Late Medievals in 6mm

Part way through last year, a regular gaming mate of mine got himself a Medieval itch. Now, this was not the sort of itch that you can get creams for these days from any high street apothecary, but something a bit more.... 6mm and made of lead.

He burst ahead and ordered his weight in figures from Baccus. With an impending sense of uncertainty - and a pinch of doom, I followed him into a folly of bill and bow. Totally out of my comfort zone, I also bought and read my first book on the Wars of the Roses (Dan Jones' The Hollow Crown), which at least gave me a very readable context in which to wage wars across the table top.

After a slow and much stalled start, I finally finished my first ever late Medieval army/ies early this month. We started with the intention of playing Bloody Barons from Peter Pig (hence the use of 30x30mm bases). The pre-battle skulduggery in that game is fantastic and very flavourful but in the end, we decided that L'Art de la Guerre gave us a more enjoyable game for the battle itself. Some of the treachery the abounds in BB's pre-game phase can be easily abstracted with the 'unreliable' commander trait in ADG, and we might end up trying to adapt the other aspects once we are more familiar with what we're doing. 

We played a great game over the weekend where all sub-commanders were unreliable. My rear ward commander decided to be hesitant about the battle (result of rolling a natural 1 in the first turn), but was soon reminded that his beloved nephew was locked away somewhere as a hostage by the C-in-C and he quickly decided that joining battle was the best course of action. Brett's rear ward lord did exactly the same thing, but sat tight for four or five turns before committing himself, effectively losing Brett the game. 

ADG uses significantly less bases than BB, so with my current forces, I can run them as either War of the Roses Yorkists, or Anglo-Irish.

Here are my three lords, all sufficiently generic - from left to right, milord Black-on-Yellow, milord Blue-on-Red (the lord commander), and milord Yellow-on-Blue.

My little camp. The tent is a little resin job from Leven Miniatures. The figures are from a range of Baccus packs including a Crusader personalities (to get the bishop with cross and kneeling knight).

A bombard (heavy artillery) from Irregular Miniatures with Baccus crew.

A scratch built organ gun (light artillery) made from a couple of spare chariot wheels, some 15mm copper spears and a cut up old credit card.

Hand gunners (light infantry) in red and green livery.

Gallowglaich (heavy swordsmen). I used Baccus early Medieval Saxon Huscarls for these. On each strip of four wee chaps, two of them have kite shields on their backs so were practically unusable for this project, but the other two worked wonderfully for axe-wielding Islesmen.
 

Irish kern - another substitution. These figures are actually Baccus Moors/Numidians. However, they are lightly clad javelinmen with small round shields, so they work fine for kern.

Less-than-heavy knights, used as Anglo-Irish nobles with their retainers, or WotR currours. The front rank of each base are Baccus knights, the rear rank are Baccus light horse. Liveries are red and white, red and yellow and green and white.

English foot knights and retinue bowmen. Liveries are blue and red, and white and black.

Anglo-Irish (or less well equipped English) retinue bill and bow, liveried in yellow and green.

 Militia bow, themed (rather than liveried) in blue.

Here is the full 200 point army for the Anglo-Irish. From the rear, mounted nobles and camp, militia bow, English retinue, Anglo-Irish retinue, gallowglaich, bombard and kern.

And here they are again presented as Yorkists - no galloglaich or kern, less cavalry, but another retinue of foot knights and bow, some hand gunners and the light artillery.