Lion Rampant and the Black Vegetable

I'm not going to have as much time for wargaming next year for various work related reasons, so have been putting my mind to the problem of greatly reduced painting time and far fewer trips to the local club. I've been struggling of late to do both and the prospect of free weekends and evenings is looking more remote than ever before. However, I'm not going to let that stop me from doing something in the time that I do have, so I have come up with a Plan B.

This revolves around down-sizing both the scope and the scale of my wargaming projects next year, with fewer overall but at a manageable level of output. This means that 28mm is definately out and that 15mm or smaller scale projects are firmly the way to go. It also means reducing the size of my games to platoon or squad level skirmish sizes, which can be focussed around a handful of figures on a playing area of no more than 2' x 4', with a 2' or 3' square area being my best fit ideal.

So, what to do? One definate project will be Lion Rampant in 15mm, using my Peter Pig War of the Roses figures that I originally intended to use for Impetus. Now, despite having a (very rusty) postgraduate degree in Medieval British Archaeology, I know next to nothing about the aformentioned conflict, which means that I would have a lot of background reading up to do, were it not for this excellent article on the equally excellent Menne of Warre blog:

http://arl-med.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/lion-rampant-wars-of-roses.html

This opened up all sorts of ideas and has given me some new directions in which to move the project to the first stages of planning. To me, the Wars of the Roses are symbolised by posh plate clad men at arms, tough brigandine armoured retainers and sturdy local yokel longbowmen slogging it out in the mud and snow of Towton, as portrayed in the evocative Peter Dennis cover art on the Perry plastic figure boxes. So, the first thing will be to set the project in the deep mid-winter, with two rival Lancastrian and Yorkist garrisons vying for supplies, taxes and extortion over some random stretch of the deep frozen Midland Shires.

This would be ideal as a solo or two player mini-campaign of linked scenarios, using the system described in the rulebook. In turn, this gave me the idea to develop something along the lines of the slightly 'tongue in cheek' Scruttockshire campaign in the old 1644 ECW rules, with a fictional area of bucolic countryside mapped out as the campaign focus. In a nod to the Peter Pig War of the Roses army packs and AK47 (?), the two rival retinues would be commanded by appropriately titled local magnates, with the forces of Lord Wensleydale being opposed by the Earl of Cheddar (or somesuch). There may even be a cameo appearance by the Black Vegetable himself...

I think you will get the basic drift of my imagi-nations approach to the whole thing, although it still has lots of room for development, especially after I re-watch the box set of the first series of Blackadder again. I'm not taking this too seriously and won't be doimg this as a club game, at least in the first instance, in order not to make any promises that I may not be able to keep. So, it will be a solo project for the moment, although I'm hoping that the middle sprog will be interested in having a go, being a big fan of Cry Havoc. I think this could be a lot of fun...so I'll be doing some more thinking to pull it together over Xmas.