Mick’s Agincourt project (Game 24/11/2021)

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

With the 600th anniversary of Agincourt coming up soon (25th October 2015), I have decided to wargame the battle.  I will copy some aspects of Simon Chick’s game from Salute.

I already have quite a lot of the Perry Agincourt to Orleans range that I bought and painted in 2005 to 2007.  I did a quick count this morning.  I have about 125 painted infantry and 32 painted cavalry.  This is more or less one of each Perry metal set.  Among this are the Perry command sets for Agincourt.  These are painted to a reasonable standard.   There a few damaged figures and the LBMS transfers on the pavises have shrunk slightly leaving white edges.  The flags look a bit worse for wear too.  Everything looks fixable.



I wrote Age of the Trebuchet in 2005, which is a historical adaption kit for LOTR SBG.  The infantry are based on 25mm slottabases and cavalry on matching 38mm round bases. 

I have already bought and built 36 Perry plastic English army, 18 metal peasants and 24 metal infantry to expand the armies.  I have another 12 archers on order and will convert some Fireforge foot sergeants.  I plan to also make some extra archers with hand weapons for melee and some placing stakes.  I plan to make large numbers of infantry casualties to mark difficult ground for the second and third waves of French.

From the maps that I have seen and pictures on Google, the battlefield is completely flat.  I have sketched out the battlefield on a white paper tablecloth.  The battle will play on a 180cm x 120cm table (6ft x 4ft).   

Questions
1. Does anybody know how the stake defences would have looked?   
Wargamers often show a single dense row of stakes but I don’t think that is how it was done.  I think a good defence that could not be jumped by a horse would have been at least 4 staggered lines of stakes each stake about 50 cm apart.  If I recall correctly, there were 4,500 archers and each had one stake.  The narrow point between the Azincourt and Tramecourt woods was only 700 metres.  As I understand there were stake defences in front of the archers but not in front of the men at arms.  That gives 4,500 stakes in about 600 metres which is 7.5 stakes per metre. 
Has anybody read anything about this?  What is your opinion?

2.  Tips for terrain cloths?
I plan to make a painted and textured cloth.  This will be the first time that I have done a painted and textured cloth so I will be experimenting with caulk and sawdust on a cotton sheet.  I would appreciate tips or links to tutorials.

3.  Please recommend some nice Flags?
I need to update the flags.  Where can I get nice 28mm flags for Agincourt Armies?

Regards

Mick

[Bone]

2.  Tips for terrain cloths?
I plan to make a painted and textured cloth.  This will be the first time that I have done a painted and textured cloth so I will be experimenting with caulk and sawdust on a cotton sheet.  I would appreciate tips or links to tutorials.

http://www.sweetwater-forum.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=6661&pageNo=15

http://www.sweetwater-forum.de/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=13984
(felt instead of cloth)

Its a long thread with lots of info and pictures.
I did some mats myself, the first ones I made with acrilyc caulc and sand - later ones with acrilyc caulc ,sawdust, shredded corc pieces and pieces of teddy fur.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Thank-you

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Here is a quick update.

Figures
Thursday and Friday were holidays in Aargau, so I cleaned the metal infantry and built the plastic set.  On Saturday, I based all of the 83 new figures (Perry English set, 18 peasants and 24 metal infantry plus 5 Fireforge conversions) and blended them in with Milliput.  In the evening, I undercoated them with GW Chaos Black spray.  On Sunday, I got up early and started painting.  

I decided to make the English distinctive by having a tight colour palette.  Most of the archers have beige (earth & bone highlight) padded aketons with red hoods and red crosses on the left chest.  Four archers have half red and half white aketons.  The men at arms have red weapon handles and leather scabbards.  Many MAA have St George devices on jupons (waistcoat) and besagews (armpit protectors).  I will start on hose on Monday evening and possibly get the whole plastic set finished by weekend.  As soon as they look reasonable, I will photograph them.

English Flags
I have photocopied the English flags in the Perry box so that I can have thin flags.  There are far more than I actually need.  

Stakes
I started a thread on TMP and the consensus is that there were at least three staggered rows.
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=384817

Mick

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

French Flags
Krigspiel.dk have excellent flags that can be downloaded for free.  The HYW section is mostly about Crecy and Poitiers but captions indicate where descendants used the same flags at Agincourt or Orleans.  I found flags for the principle characters and enough others to give unit a flag from a knight who was present at the battle.
http://www.krigsspil.dk/download/download_3.html
I found some others at Warflag.com
http://www.warflag.com/flags/medieval/franceselect.shtml

Agincourt French
Here are the French.  Most of these are figures that I painted in 2007.  Several need minor touch ups, especally where the shield transfers have shrunk.  
I have added 8 Fireforge infantry converted as flag bearers.  Each unit has a flag of a french knight who was present at Agincourt.


