Mountfitchet Castle 2

Yesterday I managed to get in a return trip to our local Norman fortification - Mountfitchet Castle in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex. I went there previously on 25th October 2020 with my daughters and son, but this time it was just me and my son. The weather was absolutely glorious for this time of year.

This time we only visited the castle grounds and not the associated museums. It still took us two and a half hours to get around to seeing every building, turret and rabbit hole.

I took many more videos and photos than listed below, but this is a taster of what we saw...

Plan of the medieval castle

The outer bailey and gate to the inner bailey

The cemetery

Mountfitchet Manor House

A medieval banquet

More of the medieval banquet

A working water wheel...

Apologies for the quality of some of the photos and videos - it was a very bright, sunny day and my old phone camera is very basic so finds it difficult to adjust to certain lighting conditions. Anyway, you should get the gist of what we saw.

I really like this fortification. Most of the Norman castles that I usually visit are made of stone (hence their survival), but this reconstruction of a wooden fortification is based on the archaeology. Apparently this castle lasted maybe one hundred years as a wooden fortress before parts were rebuilt in stone, of which there are still a few outcrops scattered around the site.

I am always surprised by the numbers of people assumed to have lived at archaeological sites. Mostly, castles have inflated numbers living in them according to "Hollywood", with dozens of soldiers and servants etc. being present. At this site, according to historical documents and archaeology, the number of commoners numbered maybe a couple of hundred (in addition to all the artisans' buildings, apparently, there were 11 peasant huts with an average of 20 persons per hut!). Add these to the Baron's household and soldiers, we are probably looking at the best part of three hundred souls in its heyday.

This is just my little summary of the visit that I will use as an aide de memoire. If you would like more information on the inhabitants and history of the castle, as always, it is better to take a look at the official historical and archaeological writings on the site that can be found in a number of books and on the web.

The Cousins' War - Game 4

Two games in two days - Yay! We worked out why, in the previous game, I was so soundly thrashed - it was by a slight misremembering of the rules. At the end of a battle only one army can be returned to the gaming board and the rest should go to the Reserve. We played it that all three went back to the board. Oh well, never mind, it was still fun.

With that in mind we were more careful playing the next game, and as a result it went the full five turns. I still didn't win mind, but it was a close run thing and it could have gone either way during every turn. Again, I played Lancaster and my son played York.

Turn 1 - The Battle of Ludford Bridge

As per most of our Cousins' War games, I started off really well with a victory (my only one) at the Battle of Ludford Bridge. I had control of two regions on the board and my son just the one.

Turn 2 - The Battle of St. Albans

I made some great gains on the board but lost the battle. I managed to secure my two regions and equalise in the third region. If I had won this battle it would have been over.

Turn 3 - The Battle of Mortimer's Cross

Again, my board play went well but losing the battle meant that my son was able to rescue himself at the last minute. I lost the midlands but gained the south.

Turn 4 - The Battle of Wakefield

Things turned round quite a bit in this round. With some deft board play and another win at the battle, my son managed to coax control of the north from me and both other regions went to equal influence. It was everything to play for going into the final turn.

Turn 5 - The Battle of Barnet

My son's board work and then his victory in the final battle meant that I had now lost control of two regions, which meant that he won the game by virtue of his 2:1 regional control, plus as an extra he had won four of the five battles.

This was a very close run game. It could have gone either way at many points in the game. My son just edged it with his superior battle play, plus he still has better luck with the dice than me. We both thoroughly enjoyed this one as it was a game on a knife-edge pretty much all the way through.

We will try to get maybe one more game in this week whilst he is here visiting and then start using some extra random event cards from the following game onwards to shake things up a little.

On the back of the gaming over the last couple of days, we decided to visit our local Norman Castle - Mountfitchet. We went there six years ago almost to the day (I made a blog entry for it), but today it was less crowded and the weather was glorious again for this time of year. Hopefully I will get a travel log written up for it tomorrow.

The Cousins' War - Game 3

I think I am getting worse at playing board games, especially against my youngest son. As my son is off school this week he popped over to mine for the break. We usually play a couple of games to keep our interest from waning. Yesterday we played a quick (and I mean quick, ha ha) game of Cousins' War. This time I played Lancaster and my son played York. This time it only took him two turns to defeat me!

