power. The Horses were also Essex and the three crew a mix of Essex and Minifigs. I finally finished it yesterday so its now ready to offer for sale. Painted generically so it will do for Poles, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Hussites and Germans.

I also had a bag of 16 Museum Miniatures MD04 Genoese Crossbowmen with Pavise to complete. They are nice castings and easy to paint up well. They only time sink is decorating the shields with various Italian City States colours. I may sell these as well but I have a suitable space in my storage box for them so there's no rush at present. Sold at the club today!

King Richard III Army at Bosworth Field - Part 1

My Take On King Richard III's Army - Part 1

Following on from my previous post about what Richard III would have looked like when commanding his army at Bosworth Field here is my take on him and parts of his army.

This project came about because Kevin Baker wanted a practice game using his Henry Tudor army and since he is based at The Cowards Wargames Club in Hoveton we arranged for him to come and visit me at Essex Warriors on the 2nd June. I foolishly agreed that I would deploy King Richard the Third's army against him and I then realised that I can throw together the army but it would be a bit of a Heinz 57 army so I decided that it would be a good excuse to use some of the spare metal in Project Lead Mountain to fill in the gaps in my collection. I have had to order more metal to make up some of the missing elements which I will be blogging about in the next instalment for this army.

I purchased lots of this metal many years ago and it is a mixture of Gladiator Games, Minifigs, Essex, Lancashire Games and probably a few other makes too.

Her is my Richard III element, I have done him mounted as well as on foot. I removed the cast on metal flags and staffs and replaced them with plain metal spears where possible so some of the figures are modified. As usual the based are MDF with magnetic sheeting underneath, coated with Vallejo Earth Brown Paste, edged in Raw Umber paint. Finished off with gravel, static grass and flower tufts from Micks Bits. The flags were found via Pinterest and printed off at home. Because Richard has Scoliosis his armour was hand made in England by the finest armourers available. The Shakespearean lie about him being a hunchbacked cripple can safely be ignored as he was a skilled rider and swordsman and his armour designed to hide any deformity that people might notice.

 

Argh - when you complete something to be told that the flag is wrong. The yellow flag was from the previous Yorkist monarch Edward IV. Richard used The Royal Banner of England in addition to his own Royal Standard. So out with the scalpel, off with the yellow flag and on with the replacement flag.

As the legitimate and legally crowned king Richard raised a Royal Bodyguard of mounted knights. He ordered 150 suits of Italian made armour for them. He didn't order Italian armour for their horses so I did a mix and match order from Essex Miniatures which I collected at Salute last weekend. I settled on MER49 Gendarmes riders on MER12 English style armoured horses. The MER49 come in a mixture of poses some with lances and others with maces but I wanted them to look like an elite body of troops so elected to use the same casting pose and put them on identical horses. I painted them to match Richards equipment so it was clear that they were a specially selected body of troops.

They can of course dismount as elite fully armoured infantry so I used Essex Miniatures MER36 Dismounted knights. Again they came in a mixture of poses using swords or maces so I selected all the figures with swords.

Richards army was divided into three Battles, commanded by Richard, Norfolk and Northumberland.

John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk was closely aligned to Richard and died during the battle. Since I am modelling the army for Bosworth Field I needed the main commanders elements too. So here is Norfolk's elements, mounted and on foot of course.

Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland was considered as not entirely reliable and when ordered to intervene in the battle failed to move prompting Richards final fatal charge to try and kill the traitor Henry Tudor and win the battle.

Because I didnt have any Northern Border Staves Irr LH O in my collection I had considered ordering some more cavalry figures but then found four elements of Irr Cv O with shields and spears which I decided I would rebase as the six missing Light Horse elements so that was a quick fix. They are all Essex Miniature castings of some sort or other.

I was short of some English mounted Men-At-Arms for this army so I also painted up six Lancashire Games Code M27 Knights to fill in this small gap. English retinue knights were considered poor troops when mounted but this is because they preferred to dismount and fight on foot where they had a well deserved reputation as excellent heavily armoured Swordsmen Men-At-Arms 

Final part of this blog is some older knight elements I painted up many years ago as Retinue Troops for Richard when he was Duke of Gloucester. They are Museum Miniatures MD24 Men At Arms [SHK] Lance.