WOTR ... WTH Am I doing?

For those of you who either don't do acronyms or have somehow missed it, WOTR stands for Wars of the Roses and WTH is my relatively cleaned up substitute for 'What the Hell'. I've been hit with a long dormant bug and have gone spinning off in an unhelpful tangent - unhelpful that is to my many other projects.

I've been enthusiastically following the You-tuber 7th Son (aka Martin Brook) and his rolling campaigns set in the WOTR and he and his mates have inspired me to re-imagine my own long-unemployed army.

The problem with big-battalion gamers like myself, we often are so mentally entrenched in big-unit theory that we find it almost impossible to conceive of modest to small armies and games. 7th Son has adequately demonstrated that a unit of 16 figures actually looks better than respectable for this type of warfare. I've also cottoned onto the fact that I can still use Hail Caesar for what some people might chose to call large skirmish games. So, I've let the madness take over ... and I'm loving it.

 

REPURPOSING

The first thing to do (after making a quick and dirty purchase of three boxes of Perry Miniatures plastic WOTR figures) was to de-base (un-base?) most of my current figures. I have levy billmen (30), levy archers (30), dismounted men-at-arms (30) and heavy cavalry with axes and maces (20) all of which are Old Glory metals. I also have a fistful of hand-gunners and a small piece of ordinance whose manufacturer eludes me.

With the addition of a mere eight more men-at-arms, three leaders and a banner-men, I can turn the men-at-arms into three units in short order. Hooray!

I will be combining some of the levy billmen with the levy archers to create three bill & bow units (10 archers, 6 billmen and command each).

 

My heavy cavalry I have split into two units of nine - one Lancastrian and one Yorkist. Did I mention I've covering both sides? In fact, I only ever mounted those cavalry figures on painting stands and undercoated them before storing them for later - twenty years ago! This is a personal record for the longest paint job ever. So, I'm painting them now.

IDENTITY

When I originally collected in this period, I decided to aim for units which might have been at the battle of Mortimer's Cross  (1461). I've decided to stick with it even if I never go on to re-fight that battle. Whilst we do not know a good deal about the battle from reliable historical records, we do know something of the origins of the forces involved and more again about the leading personalities who were present and commanding.

BASING

7th Son uses a basing convention of 60mm front by 45mm deep for formed foot units so I will also. I will be basing 'brigade' commanders on vignettes based on squares of increasing size depending on command level/rank.

NEW UNITS

I bought the Perry's box sets for Bill & Bow, Men-at-Arms and Mercenaries. Apart from extracting some crossbow and additional hand-gunners, I should be able to create a further three Retinue Bill & Bow. If I get on with it, by Christmas I should heave created 6 x Bill & Bow, 3 x Men-at-Arms, 1 Bill block, 2 skirmisher archer units, 2 hand-gunner units, 1 crossbow unit and two heavy cavalry units with a a single artillery piece - 16 units in all.

INSPIRATION

I find WOTR to be dramatic and disturbing, bloody-minded and at times horrific all at once. I have been re-listening to the audio book of Dan Jones Wars of the Roses (terrific) and referring back to my copy of Philip A Haig's The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses (1995) ad of course, the Osprey Men-at-Arms (145) The Wars of the Roses by Terence Wise and Gerry Embleton. For much of my heraldic research I am relying on Bernard Burke's The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales c/- Google Books. As always, it's a challenge.

TERRAIN IMPETUS

At present, I only have Cigar Box mats for western Europe and all my new terrain boards are for southern Europe and warmer climes. This will advance my need for some 'green-field' boards.

I do have some buildings I made for WOTR years back.

Better get on with it then.