Friday 20 July 2012

Another New Project - Early Medieval (Cry Havoc/Siege)

Regular readers of this blog maybe somewhat surprised to know that my first true 'love' (history-wise at least) is actually the Middle Ages. Reminiscing back to my youth, it seemed to have spent running around castles or trying to knock seven shades out of my older brother armed with a broom handle and dustbin lid pretending to be a gallant knight of the realm. I still enjoy walking over lumpy fields waffling on to friends saying, "this was once the site of a motte and bailey castle" watching as their eyes gradually glaze over as they think "yeah, yeah, it's another empty field."

As I also want to change the percentage of modelling to gaming I currently enjoy (approx 99.9% modelling, 0.1% gaming) I thought 'why not go back to where it all really began for me' - the Cry Havoc/Siege board games. Still highly regarded after all these years these particular games, covered the early medieval/late Crusades period, were my introduction to gaming using actual proper rules. The fact that the map in Siege was based on the real Welsh castle at Skenfrith, Monmouthshire, (part of the famous 'Three Castles' - Skenfrith, White Castle and Grosmont) helped as well.

New figure launches by Fireforge GamesCrusader Miniatures and recent discussions on TMP led me to find dedicated sites such as Cry Havoc Fan  and the excellent blogsites such as Perrys Heroes and 15mm Havoc have all encourged me to get some minitures painted and ready for playing.

As the Cry Havoc/Siege games are really skirmish games I took the executive decision and decided to base the figures individually. I did initially think about using round bases but eventually decided to use square bases as I reckon that I could eventually use these figures as not-Warhammer Bretonnians.
I also don't want to tie myself down to any one particular precise campaign or battle, although I will be heavily leaning towards the period dominated by the reign of Edward I, Longshanks (the well known moniker 'Hammer of the Scots' wasn't contemporary). The fact that he was also responsible for some the most impressive castles still standing in Britain, Conway, Caernarfon, Harlech and Beaumaris etc. all made making this decision easy.

I'm still trying to work out the mechanics of playing the game with miniatures as the original involved two double sided playing cards per each individual piece (to represent healthy, stunned, wounded and dead status). I remember that we used Essex miniatures to replace the cards but I can't remember how, or even if, we depicted each different status. 

I had contemplated using the original characters from the game as a painting guide but thought there are enough real heraldry schemes to use to make this project even more interesting for myself. The first figures detailed on this blog will be from the new early medieval range from Crusader Miniatures.

No comments:

Post a Comment