Garrison Miniatures Villagers and more Gripping Beast Arab Infantry

To add to my collection of 28mm figures for skirmish games, I ordered some villager figures from Garrison Miniatures via ebay. I chose this specific set because I felt the clothing of the figures were generic enough to allow them to do double duty: for our Ruckus Reconquista games, and our Fistful of Lead Peninsular War games.

To provide our Barons' Wars figures with more opponents, I also bought and painted a sprue of Gripping Beast's Arab Infantry. This brings my total "Saracen" force to 20 foot and 6 mounted figures, which will be sufficient for most skirmish scenarios.

I have also ordered a box of Perry Miniatures' new Spanish Guerillas, which will give us more options for our Fistful of Lead games.

Ruckus: St Elmo's Friar (Men-at-arms in motion)

For July's game we played a game of Here's the Ruckus, featuring our newly-painted figures (with FG completing six sergeant figures just the night before!).

The scenario is centred around a walled church model that I got on a trade many years ago, and has the attackers trying to kill a "turbulent priest" residing in the church, while the defenders must try to hold the attackers off until reinforcements arrive.

I made up some rules for battering down the gate, and used the basic Ruckus rules otherwise.

The defenders barricade to the gate to the church, while crossbowmen stand on crates to shoot at the attackers

Attackers come with scaling ladders and a battering ram. Brace!

Baron Hugh de Sappointment fends off the would-be priest-killers

The gate is finally breached!

The game was pretty straight-foward once the attackers chose their sites of attack and the defenders decided not to launch a sortie. Still, we had fun pushing the figures around and rolling dice.

I plan to do a scenario with mounted troops next game, to try the mounted rules. Stay tuned!

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.