War of the Roses

A longbow unit was next representing the troops of Sir Edmund Mountford (heraldic flag yellow and blue) and Sir Christopher Moresby (flag black with white cross).

The command stand on the longbow units include a couple of archers but also only have 5 figures to ease identification of unit type on the table.

The liveries were directly lifted from the flags as I could not find any other information.

The first unit off the blocks was a household unit. This was going to be the combined retinues of Sir John Pilkington of Pilkington Hall (White) and Sir Everard Digbie (or Digby). Now here is the first mistake as poor old Sir Everard was actually killed at the Towton in 1461 but could be his son?

John Pilkington’s flag was white with red cross so I decided to use a white livery with the cross as the badge. I knew that the Digbie family used a blue livery and decided to add a fleur de leis badge to reflect their heraldic flag.

In the new War of the Roses supplement the main units are Longbowmen, Household (a mixture of bill and longbow) and Bill units.

Looking at the “divisions” in the various scenarios I decided that for the first command I would do 2 units of Household, 2 units of Longbow and a unit of Billmen.

The next question was structure of the units. It was agreed that we would use 18cm frontage for a unit, this meant I could use 3 bases 6cm wide. This would also enable me to use a 2 bases to form units for Midgard in the future.

For the Household and Longbow units I decided to do two bases of Longbows and a command stand. This would allow me to paint additional command stands so I could swap between these units and with the addition of a command stand of men at arms (e.g. fully armoured figures) could represent the upgraded units in the rules.

Which units to paint.

I wanted a bit of variety in the units and to have some colourful flags on display. I started to try and identify some of the nobles who were aligned with the Stanley’s. But being in a hurry I ended up taking a shortcut when I spotted the standards and heraldic flags produced by “Frezzywater Flags” that are sold by the Lance and Longbow Society at wargames shows in the UK.

This gave the heraldic flags for the Stanley’s and some of their associates. This gave me enough to progress on the first units.

The next question would be the liveries of the various units. This may have just been a sash or even a badge but as a wargamer you always want to go with the pretty colours.

I managed to identify the following liveries for the nobles I wanted to include and these were:

• Sir Thomas Stanley – Tawny and vert (orange/green)
• Sir William Stanley – gules (red)
• Sir John Digbie (Digby) – Azure (blue)

This left me with a number I didn’t know so decided to base their liveries on the colours of their heraldic flags I would be using.

So off went the order to the “blessed Perry’s” and we were off.

When Warlord published the Wars of the Roses supplement, I bought a copy for interest, but I had just started my Dark Age forces for Midgard/Hail Ceaser so while tempted I said that I was not going to start another project. (I have all but finished the Romano-British and halfway through my Saxons).

Then two of my mates (Nige and “Broken Dice”) did start building armies and after a couple of games I was involved in, it had me hooked. So with the “will power of a wet lettuce” I caved and said I would get a couple of divisions.

The next decision was which nobles would be involved.

Normally I would play the Lancastrian but a “Broken Dice” and “Uncle Albert” refused to play Yorkist. I decided to look for nobles who controlled the area where I live (in deepest darkest Fylde in Lancashire) and it turned out to be the Stanleys!

This gave the option of the brothers Baron Sir Thomas Stanley King of Mann and Sir William Stanley to be the main commanders. This was also a problem as Sir Thomas was renowned for avoiding getting involved in battle! The obvious answer is in the end I will have to do the command bases for both 😊.