Better photos of the set-up

I took some more photos today and these are the least worst of them. There are gaps in both lines because Steve took his figures home, but hopefully they begin to show the impression we hope to create.

550 Today

There's no way that we could actually play out the battle in the time available to us on this day, so, as a commemmoration of the bloodiest battle on English soil, I set up part of the terrain and put some figures on it. This shot shows a single iteration of the order of battle deployed at the start of the battle (There should be twice as many figures on the table at Salute). The ambush in the far distance has been sprung far too early, while Norfolk has arrived at the beginning rather than lazing in bed until mid morning and then wandering up to help clean up the mess. The Yorkists are on the left of the shot and the Lancastrians on the right. Anyway, this is what 8500 figures on 288 stands looks like.



When we designed the terrain, we took into account the fact that we might not get the full order of battle put together for our earliest games, and that we might want to play a smaller version of the game. Therefore, we constructed the terrain boards so that we could remove some of them and they would still fit together properly. This meant taking some liberties with the contours, but needs must where the devil drives and all that.

Let it snow ...

Steve and I had a productive day yesterday (Saturday) working on the terrain. We covered the frames for the final two boards in plaster-soaked t-shirts, added green scatter material to the three boards that had only been painted and added snow to the first four boards that we had worked on. It looks like we might actually have a game to put on at Salute after all!

Towton before the snow

Big day tomorrow. We are planning to get the majority of the terrain finished or at least into an acceptable state for Salute. Here's part of the terrain looking towards the Cock Beck and where Castle Woods will be.

Countdown to Salute

No pictures today. Sorry. We are also too busy to blog regularly at the moment, because we are desperately trying to finish off the last of the figures and terrain so that the game will be displayed in full form at Salute. Eek! Why am I blogging when I should be painting?

Anyway, we hope to meet you all there or at Triples in May and we hope you enjoy our game.

More Lancastrians join the fray

This month we have mostly been building terrain for the Towton refight. My target for painting was to add two more contingents to the Lancastrian army, which I have done after a fashion. I did not paint them all myself though. Peter at Baccus kindly lent me his Warmaster Ancients army on condition that I rebased it to the 60mm x 30mm standard bases that he favours. The army was on 40mm x 20mm bases before. So, rather than spending the whole month painting, I have spent a large part of it rebasing stuff. This has actually put me ahead of schedule as I now only need to paint ten more stands to have a complete single iteration of the Lancastrian order of battle, once Steve finishes the contingent he is painting for me. With this done we should be ready to rock at Salute. I shall then get the rest of the figures I was meant to paint myself done so that we can add some extra figures to the battle when we attend Derby in October.

The Yorkist army has also benefitted from Peter's kindness to the tune of one contingent, but I forgot to photograph them when I took these other shots. This leaves just twelve stands of troops remaining for the Yorkist army. Those are currently in the capable hands of my friend John, who has promised them soon.

In addition to these figures, I have included a teaser shot of the Towton terrain at the bottom of this post. As usual click the pics for a larger version.

Here we see the whole Lancastrian command that I am working on(empty bases show what remains to be painted):


This is what I have painted this month:


And here we have some of the figures that I rebased for Peter:


Proto-Towton terrain (everything you need to build Towton properly):