Longbow Master Richard Head on looking at selecting some Yew staves for the English Longbow.

Perry Hundred Years War Scenic Pictures SESWC 2011

Another blast from the past as revealed to me while I was messing about trying to delete as many pdf's and photo's from my Gmail account in order to avoid paying for storage!

This time some really nice pictures taken by my good friend, and at the time fellow SESWC club compatriot David Imrie way back in 2011, which was, I think, the same year the Perry's released their range(?).

And wonderful  it is to behold the pictures again; I was 100% convinced these pictures had died on an old laptop. 

All images are of course, "clickable"

Todd's Workshop/Tobias Capwell- Arrows vs Armour 2 - THE HELMET (fundraiser)

A very worthy cause for anyone interested in Late Medieval warfare, how just effective armours were against the English warbow and at a decent "average" draw weight; and perhaps more importantly, a draw weight which could be repeated .

Please follow the link for all the details on how you can support the project. At the time of typing it is fully funded but the more cash they have access to the more they can investigate this regularly debated topic.

LINK TO THE KICKSTARTED HERE!

More Hundred Years War Perry Goodness (Rescued from WaybackMachine)

I've been trawling through my old website again on the hunt for pictures that could be potentially be rescued from WaybackMachine. It is quite a frustrating process as more often then not the images most desirable for rescue will not link and I find myself just left with the thumbnails which are far too small to republish.

What we have here are photo's which were all part of my Agincourt project started immediately after Perry Miniatures began to produce their amazing Agincourt to Orleans range. All the bases were put together for a Warhammer Ancient Battles English army for the Hundred Years War supplement was being written by Alex Buchel of Saga fame. unfortunately GW close the book on WAB just prior to the publication of Alex's HYW supplement but we did get to enjoy a weekend with a taster of what we had missed at Games Workshop in Lenton on one of the WAB campaign weekends. For me, the miniatures for this range from the Dynamic Duo were just so dynamic, so full of action they screamed vignette style basing. To give you some idea of when the collection was started; the range, in metal, was certainly beginning to be released pre-2011 as I had already out much of the army together before moving back to England from Scotland in 2011. 

As I was saying, I made a real effort to set up each of the bases, which in WAB are supposed to be single miniatures based on a 20mm for Close Order or 25mm for Skirmishers/Light Infantry. This basing convention was excessively restrictive and not at all conducive to the vignette style basing I was aiming to produce. I wanted the miniatures to look as though they were in a fight; the high quality dynamic sculpts simply demanded it!

All the imaged are "clickable" though due to the manner in which the WaybackMachine links work, some are larger then others!

Here we have Henry V and his Heraldic Banner Bearer, Sir John Codrington along with the John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. They are based on a 120mm wide unit of three stands of 40mm x 40mm, two stands of 20mm x 40mm and two ordinary WAB bases of 20 x 20mm for ease of casualty removal. The miniatures were not bases in the usual WAB manner which would have been 6 in the first rank, six in the second and finally six in the rear rank, all on 20mm ox 20mm bases(!), which was way too regimented for my taste. The Hundred Years War is a period I dearly love, it brought me into wargaming and I wanted to do the units justice.

A couple of close ups of the above unit.

Here we have Sir Thomas Erpingham with his heraldic banner bearer still holding his famous baton as the archers gear up to the attack. The Stakes vignette at the front made use of the Perry Miniatures, AO5 Archers preparing for battle,hammering in and sharpening stakes pack. It was important to me to find a way to add some effusive energy as well as a feeling of real urgency to the unit and the PM AO5 pack was just the ticket. 

The Second longbow unit was set up as to have the archers in action as the French Men at Arms neared. I wanted the Archers to have that same feeling of urgency as in the former unit. In retrospect I think I over did this as lining up the Archers with some of the miniatures from the Perry Miniatures, AO6 Dismounted men at arms advancing into an arrow storm, produced a unit that was a little too sparse. 

I encountered the same problem with the final Archer unit (or maybe as Alex's HYW WAB event in Notts Approached I found myself running pout of painting time?) which is far too sparse for my taste nowadays. The thing to bear in mind is these were my first forays into vignette style basing and it was very much a learning process for me.

It would be remiss of me not to add my thanks to David Imrie for taking the scenic pictures above at SESWC, my opponent for that night for being patient while we set up the shots and finally to Barry Hilton of League of Augsburg fame for his brilliant Flodden bases, which are no longer in the Gallery on the LOA site but if you pop over to HERE, you will get an idea of how Barry's basing was to serve as inspiration to me.

