I Feel Something Stirring Inside... And It's Not The Curry.

As you will have noticed, if you've been reading my posts recently, I've been hard at work on a truly massive project for two of my clients, focussing on assorted renaissance armies including 96 figure strong Swiss pike blocks.

Now, you may also recall that I had lost my drive for military history, beyond doing my job, but I think a chink has appeared in my armour and the light of wargaming seems to be shining through.

I have decided that I will begin work again on an early 16th Century Florentine army, which is to be honest rather vanilla, when compared to other forces of the period.

It really is quite plain, but in that, lies it's strength.

I play to either the old WRG rules by George Gush, or to La Condotta. The beauty is, that I can point an army up using WRG, but use it unaltered for L.C.

The majority of the Italian armies for the period are either filled with a lot of cavalry or have truly piss-poor city state troops. The cavalry is usually impetuous and the infantry indifferent at best.

Florentine armies on the other hand have less variety but are all steady 'C' class.

There's not a lot of horse at all, and it's C class like the rest, being 15 Elmeti and 20 skirmishers.

The artillery is limited to 2 guns, there's a few crossbow and billmen, but there are hundreds (literally) of 'C' class pike and arquebus; nice big blocks of steady regular troops which should be able to deal with the other armies easily, perhaps with the exception of the rather 'Mickey Mouse' list of combined Milanese/Venetian forces. My mate has that army and so the gloves will be off.He hates pike, so will not field them... Big mistake in my opinion.

The figures I am going to use will probably be Assault Group, Perry and Essex, with command by Mirliton.

I'm actually quite enthusiastic about this, as I can get good quality flags, love the history of the Medici and the writings of Machiavelli and have a 'thing' about massive blocks of pikemen, which stems from the blocks painted by the late great Peter Gilder for his Wargames Holiday Centre and which featured regularly in Miniature Wargames in my distant youth.

Who knows? This may actually get me shaking off the doldrums. I've had a love of Renaissance warfare sine introduced to it by lloyd Powell of Sheffield Wargames Society about 35 years ago, and as you may imagine this has been the period which has been avoided the most in the last couple of years. It bodes well that I have re-discovered my love for this most colourful of periods.

We shall see...


TTFN

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