...In with the New - Lion Rampant Retinue: First Steps

As alluded to I'm selling my 28mm WW2 to make room for more new models, relating more to current interests.  I figure my space being limited, my painting time and gaming time similarly compromised, why clutter them up with items out of favour.

Pleasingly the Germans are already up to £200 and certainly going to sell.  So I had a rummage about in the loft for some models I knew would enjoy a second chance in life.

I'd been donated a couple of dozen medieval's some years back, but most were either broken, cannibalised or mutilated with enamel paint; and tiny to boot.  But amongst them were about ten of the classic Perry Bretonnian archer models (there is probably some unwritten rule about mandatory ownership of a handful of the Perry models by all Wargamers,  I imagine).  These will make an ideal bidower unit for my envisaged force.  I see these gentlemen as Welsh or Borders bowmen.

I added a couple of oddments from the spares pile and did a bit of trimming and reposing to the leader.

It would've been nice to Greenstuff some hoods instead of helmets, but in my last move I appear to have lost a metre of the stuff.  Back to eBay plumbing spares it is then.

Additionally some spare Gripping Beast Dark Ages infantry  made for some slingers.  Records for the period I'm looking at show that slingers were still used for skirmishing, with contingents being raised from Nottingham Forest (not the football team mind, and presumably not Robin Hood's merry men either).

I undercoated these chaps before deciding to add the buckler shields and a couple of knives.  The leader has an heirloom sword added, which judging by the pommel could be many hundreds of years old...

I don't expect to get to painting these guys just yet, and it is more likely the rest of the their retinue will arrive in the post first and supplant them in terms of immediacy and coolness.  Still it is progress on my first 'New' project in two years.


In other news, I got to see American Sniper over the weekend (at the GF's behest no less, either she likes war movies or Bradley Cooper/men in uniform, either way a woman of taste).  I can certainly see why it has been hugely popular in the States, it's certainly patriotic stuff.  The battle sequences leave the Iraqi's as largely unsympathetic characters, and mostly quite one-dimensional.  The set pieces are impressive, but it is the quietness within it that is most affecting, the difficult times at home where combat stress is clear, the tension of facing the realities of who and where the enemy can be.

Overall a good film, but not a great one to my mind.  Not one that would encourage me to start wargaming the 21st century (see very old posts for that), but worth seeing for insight on he realities of the conflict and its' sad outcome(s).