Richards Banner Wagon

Here is my Richard the Lionheart's banner wagon for our Little Wars big game taking place this Saturday. The game is a retelling of the Battle of Arsuf which took place in September of 1191 between Richard's Crusading Armies and Saladin forces. We are using Hail Caesar Rules with 100 point divisions, with 4 divisions a side its a huge game. The event is set up for 8 players, each player taking control of one division.  Rich owns the majority of the models and Mike is bringing the rest. My contribution was the Richards Cart which serves as the Crusaders center piece and Saladins prime objective. (to destroy or capture it.)

The planning for this started way back in December hunting down the models and figuring out the proper size,  but accounts the flag was huge..so I made it huge..in real life numbers it's 12.5 feet high by  22.5 feet long, the beam being a ship mast at about 25 feet.or so

 

Intinerarium regis ricardi is a latin prose narrative of the Third Crusade, and is supposedly a surviving first hand account written in 1220's. The bit on Richards Banner reads:

"..The Normans defended the standard..it was formed of a long beam, like the mast of the ship: made of most solid ceiled work, on four wheels. Bound with iron, and to all appearance no sword or axe could cut or fire injure it. A chosen body of soldiers was generally appointed to guard it..lest it should be broken or thrown down; for if it fell the army would be dispersed and put into confusion"

 

Unfortunately, I came across the narrative a little late in my plans, as it seem the wagon was enclosed and encased in iron as well as part of the shaft. my version here is much more susceptible to damage and very period looking, medievaly speaking which  was the point. the wagon is from Lead Adventure miniatures and  the horse team are Perry Brothers and the 4 men a Norman command pack from Gripping Beast. while I had the miniatures for sometime this project was started for scratch right after Adepticon, so its taken me all of hobby time since to get this far...some touch ups might still be in order.

 

The most challenging about the build was of course the Flag, the final version was iteration Three.

The first being a failed all green stuff banner which looked cool but had poor texture to paint on and a very tough surface to free hand paint the lion on. I spent three nights on the GS banner before deciding it looked like crap and realizing it would take far too long to free hand both sides of the banner. and said "let try something else"  I moved over to a paper banner by itself, wasnt liking that either, then I remembered I have used foil banners before but wasnt happy with the there appearance. Then I came up with what will be the way I do all my banners forever .  I set up my banner in photoshop after finding an appropriate image and printed it out on sticker paper, I then put a piece of folded foil inside the sticker paper but cut it short so the edges of the sticker paper would seal on all sides. this way the interior foil would give it a nice bend. The next issue was the printed red on the flag was not robust enought and looked fake, so I hand painted the paper careful avoiding the lion and then touched up the lion itself with some highlights as the paper absorbed the paint its took on very nice texture and foil became even more ply able for bending., in the end I was really happy with this method and that is way I will be making historical banners from now on of any size. the flag and mast are attached to the cart with a heavy magnet so it can be removed and this piece can be used a standard baggage cart in other Hail Caesar games.

 

The cart made it first appearance on the table last night at Rich's place where demo'd the game once again and you can see the banner wagon makes an impressive piece among the hundreds of models on the table. it must have motivated the Crusaders because they sent Saladin running for the hills this time in a clear victory (last time it was draw only by failure of objective, in terms of casualties, we were decimated)

Looking forward to Saturday and pictures of the event, I missed Little Wars last year but last went in 2012 and thought it was great, hope to see more of the same look for a follow up early next week!