If you give a Szeklers a bow...

The Szeklers were the finest horsemen in Medieval Hungary, fighting as lance, bow and sword-armed cavalry. Noted for their fighting skill, they played a key role in defending Hungary from the expanding Ottoman Empire. The Szeklers enjoyed autonomy under the Hungarian crown. Their lands were outside of traditional Hungarian law, including taxation, and their only obligation to the Crown was to supply troops for military service.

Szeklers Armored Cavalry:  In Field of Glory, Szeklers cavalry options are what make the Later Hungarian army list sizzle.  They can be taken as Armored Superior cavalry with bow and sword.  That means they can melee with anyone except knights.  As Superior mounted bow, it's probably wiser to deploy them in a single line and evade when charged, shooting your enemy to bits.  After knights, they're the best Hungarian troops on the medieval battlefield.

Szeklers Light Horse: You're probably thinking, "Light Horse? Yawn."  As the best horsemen in the region, it should come as no surprise that they can be taken as Superior.  Did I mention they're sword and bow armed? They outclass most Light Horse in period. I painted 3 units of these fellows, all the better to tear up the enemy Light Horse.

Painting these Essex horsemen left me wanting more.  I'll scratch that itch by ordering up a horse-heavy Essex army, once I can decide on the army!

I've got a new army under way to celebrate the launch of Field of Glory 2.  V2 is supposed to be released in October so I need step away from the blog and get painting! 

Hungarian Lights

After a year layoff, it's good to be painting Essex figures again.  While Essex gets grief from some quarters over the limited poses, there's no company with a larger line of 15mm Medieval figures that I know of.  And their horses are simply the best in this scale.  I have some Xyston horses on my painting table and they look small and thin by comparison. The same goes for Old Glory.  Here's the first batch of reinforcements I painted up for my Later Hungarian commission.   

Hungarian Light Horse Archers:  Hungarian Light Horse are nothing special in the Medieval era but you can run up to 12 bases of them.  Good detail on the figures.  I really love the braiding on the coat and the fur trimmed jackets.

Foot Archers:  Cheap and nimble filler, really cheap if you take them as poor quality.  But then you'll have to hide them on the battlefield!  Forest green uniforms will help them hide in the woods if that's necessary.

Crossbowmen:  Like the Foot Archers, crossbowmen are cheap Light Foot filler for the Hungarian army.  Cheap doesn't mean they can't look fabulous and their yellow & black combo work looks quite stylish.  Essex cast the crossbow separately from the figures and that extra step worked quite well for these figures.

Up next in the batter's box are Szekler Light Horse (x3) and armored Szekler Cavalry. 

The Black Army Stumbles

I'd planned to do loads of yardwork Saturday but rain and cold weather gave me an excuse to put off until tomorrow what I could have done today!  Then Brandt asked if I was up for a game of Field of Glory. Perfect! I was a bit down about missing Little Wars in Chicago this weekend due to family commitments. In the alternate, we did a Littlest Little Wars convention in my basement featuring Later Ottoman Turk vs. Later Hungarians.  My Turks and Hungarians haven't seen a tabletop in 2012 and this was a historical mash-up I've wanted to try for some time.

At the start of the game, I got initiative and Brandt got almost no helpful terrain to go with the Turks. Undaunted, he came out swinging.

Early action saw Brandt jamming me with his light horse and skirmishers.  Everything in the Turkish army can shoot and I was shedding bases to his bow fire.  My 2 units of Serbian Hussars each lost a base and went disrupted, limiting their effectiveness the rest of the game. The upside was that 3 battlegroups of his Akinjis  light horse got way out in front of his army with no clear retreat path.  If I could charge them quickly, they'd be forced to either stand in place and melee or evade through his supporting line and disrupt units. I was salivating at both prospects.

The Black Army takes the field

Today saw my Later Hungarian army on the tabletop for the very first time.  Brandt promised to bring down an army to "help" me field test my army and he did not disappoint.  