More pictures dragged kicking and screaming from WaybackMachine:

Another shot of the first base of Longbowmen:

Of the "Stakes" vignette:

Close up of the Sir Thomas Erpingham Longbowmen Unit:

Archers in action unit:

Archers getting "Medieval on their asses" unit- right side, front:

As above but the left side, front of the base:

And again at eye level:

Close up:

Charles, Duke of Orléans and Jean II le Maingre, Marshal Boucicaut reaching the stakes and facing fierce resistance from the Archers. 

Archer nocking and fallen comrade:

And a few pics, again rescued from WaybackMachine of my army in the thick of it at Alex's Hundred Years War Campaign weekend in Notts many a moon back:

A Henry! A Henry! A Saint George!

Tod's Workshop with Tobias Capwell; Arrows vs Armour - Medieval Myth Busting

This is a must see for anyone interested in the series of dynastic struggles we now call the Hundred Years War. It clearly shows that the English archers was on the battlefield not as the "machine gun of the Middle Ages" but as a weapon designed to disrupt a charge causing maximum confusion and sapping the impetus out of said charge.

Longbow:

160lbs (73KG) mountain yew English longbow based on those found on the Mary Rose , which sank in 1545. The bow was loosing 80g arrows at 55ma, or 180feet per seconds, giving a 123Joules at 25 meters.

Distance:    10 metres/25 metres

                   11yards/27yards

Speed:        55 meters per second/52 meters per second

                   181 feet per second/170 feet per second

Energy:       123 Joules/109 Joules

                    91 foot-pound force/80 foot-pound force

Arrows:

The fist arrow type we used was MR80A764/158. The diameter at the shoulder was 12.7mm (1/2") tapering to a nock of 8.5mm. A total length of 30.5"

The second arrow type was MR2A1892/9. The diameter at the shoulder was 12.9 mm (1/2") and the nock was 7.5mm. A total length of 30.5"

The shafts were black Poplar (Populus Nigra) and Ask (Fraxinus Excelsior).

Fletchings were swan bound with silk into beasewax, kidney fat and copper verdigris compound

Heads were wrought iron, copied from MoL Type 9 7568

Arrows weighed 80g/2.8 ounces

Breastplate:

Based on Churburg 14 piece. The reproduction is made from Carbom Steel and is air cooled and is of variable thickness. The front and centre is 2.5mm/3/32" thick and it tapers down to 1.5mm1/16" at teh sides and edges. 

Hundred Years War English Longbowmen and Late Medieval Plans

These pictures were taken a few years ago but so far have yet to see the light of day. Since then the same miniatures have been partially re-based for Swordpoint and are awaiting the Swordpoint HYW supplement which I have on good authority will have some extra rules to render the HYW armies more playable withy the right period feel. That is all I can say on the subject without breaking the confidence of the person who passed on the news to me.

As I have so many Mainly Perry Miniatures (1415-1430)  already painted, based for Hail Caesar on 50mm x 50mm bases (Swordpoint demands 40mm x 40mm) I am in the process of slowly rebasing the whole army and will be adding to the numbers as I plod along. I will of course post pictures of each unit as I go. There is not much point in doing so at present as the miniatures have just been glued to the bases and are in need of some filler/spackle and sand etc. Not to mention paint and grass tufts. I'm sure we have all been there :>)

The pictures should give you some idea of the sort of basing, albeit three miniatures per base for Swordpoint with the archers instead of more seen below.

As usual, all the images are clickable with the exception of the last five which are small files.

The last four images were taken by David Imrie at the SESWC club in the same year that the Perry's produced their first HYWE miniatures in metal. so quite some time ago. That might explain why I have such small files- I probably published them on what was at the time a full website leaving the size of the files fixed.

Still, I think they are worth adding as they are an early illustration of my penchant for vignette style basing.

So, what of the future for my Late Medieval collection and in what direction? For some time now I have been very taken with the superb sculpts from both Clamore Castings and Antediluvian Miniatures. All my HYW armies are of the Late HYW variety and I have long wanted to go back in time and put together something from the early stages of the war. After what must be many years of procrastination I have finally decided to step back in time to before the opening of hostilities of the HYW and to the time that the Warbow was to first prove it's immense potential on the battlefield; to the time of The Battle of Dupplin Moor and the year 1332. Although there is a short time gap between 1332 and the opening of hostilities in the HYW at the Battle of Sluys 1340 by mixing and matching miniatures from Claymore Castings and Antediluvian Miniatures I should be able to build very accurate armies for both sides. 

I will be using the Claymore Rules when they are published after having had a few chats on the net with one or two people involved in the playtesting; they really sound as though they are going to do the trick! No mean feat as I have spent about 30 years looking for a good set of rules for the Hundred Years War.