Fall In 2009 - Chevauchee 1355

Forgive me for I have sinned; it has been 16 days since my last hobby-related post.... While taking the afternoon off to watch the Phillies first playoff game against the Rockies, I decided to take a few quick pictures and post something hobby related for the first time in almost two weeks. We are only one month away from Fall In, and I have work left to do.

This is the English/Gascon army of Edward, Prince of Wales (The Black Prince). I have laid it out roughly in its intended deployment; Left, Center, Right and a cavalry contingent on the far right. As can be seen, it is sitting on an incomplete blue board battlefield. More on that later. All figures are complete but the bases need to be flocked. Details of the deployment would be different, but the contents of the army are set.

Each of the three main infantry "battles" consists of five or six units of three stands each. The front line in the picture consists of longbowmen and crossbowmen, the second line is hobilar foot and Gascon spearmen, and the third line is dismounted knights. Singly based leaders and banners are in the rear. I have been a slacker and not ordered flags from the Flag Dude. It may be too late and I may need to make some flags myself. This wouldn't be a big deal, as many of my flags were made by me from the beautiful flags that can be found on the Danish wargaming site that is in my Links section.

A typical English infantry "battle" is shown here. This battle has five units, and will be the English Left - 2 longbows, 2 hobilars, and 1 dismounted knight along with their leader and banner. A battle this size will probably be led by a leader with 4 command cards. This will make command somewhat flexible, but still make it difficult to do everything you would want to do once the troops get fully engaged.

The English order of battle will probably be very similar for the two different games that I have signed up for at the show, but the scenarios will be pretty different. In one of the games, it will be a fairly standard "English on the defense" scenario, but the other will put the English army in a position where they must attack. That one should be interesting. The scenario with the French attacking will probably be similar to Poitiers (my originally intended game) in many ways; the game with the French on the defensive will be significantly different.

This picture shows some of the French mounted knights that will form the hard-hitting core of the French army, along with some of the leaders and banners. The red flag in the center rear is the Oriflamme, the most sacred secular token of medieval France, which is only brought out from its resting place in the church of Saint Denis on the most important occasions. Whether or not the Oriflamme makes an appearance at Fall In remains to be seen.

One of the main things I need to decide is what kind of battlefield I want to go with. Simple terrain cloth with stuff on it is the easiest, but I much prefer to run games on a stiff terrain board, like the in-process ones in the first picture. I am in the midst of making a set of 2.5 foot square modular boards, but finishing six or eight of them in the next few weeks would be a project I don't know if I want to commit to. Maybe I play it by ear. Terrain boards look much better, and the chances of the game getting disturbed by an inadvertent slip are much less.

We shall see soon enough...