Empress Miniatures - Interwar Armoured Vehicles

Its not often that I am moved to sing the praises of any particular manufacturer but I really do have to take my hat off to Empress miniatures for some pieces I purchased a few weeks ago.

Before I kick off with the descriptions I should state that the customer service from Empress was excellent. Not only was it a straightforward purchsase the comms from these guys was great. Having ordered the products I checked back after a week on no-show and within 24 hours I was advised that due to high demand   there would be a delay but they would be posted shortly. Within 48 hours a small parcel arrived.

You can find these guys here..

http://www.empressminiatures.com/ 

The vehicles shown come from their Spanish Civil War Range

So what did I purchase:

 1 x Chevrolet six wheeled armoured car

Unpainted shots

3 Light T17 tanks with hexagonal turrets

28mm Pt. Godfrey for scale

The armoured car is a beast

The resin vehicles were fabulous, casting excellent (bar some flash on the inner turret rings) and fitted together simply and quickly. I am so please with these that I’ll be sourcing some more at Salute in a couple of weeks time.

A Pak37 AT gun and crew.

The gun itself is metal but in bits – My only gripe is that I really do wish a simple diagram could be included to show how this all fits together. The castings all look good and I am sure will look the business.

The crew for the Pak 37 make ideal BUF gunners – their uniforms are virtually identical to those purchased from Musketeer Miniatures. Again the castings are crisp with good poses.

Looking forward to painting this lot up in the coming weeks - sorry week as they will make an appearance next week.

Prices of all these are in line with other manufacturers.

Thank you Empress Miniatures - I shall return

The Hundred Years War: Henry V versus Joan of Arc

Monday night – games night!

Well a bit of a change this evening to the usual fare we decided to play 10mm Warmaster Medieval. We agreed on a 2000 points aside game featuring a ficticious battle between the chevauchee forces of Henry V versus the latter Hundred Years forces of Joan of Arc.

 

I created the army lists before Mark I arrived and we diced for the forces, this way I could not be accused of picking the best side. For those of you interested they were as follows

French	English
Joan of Arc – General Nobles x3 Mounted Knights x4 Dismounted Knights x4 Scots X2 Retinue Foot X2 Genoese Crossbows X4 (inc Pavisses) Handgunners X2 (inc Pavisses) Cannons X3	Henry V (General) Nobles X3 Mounted Knights X2 Dismounted Knights X2 Mounted Sergeants X4 Hobilars X2 Mounted Longbows X2 Longbows X8 Peasants X8

 

As can be seen above the English forces (being Chevauchee) have more mounted troops, significantly more missile troops but are distinctly lacking in infantry. Aside from the Knights and the Seargeants all the forces were unarmoured.

 

We rolled for terrain placement and then lay out our battles. We agreed that we would keep each contingent to a maximum of four units for ordering purposes (as per fantasy warmaster) as opposed to moving battles on mass.

Now apologies here but after the first five photos the camera packed up so rather than write up a pictorial AAR I can only show you a few photos of the early part of the game.

 

The English started (me) and rather fortuitously I got all my orders – in Warmaster to command a unit to do something outside of initiative you need to roll under the leaders command skill on 2d6 – this is mofified for terrain, subsequent orders etc). It does mean that sometimes forces you want to move never budge – and I was able top advance along the line towards the French and securing the woods in the centre and on my right flank.

 Mark unfortunately wasn’t able to move as many troops but he did manage to bring up his missile troops on my right flank and managed to score a few hits. Blood had been drawn and the battle commenced.

 

The French Horse and Men at Arms

The First Charge

It all went a bit wring for the English after this charge, the French Infantry advanced and began to throw their weight around. Some lousy dice and poor judgement calls put my English on the back foot for much of the game.

In the end the French whooped the pesky English - we'll refight this again - the French are much more formidable than the earlier hundred years list where they tend to get shot to bit bits by longbows.

Whilst the figures were out I took some piccies with the camera phone of what I believe is the best 10mm Medieval range out there - Kallistra

http://www.kallistra.co.uk/

 

Mounted Hobilars - Kallistra

Mounted Knights - Kallistra

Handgunners - Kallistra

Mounted Seargeants - Kallistra

Longbows - Kallistra

Crossbows - Kallistra

Mounted Longbows - Source???

Men at Arms - Kallistra

Peasants - Kallistra

Nobles & General

 

Teutonic Spears

If you want to see some more pictures of 10mm Medieval on the blog head over here

More 10mm Medieval goodness


The proper camera is now fixed !

 

Hundred Years War - 10mm

Outside of the 28mm world I have also built some fairly large 10mm collections. These include Warmaster Fantasy, Napoleonic and Medieval. The selection of photos below were taken about five years ago.

One day we'll take the knights and archers out for another spin.

Castle Under Siege

Brace for Charge

Forces deploying

Inside the Town

Mark your targets, take aim...

Charge !!

Come and have go if you think you'r hard enough