No wonder the WOTR could be confusing. I was looking at how to represent the nobles needed. In 15mm it wouldn't break the bank to paint all of them (unless of course you are on about individual coat of arms). But they also come with their personal retinue and I was looking for some economy of force. So......
meandering through the web leads me to this pictorial representation.
Not brilliant, but does give you an idea. This is the breakdown, as of today of all the nobles in the ACOP scenarios that I am looking at using. It isn't complete by any means but what it does mean is that I can block up several large numbers of Retinue Archers in just a couple of schemes and use them for a variety of nobles.
The other piece I have noticed with ACOP is that there aren't any pure MAA stands in the Riding Retinues (RR). The RR MAA are all Red which indicates a minor captain. What that means is that they can be represented by my normal command stands plus the dedicated ones I have made up adding more colour to the companies and battles. It does mean that the only figures that I really need to start with in livery are the Retinue Archers until the Well Wishers (WW) get recruited. Again they will wear the livery of their magnate which again keeps the actual numbers of colour variations down.
This is my starting theory as I look at getting some forces down on the table.
Simple title and an idea of what the focus is going to be over the next couple of weeks or so. Order from Vexillia of some more of the excellent Freezywater flags and a reprint of the WOTR flags which they provide as a download together with whatever was left over from my initial attempts.
The Downloads from Vexillia have been rescaled and now match the freezywater ones which is a bonus and means that I have loads to choose from. But, that will only give me the Heraldic flags and I still need to look at Banners and Livery flags. Livery I don't think is going to be too much of a problem with ACOS as Captains can take from the heraldic set. I might add one or two for where I have to use a noble as a proxy. I now have the second pack of Lancastrian standards and while I prefer York it does mean at least that my hand is somewhat forced in terms of which nobles I will be representing on the table for that house.
I have found a new set of rules for the War Of The Roses which have tempted me into some more purchases and painting.
A Coat of Steel (ACOS), are a rule set produced by The Perfect Captain. They have a good following and are written exclusively for the WOTR rather than a generic rule set with special rules. They caught my eye and from a couple of read throughs and play tests I have done, I think they are a cracking set.
As with any thing new however there is pain associated with it and this rule set is no different. It wants more figures......but then again so did Hail Caesar (HC). Spearmen, Kerns, Galloglaich, Scottish Pike, European Mercenaries are all needed for Bloody Barons (BB) anyway and I had a rough plan on how to add them in the coming year.
This is what my two Armies consisted of at the beginning of January 2015. A lot of bases WIP scattered across units as I started to bulk out already painted units for HC.
A lot of holes as well. Which luckily don't need filling just yet as ACOS uses Men Arms to include both fully armoured MAA and also the personal retinue.
What I am really short of is Archers, mostly of the levy variety. For my standard armies that would be 3 figure bases. ACOS has a recommendation that 2 figure bases are used for levy. So possibly not too much pain and suffering if I go that way. I have 6 packs of Archers on the way which will give me about 24 bases of Levy Archers.
The other big thing that I don't have enough of is Nobles and Captains. These feature quite heavily in ACOS, as they did in the period. Both BB and HC only use 3 Generals per side where as ACOS generated 8 on one side alone in one game. They also have a lot more captains of contingents where as both BB and HC normally use one per "unit". In ACOS there is a lot more and I needed 25 between both factions. This is the Lancastrian host generated from the campaign game which accompanies ACOS which is called A Crown of Paper. I had to proxy in units to get a feel for what ACOS looked like on the table and also get the creative thoughts going for new bases. What I do like is that your ward structure is very variable between games and it depends on what contingents turn up that dicate how you fight.
This Ward for example only had enough contingents to form one large company but containing two nobles and four captains (there are specific rules for who can command what which is very refreshing as you cant always do what you want :) ).
The Mainward had enough for two companies with 2 nobles and three captains in one company and a noble and two captains in the smaller one
The final ward had three nobles assigned to it and again one large and one smaller company with four and two captains assigned respectively..
So.....a rummage through the spares box netted enough figures for 5 additional bases and an order into the nice people at Peter Pig for command packs which hopefully will arrive by the end of the week.
