Kent Medieval Wealden Hall House in 28mm

Timeline Miniatures make a very nice lasercut kit of a traditional Kent Medieval Wealden Building. A number of these are still around, albeit altered and rebuilt to a greater of lesser extent.In fact, Kent has the highest number of original timber-framed buildings in Europe.

The kit is dead easy to put together but I recommend you use a branded wood cement rather than simple 'white glue' as the former sets more quickly. All I did was slap on some textured Tamiya paint on the infills, which would originally have been whitewashed wattle and daub, and a thin brick wash on the tiles - the original roof would have been thatched. The jutting top bays are typical.

Inside, showing the central two-story hall with central hearth. By the 16th C., this would have been replaced by a fireplace and chimney. In its original form the high ceiling allowed smoke to accumulate at the top and leak slowly out through the thatch.

The two top floors off the kit come off if you want to use the rooms underneath.

This version does have the latest in sanitation, the drop-it-outside privy.

Ah the luxury.

A real one.


Great model: Recommended.

Plastic Oldhammer

Plastic Oldhammer soldiers can be had for a song on eBay, especially those that were in starter kits. Some, like the Bretonnian Bowmen, make useful Medieval as well as fantasy figures.

Many are unpainted.

These will never be great figures, especially repaints as they are not worth the time stripping, but they are useful army padders.

A lick o'paint and Army Painter patina varnish can cover a multitude of sins.

Review Perrys Foot Knights

 Foot Knights 1450-1500 Set

The Perry twins hardly need an introduction from me. Since they left GW they have built up a successful historical model range including many plastic sets.

Their set of 38 late medieval plate-armoured dismounted knights retails at £20, making them superb value for money. These are multipose figures that can be a little tricky to put together but on the other hand there is so much variation on offer that no two need be the same.

 Ten Man Unit With Swords

The models are a true 28mm and with a slim rather than heroic build and are nicely detailed - detail that is easily brought out with a simple black wash.

Twenty Man Unit With Two-Handed Weapons.

Bulked together the models look great, even with a very simple two-colour ad a wash paint job.

King And Standard Bearer


As well as six identical sprues, each with six figures, you get a leader sprue consisting of a King/Baron (change head as required) and Standard Bearer. Incidentally, the box includes a number of coloured flags to cut out - mainly English and French.

All I have added are some bases.

A great box of figures and superb value for money at £20.

Highly Recommended.

On My Painting Table, Longbowmen

GW released a Warhammer edition some years ago with a collection of plastic Bretonnians, including archers that were direct copies of English longbowmen. So many of these were in circulation that they turn up for pennies on ebay. They are actually very nice models that are eminently suitable for both fantasy and medieval armies.

Have At Thee, Varlet

I got this model free from Foundry with a batch of others that I bought. No idea what range he comes from; Baron's Wars ere, I suppose.

I think he would make a great command figure for a Hail Caesar army so I have painted him up despite the chap being a bit vertically challenged.

Lion Rampant Host

I have finished the retinue of John de'Rainham: he's the handsome chap on the far back left of the pic.

It's a standard 24 point host with:
1. Mounted Men at Arms (back left with lance)
2. Mounted Sergeants (middle left)
3. Foot Men at Arms (front left)
4. Foot Sergeants (right rear with spears)
5. Crossbowmen (foot right)

The cavalry is made from a box of Veus Dult Mounted Sergeants for £20.

And the infantry from a box of Foot Sergeants which cost £35.

You get 48 minis in the infantry box so I still have 18 leftover.

I bought  Battle Flag shield transfers specially made for this range. These are expensive so I only got one sheet and created the other shield designs by painting and leftover transfers from various models.

Delineation of the hard plastic models is good and they respond well to a thin coat of Army Painter tinted varnish - as shown on the armour in this photo.

Æthelflæd, Lady of Mercia

Model by Belt Fed, painted by me.

Æthelflæd, Myrcna hlæfdige, was the eldest daughter of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex. She married a Mercian ealdorman and became the ruler of Mercia, Wales and York after winning a series of battles against the Vikings and Welsh.

One of Britain's great women rulers and warlords.

Lion Rampant - First Game

The Continuing Saga of Shawn of Rochester and John de Rainham.

Swearing vengeance after his hammering at the peace conference, Shawn assembled his loyal vassals with the usual threats and bribes to launch a full blown chevauchée through John's lands.

Fortunately John received prior notice from his PAVE chain (Peasant and Villein Exhortatory system) and was ready with his full blown host.

Yep, we were ready to play Scenario 1 from Lion Rampant with Shaun as the attacker.

This is what the game looked like after five or six turns.

Shawn had considerable problems getting his host to advance while mine flatly refuse to move at all. I think it took about five turns for John de Rainham's assorted threats and bribes got the archers to advance while his cavalry stayed in a full blown sulk.

By about turn seven things hotted up. I persuaded my archers to fire on Shaun's spearmen who took to their heels - nah, nah, cowardly custards.

Meanwhile Shaun's mounted men at arms started a charge on my other archers in the woods. I marvelled at the horse's bravery as light infantry are at their best in woods.

Shaun's spearmen rallied but his mounted men at arms took a terrible pounding, the survivors fleeing clean off the battlefield. Encouraged, John's mounted men at arms and right flank knights deigned to advance.

Meanwhile an exasperated Shaun of Rochester lost his head and led his personal retinue in a charge on John de Rainham, who was still trying to persuade his own retinue to stop sulking and advance.

Alas, John's retinue promptly counter-charged (automatic response not needing a die roll) and poor Shaun got the worst of it. His retinue promptly fled the field, carrying Shaun with them, and John declared victory.