My Later Hungarian Army:
Hungarian Nobles (Knights) x 2
Szeklers x 3

Serbian Hussars x2

Hungarian Light Horse Archers x2

Clipeati & Armati x 2
Handgunners x 2
Foot Archers x1
Troop commanders x 4


Brandt's Mamluk Egyptian army:
Mamluks x2
Halqa x3
Sultans own mamluks x2:  Armored Elite drilled bow swordsmen!
Turkoman x2 
Bedouin  x 1
Field commander x1, Troop commanders x 2

His list was a rude awakening for me because it was all mounted with mostly armored, superior, drilled, bow, swordsman and four units of Lancers!  Unit for unit, his cavalry generally outclassed mine except for my Knights.  I had a lot of foot troops and I realized my Defensive Spearmen were going to have trouble getting into a game with mounted troops.Brandt's quality army versus Monty's quantity. As they say in Canada, who will win out, eh?

The first twist of the game was that of the 10 pieces of terrain, 8 ended up on Brandt's side. Since I lost initiative and had the first move, I decided to try to jam Brandt's army as moved up and out the terrain on his half of the board. There was a vineyard in the middle of the table which counts as difficult terrain and it basically cut the battlefield in two. I stacked my Knights on the right side of the battlefield and planned to conduct a delaying action on the left side against Brandt's best troops, The Sultan's Own Mamluks.   

I paired each Hungarian light horse with Serbian hussars and sent them on double moves to delay on the far left and right flanks. The downside to this strategy was that my Hussars took a great deal of bow fire and each ended up disrupted, neutralizing them.  The upside was that they did slow the Egyptians out of the gates and made a nuisance of themselves.

On my right flank, my Knights made good progress, although one battle group almost got sucked into a trap due to its impetuousness and a charge without orders.  One more inch of pursuit and they would have been in trouble from the start.  As luck would have it, they ended up just short of offering a flank to the Halqua and their lances. My second unit of Knights got extremely lucky and was able to catch an evading unit of Halqua from behind.  In short order, the Halqua were broken from the field.  The saving grace for the Egyptians was that the pursuit phase put my Knights far away from the critical action on my right flank.

In what would turn out to be the critical match up of the game, 2 units of Halqua charged a single Knight unit.  Against all odds, this matchup would grind on for 4 or 5 turns. Brandt's dicing was insane at times, with him rolling a 12, a 12, and 11 for morale checks in 3 consecutive turns.  Whichever side broke first would open up a hole which the other side could exploit and win the day.  

On my left, the 2 units of Sultan's Own Mamluks each got in a charge against Szelker Cavalry.  I knew I had to hold these guys up if I wanted to have a chance so I threw my commanders into the front lines in each of the melees.  In one  turn, Brandt killed 2 of my 4 commanders!  Ahhh!  Fortuna was starting to frown on me.  How could I make her smile instead?  The game teetered on a knife's edge!  Could my Szelkers hold long enough for my Knights to win on the right? Things were so desperate that I did the unthinkable and threw my King into the front lines to rally the weary Knights.  Brandt Kingslayer salivated at the chance to collect the head of Matthias Corvinus.

Finally, my superior numbers kicked in. I was able to sneak foot archers through a vineyard and up into the Egyptian camp for a quick 2 points. I threw a unit of Szeklers into the all-important scrum with my Knights and King, giving me extra to dice for melee. And I was able to bring my 2nd unit of Knights in with a rear charge on the enemy, putting Brandt over the break point as I myself went fragmented. Game goes to the Black Army!  And the King lived!  Long live the King!

This was a close run thing.  I was mentally exhausted at the end of this 5 1/2 hour marathon match. Medieval match-ups tend to be quicker than ancient games in Field of Glory but this was the exception!  Plus, I have to say that Brandt is one of the toughest match-ups in our club and proof is that this is was the very first time I've beaten him.  Great game, fascinating match-ups and both Brandt and I plan to tweak our lists just a bit.

Lastly, let the record to show that the Mountain Dew vending machine was broke today and I was unable to sustain myself with the sweet nectar of the gods as is normally my practice when I get tired. In the alternate, I tried a can of Red Bull and wow, does that taste bad!  Plans for a Red Bull sponsorship for my Hungarian army in Field of Glory tournaments are definitely off!   

