28mm The Baron's War (Footsore Miniatures) - Part IV

Hello!

It's been a couple of months since I last wrote a blog post but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy enjoying painting more miniatures from Footsore's The Baron's War range. Indeed I've been learning to paint in batches! Batch painting is a valuable skill all wargames miniature painters must learn because, as much as I enjoy painting for painting's sake (and for the meditative benefits it provides), the best part of owning your own teeny 13th-century army is being able to see them in all their glory on the battlefield!

It's taken a while for me to find my own way of going about batch painting, but now that I've cracked it I see it's actually quite a simple process. Rather than painting a miniature head-to-toe, base-to-drybrush one at a time as before, I now work in groups of four miniatures and do all the base painting in one go, painting like colours across the whole batch to save me constantly switching between paints. I try and keep this initial pass relatively neat but I don't worry if things go a bit outside the lines, the main objective is to just get the colour where it needs to be and to hit those tricky angles. Then I switch to a fine brush and go over the smudges/mistakes, again working in like colours, neatening up the lines and borders between colours. Once this is done I then apply the shade washes, which is quite a quick and easy step, and then let them dry (a good time to start batch painting the next lot of figures). The final step is the edge highlighting and dry brushing, and again it's a huge timesaver here to work in like colours. Then it's just a matter of basing. By working in this way I am now able to get a group of four miniatures tabletop-ready in approx. 2-3 days (fitting a couple hours painting around work and study time) rather than 1-2 weeks of slow head-to-toe singular painting where I'm much more likely to get caught up on little details and lose sight of the bigger picture. 

As a result, this is something of a bumper post as I have three packs of four miniatures to share with you! All the miniatures are from the first wave of The Baron's War range, by Andy Hobday and Paul Hicks of Warhost, and are sold by Footsore Miniatures. The three packs seen here are Spearmen - Pack 2, Spearmen - Pack 3, and Bowmen - Pack 1.

Spearmen - Pack 2

Just a bunch of trouble-makers really, aren't they?

This chap is one of the more heavily armoured of his group, surely a veteran of several clashes. His tunic has several small rips and tears, which add so much character.

The spearmen packs tend to feature two types of poses, raised and lowered. The raised miniatures are great for filling out the back of your lines and presenting a fierce, prickly defence against the enemy!

The great thing about Paul Hicks' sculpts are the little details added to each figure that make them feel more like a real person than just a toy soldier, such as belt ends, pouches, and eating knives.

This is my favourite figure of the pack, without a doubt. I love the patched tunic and sleeping roll slung over his shoulder. This guy is no stranger to trudging through fields and thickets on the long march to battle!

Spearmen - Pack 3

Not exactly born fighters, more like born farmers! Still, they're a brave bunch...

This miniature has loads of expression in his little face and pose, just a brilliant sculpt!

For this group of spearmen I wanted a decidedly non-professional look, as they almost entirely lack armour, so I chose to make them "green" billmen, fresh out of the fields, some armed with their tools!

The bills and voulges are a separate pack of twelve pieces, also available from Footsore. There's three types and you get four of each. I really like them, although they are a bit tricky to clean up off the sprue due to being made of a soft metal. 

I've yet to master the art of miniature photography so apologies that the polearms are sometimes cut out of the image - I've made the assumption that the figure themselves is much more interesting to the viewer!

Bowmen - Pack 1

Possibly a poacher or two among this motley crew...

The most well-equipped of the bowmen, I like to think of this chap being part of the local castle garrison. Perhaps he's even the captain of the archers there.

If there wasn't already a designated Robin Hood figure in The Baron's War range (from wave two), this guy would be my pick for the legendary archer. As it is, he's a great looking figure and the pose is very dynamic.

I've chosen not to add custom arrows and bowstrings to my archer miniatures as, for me, its too much faff for very little payoff - on the tabletop, they look perfect without them.

I love the warm, earthy forest tones on this figure. He could well be a particularly talented poacher who has been called up in return for a more lenient sentence. 

I hope you've enjoyed looking at my work and reading this post, it's been great fun and very satisfying to fill out my The Baron's War retinue a bit quicker whilst still making each miniature look as good as my skills allow. Coming up, I have more bowmen and also some knights, including the Greatest Knight of all England, William Marshal 1st Earl of Pembroke.

