Never Ending Knights

It's been almost a month since I started this group of Garrison knights and sergeants. They hit a near perfect wave of obstacles ranging from the minor things like repeated calls for physical labour during my best painting light hours and the resulting tiredness in the evenings to major things like having trouble choosing the colours and heraldry and not liking the 1st attempts to an odd reluctance on the part of the figures to accept paint graciously, something I experience now and then. (Cynics might suggest the problem is actually to do with how tired or distracted the painter is.)

In any event they have been bypassed several times while I worked on something else but after having a fairly relaxing day with a game and only 2 hours of snow clearance I decided to force finish them before they got quietly put away unfinished for ever. Luckily gloss varnish hides a multitude of sins.

Sir Daniel Lichen and Sir Edward Longbottom and 2 henchmen almost ready for battle.

When I started in on them, they were going to be a 4 figure unit on unarmoured horses. They would serve as a supporting unit for the Earl of Cowcross or as medium cavalry if needed. Sir Daniel just seemed to need a barded horse though, and possibly a front row seat. Then, the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed to me that the sergeants and lesser knights and other men at arms would be serving in separate units. It seemed more likely that they should be permanently attached as a 2nd rank to the great lords and knights on their barded horses leaving it to mounted crossbowmen and some sort of border horse to form the light or medium cavalry.

Then I changed the grid size........

My existing and in progress units were designed as 2 stand units to fit a 4" grid. They look a little lost on the 6" grid so either bigger stands or more of them are called for. Either way will allow me to use more figures without making the games bigger, longer or more complex but if I go for more bases I can also add more depth to the units without adding complexity.

So now the plan is to convert the existing partially built armies to a smaller number of larger units, 6 stands if heavy, 3 if light. Since most of the units are not uniformed its mostly a matter of shuffling but, this just might mean "having" to buy more figures.......