The Marshal Petain Gentleman's Club: Winter of Discontent

Tuesday 11 September 2018

Winter of Discontent

OK, so it’s only autumn and the discontent is only really a niggle but the phrase seemed apposite. Yes we’re talking Wars of the Roses here. Now, as fellow Petains will be aware, I have a reasonably large WOTR collection in 10mm scale that I game with using Peter Pig’s ‘Bloody Barons’. However, for some time now, I’ve not been happy with the basing and have been considering a rebase. Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the style of basing or the base dimensions, in fact I rather like the Peter Pig style square bases, no it’s the actual basing material / colours that I don’t like. The main problem is that the bases have a sort of camouflage effect that obscures the figures and with my ageing eyes I really need the figures to ‘pop’. I have actually bought some replacement bases but I just haven’t settled on an alternative basing scheme yet.

10mm troops - I know the photo is blurry but then again so are my eyes!

Anyway that’s just a long winded way of saying that a WOTR project has been at the back of my mind for some time now. As it happens a fellow member of ‘the other club’ also has a 10mm WOTR collection, currently unpainted, but has never settled on a set of rules. Whilst I really like Bloody Barons, they’re far from perfect and I have ‘tweaked’ them to better reflect my preconceptions. They do give a cracking game though and they have been very popular at the club. Are they just that though – a game? How well do they reflect the warfare of the time? To be honest, I’m not sure and ultimately I’m not even convinced that the question can even be answered. However, I do fancy taking a fresh look at the period and re-examining some of my own preconceptions. Somewhere, buried in the depths of my war room (aka the garage) I have a notebook containing my thoughts and ideas on the period but this may be a better way of recording the project. I also know that some of the Petains are ardent medievalists so hopefully this will serve as a source of useful discussion points – even if only carried out in the pub.

So first off I want to look at some alternative rule systems. For the purposes of this exercise, or at least to begin with, I shall restrict this study to rules that are period specific. At the moment I have copies of Poleaxed 2, Bloody Barons, Tree of Battles, and Coat of Steel plus I have borrowed a copy of, the snappily titled, ‘For Lords, Tomorrow is a Busy Day’. I’m sure other rule systems are available but this selection will be more than enough to begin with.