- The Kenilworth Knight

P.S. Have a bonus pic of the billmen with some terrain (building from Sarissa Precision)!

28mm The Baron's War (Footsore Miniatures) - Part III

Hello, I'm back again with a couple of newly finished miniatures from Footsore's The Baron's War 28mm range: Henry de Beaumont, 5th earl of Warwick, and Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester and Chief Justiciar of England from 1213 to c.1215. De Beaumont was a commander in King John's royal army (and my nearest local lord), and des Roches was one of the most important and influential men in both John and his son Henry III's governments. Both men fought for the infant Henry III's cause at the Second Battle of Lincoln in 1217.

I've really enjoyed painting these two over the past week. The sculpts are just wonderful, there's so much crisp detail and being of baronial/episcopal class they are a great canvas for some bright bold colours. The prominent fabric elements on both figures provided me with a great opportunity to work on my shading and highlighting, and I'm pleased with the results. I also got to try out the shield decals from Citadel Six for the first time and I'm very impressed with them, as someone with relatively poor coordination I didn't find them too fiddly as long as I took my time and had all my tools near to hand before starting the process. I did cock up the bishop of Winchester's shield and had to remove it, but thankfully Suzanne at Citadel Six very kindly sent me some replacements and I got it on with no futher trouble second time round.

Henry de Beaumont, 5th earl of Warwick

I really enjoyed bringing out the highlights on the cloak with a good bit of drybrushing

Seen here with his bannerman - a fine knightly pair!

I continued my use of The Army Painter's basing guide and I'm very happy with the results

Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester and Chief Justiciar of England (1213-c.1215). Getting this particular decal on took a couple of attempts but I think the finished shield looks great.

One of my main goals with this miniature was making the surcoat look rich and sumptuous. The bishop wields a mace, symbolic of the Church's rules against bishops spilling blood, but carries a dagger and a sword on his belt anyway - needs must!

I hope you enjoyed these miniatures, I had a great time painting them and I feel like with each figure I'm really honing my techniques. Which is a good thing, because there's plenty more to come!

- The Kenilworth Knight

28mm The Baron's War (Footsore) - Part II

Today I finished another miniature from Footsore Miniatures The Baron's War range, a bannerman of Henry de Beaumont, 5th Earl of Warwick. Beaumont was a commander of the Royal Army and saw action at the siege of Lincoln in 1217, fighting for Henry III. Being from Warwickshire I'm pleased to have some local representation in my Loyalist army. 

It was a pleasure to paint this miniature. The detail from sculptor Paul Hicks is just superb and it was great to have a go at painting some brighter and bolder colours for this wealthy warrior, he really stands out on the battlefield amongst his more drab-looking lowborn companions.

As I wasn't entirely pleased with my initial attempt at using static grass for basing the first pack of Baron's War spearmen, I chose to stick to a proven formula this time and followed the free PDF basing guide from The Army Painter. I'm much happier with the results and I will be using this for all my Baron's War miniatures going forward. I will probably go back and alter the first batch of spearmen as well. 

This bannerman is one half of the first Foot Knight Command pack, I hope to finish the other figure (Beaumont himself) this week. Thanks for looking!

- The Kenilworth Knight

28mm The Barons' War (Footsore) - Part I

Being a graduate of medieval history, with much of my studies being on and around Magna Carta and the subsequent siege of Rochester Castle in 1215, I was thrilled when I found out that there was a range of 28mm miniatures themed around the First Barons' War of 1215-17 available from Footsore Miniatures. Initially this range began as a Kickstarter project from Andy Hobday, who has worked on a number of games and clearly has a passion for this particular period of English history. Andy has collaborated with sculptor Paul Hicks to produce a line of superb miniatures that really encapsulate all the participants in the conflict, from the lowly militiaman to nobles such as William Marshal and Hughbert de Burgh, and even going so far as to include the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton. This first Kickstarter was a smash-hit success, and has since led to a successful follow-up Kickstarter, the publication of an original Barons' War ruleset, and the development of another follow-up range due to hit Kickstarter some time in March 2021. Bravo, Andy and Paul!

