Preparing for Towton

After all the effort in January to get my Normans ready February was a bit slow but it's time to get back into gear as I have two projects to finish by mid-April. Trev is organising a Lasalle battles day on the 23rd April so I need to complete my French army by then and hopefully get some practice games in. The army needs the artillery finished off and a brigade of Dragoons but more about that in another post.

Before that JP and I are putting on a demonstration game of the battle of Towton at a festival on 17th April. I need to complete a Lancastrian army of 400pts in 15mm and the rest of this post will outline that army.

The army is divided into three battles, the Duke of Somerset's, the Duke of Exeter's, and the Earl of Northumberland's. Each battle consists of two units of archers with two large units, one of men-at-arms supported by billmen, and one solely of billmen. In addition to this there is a large unit of Scottish pikemen and unit of light cavalry.

All told, 21 stands holding 190 figures. The figures are all Peter Pig and they are excellent figures. I have the last of them on order and hope to pick them up this weekend.

I managed to make a start on the Duke of Somerset's battle completing the archers, men-at-arms and one stand of billmen. I always find it initially difficult when I move between painting scales. Going from 28mm to 15mm I have to stop myself doing unnecessary detail and additional shades.

While historically each battle was made up of the retinues of a number of nobles, for the demonstration I want the three different battles to be clearly distinguishable so all retinue soldiers will have the livery of the commander, for the Duke of Somerset its white and blue.

Anyway another busy month of painting ahead during which we need to find time to write up the scenario and short history as a handout for the demo.