"The wars of the roses" Topic

I am thinking of starting to collect an army for The Wars of the Roses could one of you fine fellows suggest what I should start collecting for unit types for a sensible start.

Perhaps even a suggestion for a reference that is not to in depth or heady a read as I have little knowledge of the conflict.
Many thanks in advance

There are some reasonable Ospreys. Lion Rampant will get you interesting games at a fairly low figure headcount.

Unit types.

Bowmen
Billmen
Foot knights
Mounted knights.

Look at the Perry WotR range for a good indication, even if you don't want to do 28s.

Proportions: Paint more archers than anything else. Billmen might not be more numerous than dismounted Men-at-Arms (MAA), but if they are I don't think that anybody is going to fault your choice. If you have zero billmen, again, I don't think that anybody is going to find fault. HOWEVER! do not make all of your MAA cap-a-pie plate infantry. I'd guess that over half of the MAA in a battle line would be mostly chainmail with pieces of plate, especially on the knees and arms and chest. A pleasing mix of old style (late Hundred Years War, HYW) armor on the lesser nobility and yeomanry would look cool. All the leaders and their standard bearers (command group figures) should be equipped in the latest armor style, which would probably be imported Italian and German plate. Cavalry: WotR armies don't have to field a single unit of cavalry. But if you want mounted troops, a single unit of MAA would be sufficient. If anyone tried to field more than say 10% of their total army as mounted troops I'd be making objections….

Thanks fellows, guess I should have said I intend on doing 25/28mm figures.

Look into the Perry Miniatures hard plastic figures. Assembly is required but it is not difficult and the resulting variety is great.

Front Rank do some very nice WOR figures.
I painted them up as Burgundians.

Front Rank on the left Old Glory on the right.

link

As mentioned by coopman, Perry Miniatures have some lovely products.
This boxed set is a nice taster.

It's important to realize that during that period knights were called Man at Arms. Knight during this period was a social status, man at arms was combat role. Some man at arms were Knights, some were not. When looking at armies composition you won't be confused if you know this little fact.

Also, towards the end of the war some interesting troops from Scotland, Ireland and Europe appeared as mercenaries for both sides. You can have light cavalry, light infantry, pikemen, crossbowmen and even wild looking Irish fighting in your army. Of course, the basic composition was as others stated above.

A book that I recommend is "Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses" by Haigh:
link

Men at arms (i.e. knights) were rarely mounted in the big battles of the time. They dismounted and fought on foot, in most cases.

A lot depends on what level you wish to game at.

At Lion Rampant level fully-plated men-at-arms will probably be less common.

At Hail Caesar level you can probably get fancy toys like European Mercenary pikes.

all valuable information thank you fellows!

I suggest the Perfect Captains Coat of Steel for Rules and guide to basing

Perry 28mm Plastics or Mirilton 15mm Metals for miniatures

The two scenario books produced for Poleaxed for scenarios

A book that I recommend is "Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses" by Haigh:
link

But don't trust his maps. Some of them are completely wrong.

Link to the free A Coat of Steel Rules

link

and a sample of poleaxed scenarios

PDF link

Perhaps even a suggestion for a reference that is not to in depth or heady a read as I have little knowledge of the conflict.

The "Poleaxed" link in the post above is for sample pages from the War of the Roses Sourcebooks which were written as general overviews for wargamers.

Mirliton 15mm Metals for miniatures

Here's a link for you.

Hope this helps.

--
Martin Stephenson
Vexillia: Wargames Miniatures & Accessories
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About Perry miniatures plastics, they are a great choice if you like assembling plastics and having plenty of choice over how your models will look like.

If you don't like assembling plastics, then these are not for you. There is a decent number of parts per model that need to be glued together (around 5 parts for most, bit fewer or more for some), and you will also need to spend some time selecting which parts to use where. If you want to skip the assembly work, then it is better to look for metals (Perrys themselves do some nice metal men-at-arms and billmen, but not much in the way of metal archers).

If you are not sure whether you like assembling plastics, get one of their WotR plastic infantry sets, assemble half of it and then decide whether you want to continue or go back to cleaning metal figures.

If you are sure that you really really like assembling plastics, and want to make the most out of them, then consider early on investing in one of each of the plastic sets (WotR infantry, Mercenaries, Mounted men-at-arms, Foot knights and the upcoming "light cavalry" set), and then buying additional sets of WotR infantry as need arises. That way you can freely mix and match parts between the different sets (there being something like 57 different plastic heads to select from) and make your models really varied looking.

(Reasonable people will of course point out that buying one of everything in the beginning will make your starter force too heavy in men-at-arms, but you don't need to build all of those in the beginning. Assemble a bunch of them everytime you buy a new box set of WotR infantry. And as for the Mercenaries set, you don't need to arm them all with the weapons from their own box – there are plenty of leftover bow and bill arms in the WotR infantry kit, and you could even nick something from the Foot knights box.)

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In any case, choose the kind of miniatures that you like most.

I know that it varied, but what is a reasonable unit mix for someone to start out modeling? For example, 1/3 of the units are archers, 1/3 of the units are billmen and 1/3 of the units are men at arms. Would that be far off?

I know that it varied, but what is a reasonable unit mix for someone to start out modeling? For example, 1/3 of the units are archers, 1/3 of the units are billmen and 1/3 of the units are men at arms. Would that be far off?

I usually work on the basis of 50% archers, 40% billmen and 10% MAA.

My opinion is that "billmen" have received a much higher "billing" than they ought to. MAA were much more numerous in WotR battles than they ever were in HYW battles. I wouldn't put more than c. 50% of them into a WotR army, though. Archers could vary anywhere from "1/3" to well over half of the total, even as high as the HYW ration of one MAA to every five or six archers. But that would be the outside limit. At the major battles such as Wakefield and Towton I think that the archer component was never more than half, with MAA making up 3/4 or 4/5 of the balance, with "billmen" filling the rest. Keep in mind that "billmen" were probably "failed archers", i.e. those not strong enough to pull a "warbow"….

MAA were much more numerous in WotR battles than they ever were in HYW battles.

I'm not sure on what evidence you base that assertion, (and we have had a similar discussion elsewhere) but based on the fact that full plate armour was extremely expensive, I really think that having more than 10% MAA in a WOTR army is stretching the bounds of credulity.

Having said that I am also aware that there is a debate in academic circles that questions the existence of "billmen" at all …

I'm also not sure I agree with the concept of "bilmen" as being "failed archers" on the grounds that with the constant training from the age of 7 it should be possible for any fit man to draw a warbow.

I would however consider "billmen" to possibly be the "MAA" that couldn't afford full plate harness …

True on both points, MajorB.

"MAA" in my definition does not limit the category to only cap-a-pie plated nobility. Most of the MAA would have been well armed "mail and plate" or wearing the older iron plate armor. The "cat's whiskers" fighters in the latest gear were always a small percentage, and probably 10% of total army is pushing the limit as far as it ought to go.

Billmen would be an overlapping troop type, with some lightly equipped MAA and heavily equipped archers contributing.

I know that archers started out very early in boyhood. However, due to exigencies of earning a living, health, or rather the lack of it, and the beginning of the diminishment of the English passion for shooting (lamented fully by Ascham two generations after Bosworth), many trained archers were unfit or unable to pull that most powerful of missile weapons, the "warbow". Rather than shoot a lesser weapon, would it not be more realistic to take the increasingly permissible alternative, the bill?…

I second Coat of Steel with the right flavour fort he period, works in any scale.