28mm Gripping Beast Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ

 

New Unit today and its one I bought years ago, I reckon over 10, I bought them when they came out, so if anyone remembers when that was let me know !

The bulk of the 12 figures are the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ box set from Gripping Beast, I've added another 4 figures to give me additional options of 8, 12 or two sixes on the table.

The Flags are from Flags of War. The bases are 50 x 60 with 2 figs per base.

It took a very long time to get them from the box to the table but I rather like them.

Troops on Parade - Kingdom of Heaven

 

Strange things happen in lockdown, like watching films and wondering what a particular scene would look like set up with your toy soldiers. If there is any disadvantage to the end of Covid its going to be the lack of opportunity to do mad, spontaneous photo shoots as the wargames table gets filled up with actual gaming !

So I randomly came across the charge scene from the movie Kingdom of Heaven and I thought, I can do that, so I did and I left the photos here as proof.

My 28mm Christian Crusades Cavalry currently consists of 3 units of Knights and 2 units of Sgts, plus 4 Command Bases. The figures are all from Fireforge Games apart from three of the Command Bases which are from 1st Corps.

Above is a detail view of King Baldwin and my Kingdom of Jerusalem Knights based on uniforms from the film.

Next up are my Knights of St Lazarus, the Leper Knights, an order I have been fascinated by for most of my adult life, they only ever put 30 or so Knights in the field, but what the hell 😉 I was always going to have a unit of them.

The third unit of Red Knights are the later Hospitallers, some one donated a box of Teutonic Knights to the collection and rather than waste them I deliberately painted them up in a later livery, mostly just to wind people up 😁

Setting them out in a wedge formation and taking the photos was really good fun, there are only 70 figures here but what a powerful bunch of figures they are ! So I will just let the pictures do the talking.

Knights of Jerusalem 

Thanks for your indulgence in my Kingdom of Heaven set up

28mm Crusader Castle - Empires at Arms - A Review

 

Featured in last month's Utubes update was the latest addition to the Crusades Project, a 28mm MDF castle from Empires at War. It's a big old thing, it covers close to a third of our 12 x 6 table, perfect for the sort of skirmish games we like 😉

I've done a video review on the Utubes, photos below if that is your preference.

The castle comes in 12 seperate sections each of which can be bought individually. At 90 pounds all in I think this is good value.

https://empiresatwar.co.uk/product/28mm-western-crusader-castle-modular-kit/

The sections come in seperate MDF kits, they are good quality and are easy to put together, me and my lad put all these together in about 3 hours.

There are 6 wall sections, 4 corner towers, a gate house, a centre tower and a staircase. The items are all really well designed and when completed they fit together perfectly. Each wall section fits one of my 24 figure units perfectly.

My plan (in the future) is to somehow paint this up in the style of a Crusader Castle along the lines of the Krak des Chevalier in Syria, I love the white stone and hints of green vegetation. Any model builders got any tips on how do get that effect ?

However it will more than likely stay as it is 😁

All in all I think the piece is good value, detail is great. It's easy to put together and is nice and strong. It's a great building to have for some proper Big Battle Crusades Gaming.

Yarkshire Gamer August 2020 Update

 

It's that time again, the monthly video update on the goings on at Yarkshire Gamer, still no gaming and the Govt announcements today mean it will be another 2 weeks at least.

So tune in and drop out !

5 new units this month, the 28mm Artisan WW1 Arab Revolt Cavalry in the top pic. The Kingdom of Jerusalem Knights.

Some WW1 Turkish Cavalry 

Some Crusades Command Bases 

And some Carthaginians 

I'm losing hope of getting any gaming in for a long time so back to the paints it is.

Troops on Parade - Kingdom of Jerusalem

The joy of finishing a Project, even a small mini Project within a larger Project never lessens. Regular readers will have seen this group of Kingdom of Jerusalem figures grow from 0 to 98 over the last few months.

There is a video run through above if you have time, all new Subscribers to Yarkshire TV are welcomed with a good brew and a Eeh Up 😁

This will end up being probably a quarter of my Christian Crusades Force 1 x 12 Mounted Knights, 1 x 12 Mounted Sergeants, 1 x 24 Foot Knights, 1 x 24 Melee Weapon Foot Sgts, 1 x 24 Crossbow Sgts and a 2 x fig command base.

All the figures are from Fireforge Games, Decals from Battle Flag and Flags from Flags of War. I just put them together, painted and based them.

 

The nit pickers and rivet counters were out of their cage a bit on my last Crusades post so just to make it perfectly clear this is my interpretation of a Kingdom of Jerusalem force, it's a bit too uniform, it's a bit "hollywood" as someone called it. I like it, quite a lot actually.

Individual unit shots next, 1st the 24 man Crossbow unit, all bases are 60mm x 50mm (except command) with the 60mm as frontage on the foot and 50mm the frontage on the horse (I.e. 50mm x 60mm) the extra depth on the mounted stuff.

Next up the 24 Foot Sergeants with Melee weapons.

The 24 Foot Knights.

The 12 Mounted Sergeants lurking in the background, these are on the 50mm frontage two to a base. Mostly to protect the figures but the extra depth allows for a more "dynamic" placing of the figures to get a better feel of motion.

The final unit is the strike force of 12 mounted Knights in all their finery.

The final piece is this command stand, both individual figures from Fireforge, their wonderful King Baldwin IV model with his silver mask and gloves. The standard bearer is a French knight model, I simply binned the shield and used a spare one from my Knights box to give him the same livery as the others.

So there you have it, my Kingdom of Jerusalem force complete and shoved in a box waiting for the call to arms.

28mm Crusades Command Bases

A quick show off post today of some new command bases for my 28mm Crusades Project. These figures are from 1st Corps / Curtneys Miniatures and I picked them up from the York show a couple of years back.

I am always really slack when it comes to Command Stands and end up with armies hundreds of figures strong with no commanders, so to get four (The other one will be in the Kingdom of Jerusalem force review later in the week) done at this stage of the Army build is pretty remarkable.

Base number one is based on my Red Knights unit (a later Hospitaller unit) and consists of a musician and standard bearer, flags are from Flags of War.

Second base is for my St Lazarus Knights, those of you who are familiar with the blog may notice that my choice of command stands is based around left over decals from previous units, not that I'm tight or anything 😁

The commander figures are basically the same but with different head and weapon options, this one has a bishop type head and a made.

So there we have three command bases ready for our next Crusades game whenever that will be, Kingdom of Jerusalem and of Project shots coming next.