Well my toys still haven’t arrived so for some reason I decided to play around in 3D builder and made some teeny, tiny Landsnekht…
Here is a single dude with a halberd. To be fair this is after he was shrunk. Even I have limits to my stupidity.
To be honest, and in hindsight I should have done it in blender. Well it kept me busy for a bit.
So, because I am a twit, I have decided to once again expand the Great Italian Wars Forces. This time with the (kind of) new Florentine forces from the Altuos range.
Not really a super large force, but enough to have a small army. Don’t ask me about points, I haven’t got a clue and honestly I just got what would look good on the table.
Basically pikes, shot, swordsmen etc. oh and a medium artillery piece. Well Florence was rich.
Anyway I decided I needed more Flags. So off to the fabulous Pete’s Flags on eBay. I came across two sheets one a Florentine Mercenary set and the other from the Florentine League at the battle of Anghiari.
They Arrived today and I am very happy… I had a bit of a niggle at the back of my mind about the Florentine League at the battle of Anghiari… Well yeah of course I did. The battle took place in 1440. Giovanni of the Black Band was born nearly 60 years after the battle. So I will have two forces on the table that are basically 75 years apart.
So the options are:
Say sod it, a flag is a flag.
Put one set in a box and only use the standard mercenary flags.
I will let you have a guess which way I might go. Purists may want to look away now.
Well it sort of sounds a bit like an Italian town.
So I popped over to Mike’s today, took my toys to oggle at and discuss various rules sets.
As we had armies painted we decided to have a little try at a battle using Lion Rampant.
My chaps at the top, with his at the bottom. This wasn’t my initial setup. I had just shoved them on the table. My Condottiere were trying to escort the baggage train across the bridge but were stopped by some dastardly enemy.
My activation dice were, frankly crap! His heavy cavalry thundered across the field and through a lucky roll mine managed to counter charge. We hacked and slashed for a good while and then I luckily managed to shrug him off, he retired, battered. His light cavalry (in the background) sensing victory followed with a charge of their own. I once again managed a lucky countercharge and completely destroyed them, but lost half of my heavies over the two combats.
My skirmishers managed to make it into the woods and completely tied up the mounted crossbows. They however never fired once and eventually died to a man. My troops on the right of the cavalry managed to get into the woods to hold them up even more.
There was some further ArgyBargy on the right flank, with his pole arm wielding crazies charging first the stradiots, who took one look at them, chucked a pile of javelins into their faces and legged it. The pole armed chaps were in turn run down by my other heavy cavalry. In the end my horsemen became a bit of a spent round, but they had secured the flank.
My poor Stradiots got charged by a pike block and somehow won the combat and pushed the pike block back. My pike block was charged by the remains of his heavy cavalry and managed to lose. I charged into him and gave him a good kicking. His cavalry were basically broken, but kept hanging on there.
We had to end it there as I had to shoot off.
Lion Rampant seemed to work. When I got home I realised I had bought the second edition which has rules for piles and handguns in it.
Time for a bit of a read through the rules as they also have rules for holy men, banners etc. basically these give you a plus one to the units courage… Luckily my leader brought his religious entourage with him.
I will let you know how I get on.
Bogenwald 