Generals and Majors

and Matthias Corvinus himself! In keeping with the theme of the Black Army, I painted the King's breastplate black with a glaze over the top. I painted 3 figures per base but after experimenting with the arrangement, I decided it was too crowded and downsized to 2 figures per command base. I also did faces as best I could and eyes on the king.  I don't think I'll be doing that again any time soon...maybe once per army!

 

With that, the Medieval Hungarian army is complete and ready for the tabletop.  I'll order and paint up some cannons so I can port this army into Field of Glory Renaissance.

In celebration of this milestone, I'll extro the Hungarian Army project with one of my favorite musical bits by XTC.

Bad spot for a flat tire!

Hungarian camp is finished and the end of this project is in sight!  I had two early ideas for this camp, neither of which came to fruition. I wanted to do something that fit thematically with a medieval Hungarian army. My first idea was to build an elevated camp that looked like it was situated on a mountain cliff.  I worked over a couple of  pieces of Styrofoam but I could not get it to look proper so I discarded the mountain cliff idea.

For my second idea, I found a wagon and hand gunners in my pile of unpainted figures.  Corvinus' Black Army employed protected battlewagons so I decided to use Green Stuff to turn an ordinary wagon into a protected battle wagon. This required me to build a very thin wooden wall onto one side of the wagon from which the handgunners would have protection while loading and firing. Try as I might, my skills with Green Stuff modelling putty are not sufficient to convert a wagon into a Hussite-like fortress on wheels.

In the process of this failed conversion, I snapped a wheel off of the wagon.  My first inclination was to curse my ineptitude.  My second was to use the busted wagon as the centerpiece of  my camp.  BINGO!!!!

I'm not much of an ideas guy and I mostly follow in the footsteps of painters and hobbyists more talented than I.  This time though, I managed to come up with a good theme for the camp AND I tried something new in painting the tent. I blocked in the base colors. Then I put in ocher wash over the top of it. Then I put the highlights on in thick rivulets so that when they dried, they formed a ridge/shadow to simulate the shadowing on a fabric tent.  Last step, I brought in Devlon Mud wash in with a very thin brush to create a line between the two colors.   I think it works!  It looks good from 3 feet away but of course, photos aren't shot from 3 feet away.

I'm just happy that I've been able to incorporate an Impetus-like diorama into Field of Glory!  Here's a shot that incorporates a dime to show the 15mm scale for nonmodellers.  The medieval tent is by Baueda and it is spectacular.  I'll be using Baueda for all of my tents  in the future!  Figures and wagon are by Essex and quite excellent themselves.  

The rarely seen "dime" pavis. 

Last is the work in progress pic. It is true that posting a "work in progress" pic at the end of a post is out of order but blogging requires you to start with your best picture first to (hopefully) draw readers in.

It occurred to on me that I need some fortifications to my Ottoman Turks army so I got about building them.  These were made with Durhams Water Putty thickly mixed and slapped on Litko bases. Woodland Scenic Fine Ballast over the top with glue/water mix. Fortifications will give my Janissary foot an assist when fighting on wide open Knight-centric battlefields. And as a bonus, having the Janissary fight from behind fortifications is also historically correct!

When Accident became Providence!

No, you can't eat them

Hungarian Knights!

Hungarian knights in the 14-15th century were equipped much like their western counterparts.  Unlike their western counterparts, Hungarian knights didn't routinely charge everything that moved on the battlefield.  Repeatedly facing Ottoman Turk light horse tactics must have taught them to be cautious.  These knights are the core troops around which Matthias Corvinus' Black Army was built.  Much like a game of high stakes poker, you are "all in" when the knights go in! 

These are all Essex figures and they were a joy to paint.  Essex horses are just fantastic with a great variety of poses and figures.  I would say these figures represent my best work to date.  I took the time to black line the tack on the horses and I think it was worth the extra effort.  I also tried painting faces for the first time.  Not so easy with old eyes but its a start!  Forgive me for the number of photos but I'm pretty pleased with these 3 battlegroups.  I need to savor my painting victory before moving on to the command stands and camp.  The end of the Hungarian project is in sight! I'm really interested to see how they do against the Ottoman Turks.