Perry Miniatures - War of the Roses Infantry
| Name of Product | Wars of the Roses Infantry (bows and bills) 1455-1487 |
| Product Number | WR1 |
| Manufacturer | Perry Miniatures |
| Genre | Historical (Medieval) |
| Scale | 28mm |
| Price | £15.00 |
What do you get?
Supplied in the box are two different sprues of figures. The first (and larger one) has 12 bodies without heads or arms on a thin integral base. The bodies are split into 12 separate combinations of clothing and armour: 2 x plate and hose, 4 x jack and hose, 1 x jack and plate leg armour and 5 x tunic/ and hose.
The rest of this sprue is taken up with 16 sets of arms and 12 heads wearing various helmets (pots, sallets and bascinets). The arms are moulded holding weapons 10 pairs loading and shooting longbows and six pairs wielding polearms (bills, halberds and a solitary spear.) The sets of arms come in a variety of plain sleeves, mail short sleeves and padded long and short sleeve.This is quite useful for matching up the right pairs of arms and they work fine with the various bodies due to the practice in this period of wearing multiple layers of different protection, some of which could easily be sleeveless. There are three of these sprues in the box.
The other , slightly smaller, sprue is loosely a "command set"
and contains 2 figures in full plate or "white harness". There
are three pairs of armoured arms that can be mixed and matched
to have these two men-at-arms carrying pole-axes or swords. Other
options are pointing or holding a flag staff. There is a fourth
pair of unarmoured arms to allow the conversion of one of the
figures from the other sprue into a trumpeter. In addition the
sprue has all sorts of useful items including 9 sheathed swords
(3 with bucklers attached), 5 bundles of arrows, 3 groups of arrows
planted in the ground and 10 additional heads. The heads include
knightly close-helms (one of which has a separate visor - fiddly
but allows you to position it very specifically), different variants
on sallets and 2 heads in soft caps. There are 2 of these sprues
in the box. For those of you who haven't yet done the maths, the
included weaponry allows this set to be fielded at various ratios
of bow to bill depending on your preference, rules you use or
the specific army your portraying. The range is from 1 to 1 through
to 5 bows for every 1 billman, so that covers pretty much every
eventuality. The command figures can also be drafted in as additional
close combat types if that is needed.
In addition every box comes complete with a set of plastic bases and a leaflet that has a beginners guide to painting Wars of the Roses livery as well as a page of full colour banners to cut out and apply to the included flagpoles.
How do they compare?
The detail on these mouldings all looks first rate. The helmet and some of the jacks have individual rivets nicely depicted, all details are sharp and there are no rounded or blobby parts. The armour and clothing style looks right for this period but there is nothing so specific that it would be jarring to use these for any time in the 15th Century. Size-wise the figures are 30mm to the top of their heads (around 27-28mm to eye level where it is visible.) They are at the more life like end of the proportions scale and head size is approximately 1/6 of their height. In this they are almost identical to the Perry's' own metal figures with which they mix perfectly.
Unsurprisingly a supporting range of personalities and more exotic troop types is already appearing to add to the variety possible in your armies. It will as always be an individual call as to whether this style of figure will mix on the table let alone in a unit with other manufacturers' fare.
Certainly these are noticeably taller than the Foundry Wars of the Roses figures (also Perry sculpts) at 25-27mm tall and they are a fair bit slimmer than the Front Rank range. Armoured figures do seem to pose less of a problem as they are all bulkier that an unarmoured man to begin with.
The final word.
Over the last few years I have found myself becoming a bit of a Perry Miniatures figure snob; when looking at a new period to game my first thought is, "Do the Perries do any figures for that?" This has helped to overcome my natural resistance to plastic figures and I have bought each of the boxes as they have been produced. The most recent offering is one that makes a lot of sense in plastic but would be all too easy to get wrong, with lots of very period specific details in armour and clothing. The armies of the Wars of the Roses in the 15th Century were composed mainly of the legendary English longbowmen (or occasionally Welsh) backed up by infantry armed with polearms; usually billhooks or "bills". With these two troop types supplied in plastic pretty much a complete army can be fielded. Unusual or exotic types can be provided in metal but the main cost has been significantly reduced.
