First game of lion rampant

Today i managed to get my first game of lion rampant and it seems to be a solid set of rules.

I had a couple of bad turns at the beginning with a string of lousy activations (or rather lack of activations) but it evened out in the end.

 a unit of archers rushing past a small hamlet with some prickers in the background.

 The enemy center with a their leader commanding a unit of mounted men at arms

 A unit of handgunners hovering over a field.

 Flanking manoeuvre!

 My leader commanding som men at arms, these guys are tough!

The enemy leader is all that is left of the mounted men at arms after a number of wild charges and counter charges.

The game was fun, we had some needless trouble calculating courage (we made it more complicated than it was). I need to remember a few small rules regarding battered units but we didnt miss anything major.

I need to work more on the terrain:

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-Roads

-Linear obstacles (some hedges and fences)

-Some scatter items to liven up the table

Painted italians

I have been building and painting a few different groups of miniatures lately and finished the basing on all of them today.

 First out is a group of 8 archers for my red and yellow retinue, this gives me 24 archers with these colours.

 This is my first attempt at going for an italian feel. I have used a wonderful venetian  flag that i bought on ebay (look for Petes_flags)

 Some mounted men at arms seems to be mandatory. I am not sold on the way that the horse armour turned out.

 More horsemen, i am rather pleased with the horses.

I now have a few books to get me started.

Next on the painting table is a large group of crossbowmen, some light infantry and another 12 horses. I have also bought some priests and a few other miniatures to use in scenarios.

Italian retinue

 I have started to put together some italian infantry, they will be based individually so i can use them with different rules. After starting this project i realise that i need a lot more understanding about the  Italian condottiere and how they fought so more research is needed.

 A bunch of crossbowmen, i will make a few bases of pavisses too.

 Pikemen! I will need more of these.

 Light infantry

Handgunners

I think i will paint them in a black and white scheme with red and yellow as contrasting details.

Finished rebasing the last retinue

I have finished rebasing the last of batch of miniatures, the "blue retinue". I think that they would look better with some kind of badge or contrasting colour to break up all the blue.

I have also finished a few more forest bases and some buildings from 4ground.

Treemaking

This is a short step by step guide in how i make my trees using tree armatures from woodland scenics and some other bits and pieces

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 The armature needs to be twisted to make it a bit more realistic looking. this can be a bit painfull with the larger armatures since they are rather hard to twist near the bottom.

when the armature looks decent i mount it on a base a paint it to make it look less plastic.

 Contact glue and foilage clumps will be used next, i have tried woodland scenics hob-e-tac but it always ends with lots of work trying to fix everything after it keeps falling off.

 Put some glue on both sides of the treelimb and apply small clumps of foilage.

 Try to make the clumps meet near the trunk to make it look like a mass of leaves. When finished with the foilage i apply some PVA glue to the base and dip it in my container of basing sand. Some stones or twigs from the garden will make the base a bit more interesting.

 When the PVA glue is dry i always apply a mix of some dark craftpaint, PVA glue and water (about 1 part paint 2 parts glue and 3 parts water). This will fix all the sand in place and give a good base for the paint when dry.

For this project i am painting all bases i vallejo flat earth with a drybrush of GW Zandri dust. When dry i give it a wash of GW agrax earthshade, this gives a nice neutral colour that does not contrast too much with the grass. 

I finally apply some flock and put some different tufts on the base.

I hope this can be of some use to someone. I Find it best to make larger batches since the process can be a bit messy at times.

Some more miniatures rebased and some trees.

I have finished the next batch of bases and i have also made a couple of test trees, they turned out better than i had hoped!

 24 Bowmen of the white and green sort

 Men at arms

 2 newly made trees

A small forest!, the scruffy looking conifers are from an earlier attempt but the bases are new.

Sticks and stones

Its time to start on some terrain! I will start with some smaller projects and when my hobby room is finished i will be able to work on something larger.

I really like the building kits from 4ground (I have even started to enjoy the smell a little).

 Some houses and a bunch of forest bases will make a good start

Something new, something old and something found.

The rebasing of my miniatures continues and i hope to have the next batch ready this weekend. I have started planning on the next retinue and it might be some italians.