And, we're off...

...with the first Wars of the Roses figures under the brush! As the 'Hybrid Roses' were spray undercoated ready for painting and not yet placed in an appropriate Lead Pimple RUB under my desk here in GHQ I decided to kick off the project with them! I fixed the ten figures of the Bill and Men At Arms base to their MDF hexes ready to start the next day. As with any new project I have to get both a feel for painting the figures and a good idea of the sequence by which the colours will best be applied. As you might expect, the first four figures took quite a while to process, but eventually I was satisfied with the look I had obtained for them and so the remaining Billmen were processed. That left me with three fully armoured figures and a musician to complete the unit. 

As these figures and their partner base of Bowmen would be unique in the collection I'd decided to depict them as a Retinue equally unique, that of Sir Robert Giffard of Chillington in the county of Staffordshire. Why unique you might well ask. So, according to the family website the family played no active military role in any of the battles of the war! They can therefore figure in our future games for either the Lancastrian or the Yorkist cause!

Of course there are no commercial banners or standards available for them, so I set to researching and producing my own based on the known family coats of arms around the period. As far as I could discover the family's heraldry featured a black panther - allegedly slain by a C12th ancestor - and three stirrups. Using images my web searches turned up I was able to produce a number of suitable banners to choose from and print them out at an appropriate size.

The base of Bows are underway now, though progress is slow on the first five archers for the rear rank as I work out the colours and sequence for painting. Hopefully the remaining six figures will prove quicker as was with the Bills.