Agincourt English
The command set was painted in 2007 as were a few archers and MAA.  I have built and started to paint 36 English from the Perry Plastic set and 4 Fireforge bodies with Perry arms to be archer musicians and flag bearers.  Two more sprues of archers arrived this week so they are not yet painted.


Grass Matt
I bought sample strips of two thicknesses of teddy bear fur. Each was about 30 cm x 160 cm.
One was very dense and plush and about 12mm thick.  The other was very thin and looked cheap.
The thick fur looked good before painting but took a lot of effort to apply the paint and the final result was not really much better than the thin fur.  I could easily cut roads and paths into the thin fur with an electric hair trimmer.  The thick fur was too much for the electric clippers.
I experimented with painting, first trying with brushes, but quickly changed to dipping.  The best way appears to be to make a bath of very dilute paint (about 1 part paint to 10 parts water) and dip the fur into it.  Then I wrung it out and redipped the parts where the paint was thin.  About 66% yellow and 33% bright green mixed with water gave a very bright spring green colour similar to GW static grass.  I did some with earth as the main colour and then dry brushed with bright green but this looked very dark.  I will use this for forests.  
I will use the thinner fur to make the mat.

[Anna Elizabeth]

Oh, very nice! I'm planning a similar collection, for the French, anyway.

It's really good to see painted and W-i_P armies, it's inspiring.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Thank-you

You can see larger versions of the pictures on my Flickr gallery.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/31905569@N05/

[Atheling]

Great work Mick and and impressive array too 

Darrell.

[Dave Knight]

Looking very good indeed

[shandy]

That's a splendid project, Mick! A pity I'll be leaving Switzerland for good in three weeks… I'd have loved to game Agincourt with you.

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Dear Shandy,

All the figures are built and based and I have a painted paper table cloth as terrain.
We could actually play it now...if you have time one evening or at the weekend.

I haven't decided on rules but we could try Lion Rampant which I have just bought.... or we could use LOTR SBG (GW Lord of the Rings game).
 

Mick

[shandy]

We could actually play it now...if you have time one evening or at the weekend.

Aww, that'd be great! pm sent.

[Dave Knight]

Looking forward to an AAR

[Mick_in_Switzerland]

Sunday 31st May 2015

Shandy will come to visit next weekend, to play Agincourt, so I have been rushing to get everything to a playable state.

Fur Mat
On Saturday, I visited Aarau and went round the fabric stores.  In Alja (www.alja.ch) I bought 2 metres of beige fur and 40 cm of dark brown imitation suede.  The fur, called Polo is a lightweight 80% acrylic and 20% polyester fur which is 150 cm wide and costs CHF 17 per metre.  I also bought 40 cm x 150 cm of dark brown imitation suede velour which costs CHF 29 per metre.
In the craft shop (Bastel-Huus), I bought 4 x 80ml bottles of acrylic craft paints in Pistachio, Leaf Green, Rich Green and Medium Yellow.  At CHF 5.80, you get about 5 times as much as a GW paint pot, so it is about 25% of the GW paint cost.  This is important as I used about 240 ml to colour the 2 metre x 150 cm fur.
I also bought a heavy duty polythene sheet from the DIY store.  This was described as a decorator’s tarpaulin 5m x 4m.  

I moved the furniture and put the sheet on the tiled floor with the fur on top.  Warning, this is a messy process, so you need to wear old clothes and protect the floor and furniture from splashes.  I mixed the paints in a tub so that I had varying shades of green.  I diluted this with a lot of water (about 20 times as much water as paint) and applied it to the fur with a 2 inch decorators paint brush.  I frequently rolled the fur into a giant sausage and squeezed it so that the wet paint came through to the other side.  This rolling and wringing spread the paint and evened up the colour.  I then unrolled this and kept adding more paint and repeated the process until I was happy with the colours.  I then hung this outside on the washing line to dry.

The brown velour has been used for roads and painted as temporary terrain for the ploughed fields.

Stake emplacements
I need a temporary solution for the game with Shandy next weekend.  I used some Perry bases (40x 50mm), each with two or three stakes to give me enough stakes to cover the frontage of the archer units.  I added a strip of sprue to the underside of the base at the back so that they form a wedge that comes up from ground level to a height that matches the movement tray at the back.  These have been quickly painted to use this week.

Unit Markers
I found small laser cut letters in the craft shop.  I bought a full alphabet and will use these to mark each unit.

[Atheling]

Mick,

If it's any help to you, I've got a brilliant (French) booklet that is in two parts showing the heraldry of i/ the French Survivors and Prisoners of Agincourt and ii/ the French Dead from Agincourt.

It's in my ex's garage and will remain there until I move into the new house (a couple of months at most) I think that you could find it very useful.  It would take some scanning....... but I owe you one for the pics you sent me.

Darrell.