On June 9th, 2016, Will and I played our first full Wars of the Roses miniatures wargame using The Perfect Captain's rules: A Coat of Steel. Will fielded his excellent Lancastrian army painted by the very talented Martin Robson for his private collection. Will augmented his force (reluctantly) with a few units provided by myself. My own army of Yorkists was painted by a variety of artists, depending on the "faction". The majority are painted by Leuthen Studios, Carl Robson and myself, the latter with a lot of help from Jeff Lower. The flags are by CitadelSix. The 28mm miniatures are all by Perry, both plastic and metal.
Will and I have been building our armies for several years. I fabricated all of the character cards and other "props" provided on line by The Perfect Captain. I cannot recommend The Captain (whoever he is/they are) highly enough. The artwork and the rules are outstanding. They produced a very colourful game which really felt like late medieval English warfare.
We played one practice skirmish to learn the rules. The game was technically a Yorkist victory. However, I consider this another learning game. In particular, we did not get quite right the Company and Ward composition. The Wards should have had more, smaller Companies. We did not really need to have all four Wards for both sides. The forces were not evenly matched and my superior firepower from Retinue archers skewed the final result. However, it was a fun and instructive game.
Here are a few photos taken during various stages of the battle. Jeff decided to spend his time on this Craft Day painting some miniatures but opined that it was a good game!
