I'm looking forward to trying out the newly published Torpedoes and Tides coastal warfare rules soon, using my old 1/600th scale models that have been gathering dust for years. These are a mix of the Skytrex, now Heroics and Ros, and Tumbling Dice range, with some merchant shipping set aside for painting too. They need rebasing and a bit of tidying up, perhaps adding some masts from brass wire, but otherwise they're good to go. It's a bit of a diversion from my medieval focus but why not?
A bit of trial and error base painting this evening, using a range of paint shades and washes that I've used before on my 2mm ECW units. I'm not completely happy with the end result but it's not too bad and will do the trick, at least for this project. The next step is to block in the figures in matt black as a basecoat for painting at the weekend.
This new set of rules for coastal warfare, based on the Galleys and Galleons system, is now available on Wargame Vault. I've been following the play testing for this for a while on The Stronghold Rebuilt blog and it looks really good. I'm going to grab a copy, print it out and see if I can dust off my old 1/600th scale early war coastal forces for a few try out games over the holidays in a couple of weeks. You can read more about the rules and how they work here:
https://wargamingraft.wordpress.com/2025/08/06/designing-torpedoes-tides/
Fiddling about with a test base for the 2mm early HYW Anglo-Breton Army to see how I can achieve a realistic yet straightforward result. The base was given a coat of fine sand then spray undercoated with Halfords Ultra Matt Camo Brown. After this I wet brushed some very cheap and very old Earth Brown acrylic artist paint, as a basecoat, followed by a heavy dry brush in Vallejo USA Tan Earth.
The question now is do I use fine flock to cover the whole base, leaving a few earthy patches, or do I use another wet brush / dry brush approach for the grass? In the past I've just used flock patches for my Strength and Honour bases but they were for Parthia and similar arid locations, so probably not a good option, considering the HYW project will focus on an often soggy Brittany.
I'm going to try a three stage wet brush and dry brush in Vallejo green colours, which I've tried out on my 2mm ECW units before, with a final wash of Citadel Athonian Camo Shade for definition. If this looks okay, I will then add a few patches of light grass flock to represent bushes, brambles and other foliage, just to give the whole thing a more organic look.
If it looks rubbish...I'll have to try Plan B!
A slight change of plan for the next couple of weeks, as I put the Lion Rampant / Ecorcheurs army to one side and paint up this lot. Here we have an early Hundred Years War or War of Breton Succession army, using the Antonine Miniatures Strength and Honour 2mm range.
At the front there's a single unit of mounted men at arms, with two dismounted men at arms units to the immediate left. At the back left are two units of spearmen, Welsh or otherwise, while on the right are four units of longbowmen in wedge formation.
I'd add another unit of dismounted men at arms but I've run out of the bits I need for that, with an order placed today for some additional pieces to use for the French - Breton side. I've already put together a base of mounted knights for them but need more pieces to do the crossbows, spearmen and so on.
The rules for this are a bit sketchy to say the least, but I'll start off with Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames, albeit tweaked to add a bit more detail or even mashed together with his Ancient and Medieval rules? I might even write my own rules, who knows? The plan is to use my neglected collection of Hexon terrain as a quick fix, so that I can try out the rules for some solo wargaming as soon as possible.
I've completed most of the blocking in on the Perry Miniatures longbowmen, with just the leather bits, arrow sheafs and longbows to do. They look a bit odd in terms of colours but this is the basecoat and will be followed by one or two lighter shades, using my very old but still serviceable Foundry triad pots. I'm hoping things will speed up a bit after the blocking in is completed, but I'm a very slow painter, especially in 28mm having not painted anything this big for years!
In the One Hour Wargames rules, there are four unit types including Knights, Men at Arms, Archers and Levy. The Archers are actually crossbow equipped, gaining a +2 for missile fire but a -2 modifier for hand to hand combat. I could use this profile for English longbows, which would be a simple way to incorporate them in the system, but it doesn't seem quite right to treat crossbows and longbows as exactly the same weapon type?
Instead, I'm thinking of using the same profile but giving the longbow units an additional casualty modifier against mounted opponents, representing the use of defensive stakes - this would half the number of hits inflicted by cavalry against the longbow unit. The unit would have to be stationary to benefit from this bonus and so could not have moved in the previous turn to be eligible.
The other option is to extend the range of longbows to 18" but then remove the +2 modifier for missile fire, reflecting the lesser stopping power of longbows compared to crossbows and their greater effective range. I would also incorporate the casualty modifier for defensive stakes with this to create a bespoke option, the two things giving longbows a distinctive tactical profile.
Thoughts?
Incidentally, I'm also thinking of ways to represent bills and bows as unit types for the Wars of the Roses period, but that's another story....
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| Crecy, Poitiers... |
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| Longbowmen |
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| Knights / Mounted Men at Arms |
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| Welsh Spearmen or French Levy |
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| Genoese Crossbowmen with Pavises |
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| Men at Arms |
The usual Sunday morning diversions, this time playing around with some Antonine Miniatures 2mm blocks in an attempt to create units for the early Hundred Years War, mid to late Fourteenth Century or so. I've been thinking about this for quite a while and I think it would work well with the One Hour Wargames rules, with some tweaks to the unit profiles to incorporate longbows alongside the existing crossbow armed archers.
So, here we have a selection of units including the aforementioned longbows, crossbows, men at arms, mounted men at arms / knights and a spearman unit in case the Welsh are involved. The bases are 120mm x 40mm x 3mm, which just happened to be in the spare bases box, for some long forgotten purpose that now eludes me. I'd be interested to know what you think about this idea, as it's not really realistic in historical terms but fits the rules quite well, give or take the tweaks I've mentioned.
This rather impressive 28mm 3D printed trebuchet arrived in the post today from Parabellum Miniatures, a company that I haven't ordered from before but will be doing so again, based on the quality of their models. I've dry fitted it together to show what it looks like in comparison with a Perry Miniatures figure, and I think it looks very good indeed. You can also assemble it as a launching model, with parts supplied in he kit for the sling and trough, but I'm going to build mine loaded and ready to go. The range also includes bombards and siege equipment, which allows you to assemble a full on siege line, if you wanted to have that as a theme for your scenarios. Excellent!