I myself arrived somewhat late to the party as my interest in the hobby developed only recently over the course of the pandemic. No bother, however, as thanks to the savings made from being stuck in the house for much of 2020 I have swiftly caught up, with a heavy box of lead containing the full first wave of figures under my desk and an itchy wallet ready for when the second wave is available for general retail later this month. It should be noted that the prices for these figures are quite reasonable, with the majority of the infantry packs netting you four miniatures with bases and weapons for £8.00, and the cavalry packs coming in at £10.00 for two knights with their barded mounts, plus bases and lances. 

For my first excursion into the Barons' War I decided to start simple and painted up the first pack of spearmen. These are very nicely sculpted, with lots of added details such as pouches and knives hanging from the belts and a good mix of cloth and maille armour. The faces are full of expression and the poses are also quite dynamic - rather than a simple static spear wall you get a real sense of action from these figures, with the weapons being held and thrust at different heights and a mix of advancing and defending movement in the legs. The bases are standard 25mm rounds cut from MDF, and the miniatures have a thin base moulded onto the feet like those old green army men. I much prefer this to the moulded tab and slotta bases of my Robin Hood range from Conquest Games, as there's no need to fill in any gaps or balance the figures whilst the superglue sets. Speaking of Conquest, I did find that the Barons' War miniatures are noticeably slighter in their proportions than the Robin Hood troops, and that they had a bit more flash and mould lines to sort out prior to priming, whereas Conquest figures can be more or less primed straight out of the blister pack.

The Barons' War Spearmen - Pack 1

There is a need to drill the hands on these figures, which was a first for me. I started out using a pin-vice with a 1mm bit but after half an hour I had struggled to make much progress (probably due to the pin-vice being a cheap one from Amazon rather than anything more substantial) so resorted to a combination of making a small lead hole with the pin-vice and then using my dremel for the rest. This was a bit scary given how near my fingers were to the drill bit but it worked a lot better, giving me a much cleaner cut through the material. And I didn't stab myself once, which I suppose is a bonus. 

The spears themselves were moulded white-metal ones mounted on a sprue. These did come quite twisted and bent but I was able to straighten out most of the kinks. However I did suffer one casualty where one of the spears got knocked on what must have been a weak point and snapped in two. I replaced it with one of Footsore's 100mm metal wire spears which are much stronger - indeed, it took a good squeeze on the snips to trim the length! These don't have moulded heads so do look quite different from the originals but I think it's a fair compromise. I plan to use these for the rest of the spearmen packs and will most likely go back and replace the three remaining white-metal spears from this set at some point in the future when they've taken a few knocks. 

In terms of painting, because these are lower-ranking troops I didn't want to give them any specific heraldic colours so I opted to replicate the example scheme used on Footsore's website. This way they can be used as part of any lord's retinue and the earthy tones will hopefully make their more colourful superiors 'pop' more on the table. For the bases I used Army Painter brown battleground material and Javis summer static grass, with a large autumn tuft. It was my first time using static grass and I'm not entirely sure I used it right - perhaps I applied too much, or need to mix shades? I'll definitely have to experiment a bit before I base my next batch of figures. Either way I can always go back and give these another look later on.

Spearman A - one of the better equipped soldiers, he is kitted out with a maille shirt and a pot helm

Spearman B - this guy is clearly a veteran having acquired a maille shirt, coif, and a kettle helm, his belongings slung over his shoulder in a leather satchel

Spearman C - rather more 'squishy' than his companions, this chaps only protection is an old bowl helm

Spearman D - I like to think that this guy is a mercenary, lightly armoured but with a nasty-looking back-up plan tucked away in his belt

All in all, I was very impressed by these miniatures from Hobday and Hicks, and I can't wait to get stuck in with the knights and bannermen waiting in their box under the desk. This range offers an exciting opportunity to collect, paint, and wargame figures from a really dramatic point in English history: the climax of King John's wicked reign. I look forward to getting my hands on the second wave and you can bet I'll be in line to back the third Kickstarter project!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this post. Still to come, a set of Ecclesiastics from Conquest Games and the first Foot Knight Command pack from The Barons' War! 

- The Kenilworth Knight