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I don't know what to make of this. The game was completely controlled by the activation die rolls. I won the game by not managing to do anything. Admittedly there was some terrible die-rolling going on.

Review - HaT 28 mm El Cid Almoravid Heavy Cavalry

I have painted up a few more of my HaT El Cid hard plastic 28mm models: the  Almoravid Heavy Cavalry.

The only problem is that the thin plastic spears are a bit brittle. Otherwise these are nice models. They are from the same sculpts as the 1/72 figs so have the same style and look.

 They are to-scale models (I suspect 1/56) rather than chunky wargaming 28mm size models but the difference is not great. Above is one of the models placed alongside a Deus Vult medieval cavalryman. In my opinion the two will mix fine but then I am liberal on such matters.

Review - Osprey's Lion Rampant

Sir John de'Rainham rides to a sit down with Shaun of Rochester escorted by his loyal Men at Arms

I have never owned a medieval army but I've liked rules by Daniel Mersey in the past so was moved to pick up a copy of Lion Rampant from Osprey Games.

Lion Rampart

I was impressed. They were relatively simple, self-contained and I understood them on the first read through. So I persuaded my friend Shaun to give them a try. We used some of Shaun's colourfully painted Brettonian armies and restricted ourselves to three units while we learnt the game.

The various types of troops are classed into a limited number of troops: Mounted & Unmounted Men at Arms (the heavies), Mounted & Unmounted Yeoman (mediums), Fierce Foot (nutters), Serfs (oiks), Missile Troops (bowmen & slingers) and finally Crossbowmen. There are a few special rules to tailor troops and distinguish between, say, bow-armed and javelin-armed light cavalry.

It's a skirmish game, one model equals one man, so has very fluid and free movement and only requires forty or so models for an army.

For our trial game, we decided on a tiny scenario of one unit of knights, spearmen and bows each.

So over to the encounter.

Battle of Wrinkled Bottom

Trial by Combat


Sir John and Shaun of Rochester have long disputed grazing rights for their peasantry in Wrinkled Bottom by The Medway. The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Taxbrake, organised a meeting to discuss the matter like civilised Christian men.

Unfortunately, the meeting got off to a dodgy start when Sir John congratulated Shaun of Rochester's family for doing so well considered that they had floated down the Medway on a sinking raft after being cast out of the Weald by the other bandits. Shaun noted in rely that Sir John's family had come over with The Conqueror, where they had been employed to muck out the horses on one of the transports.

After that it went downhill.

Such insult could only be settled by blood. So Sir John and Shaun fought a duel (I won the initiative and made a leadership challenge. If Shaun refused it might destabilise his army). We each launch three blows (dice), hitting on a 5+.

We both scored twice, a draw so no effect and the leaders were returned to their units.

The knights charge eager to join the combat


Mounted Men at Arms have a 'wild charge' so I was forced to charge Shaun's knights who promptly countercharged.

My bowmen moved up towards Shaun's while my spearmen went into a huddle (a schiltron) and refused to move.

The knights recoil

After the first clash, our knights retreated to regroup with few casualties. They have excellent armour. Shaun's bowmen shot up mine - memo to self - don't move into bow range of enemy bowmen. Astonishingly Shaun's billmen charged my knights - what were they thinking?

 Victory!

The spearmen got a bloody nose and my emboldened knights, gander up, rode down Shaun's retinue forcing him to flee the field.




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So there we are, great fun all round.

Look, this is not the sort of game one will play for week after week, armies will tend to be a bit samey after a while, but it is the sort of game you will come back to for a quick game time after time.

I like it: recommended.

As for Shaun of Rochester, I'm sure he will not take this lying down. I feel a campaign working through the provided scenarios coming on.

He will be back!

Review - HaT 28mm El Cid Almoravid Heavy Infantry

The major toy soldier companies seem to be waking up to the market for 28mm wargame figures. Italieri are offering Warlord Games WWII infantry under their own brand for inclusion with their new 1/56 range.

HaT have chosen to rescale some of their 1/72 range as '28mm'. This is not done by scaling up a 1/72 figure but by scaling down from the original large sculpts. So these figures look just like the 1/72 models.

So the miniatures are scale miniatures with a model of a man being 28mm high. Now this is different to most 28mm figures which are not sculpted to scale. They are usually bigger than 28mm and have bodies which are way out of proportion to real human shapes. 28mm wargames miniatures are too fat, their heads and hands are usually too big and their weapons are exaggerated in bulk.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need to change proportions when changing scales to make the figure 'look right'. And wargame miniatures have to be robust to stand handling and travel.

1. So the first point to make is that the HaT range is 28mm to scale figures rather than the usual wargame style. I don't think that matters particularly and would be happy to use these models on the wargame table with traditional 28mm. However, if you are a bit autistic and OCD about scale this might be an issue.

2. The models are hard plastic, polystyrene, so are stuck together with normal plastic cement. One point is that spears are thin and rather brittle. They break rather easily.

There will be three El Cid armies: Spanish Christian,  Almoravid Berber and Andalusian. Each consists of four different boxes: heavy infantry, light infantry, heavy cavalry and light cavalry.

I chose to start with the heavy infantry from the Almoravid range.

The models are wonderful value for money with 32 infantry in the box for around a tenner.

They paint up fine - see above.

I think I will get a box for every unit in the El Cid Range which I intend to use for skirmish games - by far the normal type of warfare in Medieval Spain.

£120 will buy three complete armies for Lionheart or similar.

Recommended if you can cope with a slightly different 'look' to your armies.

Perry Miniatures

Sigh, so many great models, so little time, so little money.

While I was round at Shaun's place he showed me his Perry plastic Medieval pikemen. Drool.