Wargames Atlantic The Barons' War

The Barons' War rules have been around for a while, and while I have always fancied the idea of painting up some "Bretonnian" style medieval knights, I have resisted getting the figures. But when the pre-order date for the new second edition starter set came closer, I saw the "barricades" sprues with all the scatter terrain, and decided that they would be a useful addition to my collection. I did some quick maths, and realised that a deluxe starter set plus an extra box of foot sergeants split between three or four people will give each enough figures for a Ruckus retinue.

I sent a message to the group, and Adrian, FG, and wahj all agreed to take up a quarter of the figures, and I sent the order off. Looking at the sprues, I saw that there were four helms with animal crests: a lion, a leopard, a bull, and a boar. The crest for the house which I use for my Warhammer (The) Empire army has a lion's head, and so I thought I would use that helm, and maybe style the retinue as the predecessor for the same house. I floated the idea, and each of the other guys adopted an animal for their retinues. I then googled and found the appropriate heraldry decals for everyone.

The figures arrived seven weeks ago, and yesterday I put a second coat of spray varnish on the figures. Here they are now:

The Captain of my retinue and his spear - Hugh de Sappointment

A yet unnamed Squire

The third spear of the retinue

The three leaders come in mounted and dismounted versions

I am quite excited about this project, and while I still have a Rohan-themed game of Ruckus to play, I have already planned two scenarios for the project.

Talavera (North)

Dom was back for the weekend and we finally got a chance to play the Talavera (North) scenario I have been planning for for a long. Despite the scenario representing only part of the battle, the number of units required were so big that we had to use double scale, hence the dice you see in the photos (to represent half-bases).

The battle saw three French divisions engaging the British (Dom's figures painted more than 20 years ago) left flank, hoping to turn their position, as well as the Spanish (Nabil's newly-painted figures) to the British left.

Historically, the Spanish took little part in the battle, but in our game I wanted to prevent them from influencing the main battle, and so resolved to rush their position en masse to take them out of the battle, before turning to aid wahj roll up the British flank.

However, the Spanish responded proactively, and prevented the French from enveloping them. Nevertheless, French numbers told and the Spanish were contained on their ridge. Then I made the classic error of being too fixed on the immediate objective and losing sight of the bigger battle. Instead of leaving a small force to contain the Spanish and diverting the rest of the division to my left, I tried to push the Spanish off the table. The Spanish held on, and I lost two precious turns before realising that that the French left flank was not making headway.

By the time the game clock ran down the Allies had won convincingly.