Turn 1 - The Battle of St. Albans

Like last game, it started quite well for me - a quick win for Lancaster at the Battle of St. Albans for the first turn. But, at the end of the turn, even though I controlled the Midlands, due to some judicious card playing my son controlled both the south and the north regions.

Turn 2 - The Battle of Ludford Bridge

I was sightly outnumbered at this battle, but my card paying managed to even things up on the Influence board. Unfortunately for me, my son rolled so well at the battle, no matter how I tried to twist and turn my way out of it with my CPs, he defeated me outright and was able to place his armies back on the board and thus control all three regions to win the game.

Hopefully our next game will take a bit longer than the ten minutes this one took.

Warlord Games' Orc Warband

As per the previous post, I ordered that box set of Warlords of Erewhon plastic orcs by Warlord Games from Wayland Games at a nice hefty discount - very happy about that. The box arrived late last week.

Erewhon Orc Warband

Inside the box you get eight identical sprues, each containing enough parts to make three figures with a multitude of options for building them, plus a sprue of 24 bases.

Bases that come in the box

Two of the sprues - obverse and reverse views

On each sprue there are three upper and three lower body parts to give 9 variants in total. With there being seven heads per sprue, this variant number rises to 63. Then the variants multiply even further with the weapons and shields included - I can't be bothered to count them but there will be more variants than I will ever need.

View of one side of a sprue

...and of the other side

The main thing is that I will also be able to use many of the spare parts to further convert my GW orcs left over from the 14 standard build and the 14 conversions that I have already prepped. I think I will try to build the nine body variants from the box and mix them up a bit with the heads, before tackling some GW head and weapon swaps using the spares left on those sprues.

In other news, I am hoping to get back to playing online D&D on a Thursday evening (the sessions have been a bit lax recently due to illness, work and player availability in general), the second StarVigia adventure for my character Thomas Aquinas, plus a few other games whilst my youngest son is visiting. I will also try to get some of his Wars of the Roses and Game of Thrones figures sorted whilst he is here - at least to the constructed phase in readiness for an undercoat.

LotR Orc Update

Yesterday I started working on my Middle-Earth generic orc army that I can use for either Mordor, Isengard, or any other generic orc army of my choosing. I was waiting until I was able to get to a local gaming store to pick up a few more paints and some plastic glue, which I did at the weekend, to get started.

Today I spent a bit of time looking at the Games Workshop plastic orc variants. I have approximately 50 orc warriors on foot (some sprues from the Battle Games in Middle Earth collection and an eBay second hand purchase - all from many years ago). The poses and a couple of armaments swaps allow for 14 different variants if glued up in a particular way without any need for cutting any figures up. The first set I will paint (well, actually finish off from last year's Orctober) in the coming weeks, but I have also sorted out another set of the same 14 poses that I have done weapon swaps for - hence the requirement for the plastic glue.

Some of the swaps were quite easy - literally cut off the hand and weapon of the warrior and glue it to another warrior. Some were a little more tricky than others as there was not a lot of adhesion area for the glue to work. Anyway, here they all are...

Simple hand/weapon swaps

Spear ends swapped/replaced with alternate heads

Weapon swaps and some added shields

Bow swaps

Most of these were simple swaps of existing orc parts, but some were from other non-GW kits. The first picture above is just purely hand/weapon swaps between these four figures. The second picture had the spear ends swapped but I also used an alternative spear shaft and head from one of my historical sets for one of the conversions. In the third picture, I did a bit more work on the figures - some hand/weapon swaps, but also the addition of some shields. The figure at the end still needs a shield adding, but the ones I used for the other figures won't fit, so I need to source a suitable shield from elsewhere. Finally, in the fourth picture I replaced the bow hands for the archers. The archers are almost impossible (for my limited skill set anyway) to convert in any other way, but I may have some success with arm and head swaps for some of the others.

This has prompted me to purchase that Warlord Games plastic Orc Warband box set to use as alternative poses and for further conversions of the rest of my Games Workshop orc warriors. This box will give an extra 24 warriors - hopefully enough to make up several Midgard bases worth of orcs. Speaking of which, I will also get to work on those movement trays over the coming weeks.