New book in the collection

 Gabriele Esposito's Armies of the Medieval Italian Wars 1125–1325 (Men-at-Arms 523), illustrated beautifully by Giuseppe Rava, arrived today. This should calm my nerves a bit when it comes to planning out the painting of my Later Communal Italian army.

 

 

Note to Amazon: Please, for the love of all that is good and sacred, start shipping books so that they're better protected against damage!!! I bought this as "new" but it looks like it has seen plenty of action in the past; the cover has a couple of creases, corners bent, scuff marks, etc.

I've settled on a WotR army

 Or have I?

I have been, for some time, mulling over building a Wars of the Roses (WotR) army. The biggest obstacle to getting started has been not being able to decide which side to represent or at least which side to represent first. Delving deeper into one line of my genealogy (mother's side) seemed to have solved the issue for me... or so I thought.

Comparing a database list of those involved in the WotR to my family tree showed a ratio heavily weighted towards the Lancastrians. There it was. The first retinue(s) were finally going to be planned. Then I decided to go looking for flags/banners/pennants and found a link to the archived Grimsby Wargames Society. On the very last sheet of Yorkist flags was the one name I know is legitimately an ancestor (DNA matched distant relatives); Sir William Skipwith (oddly spelled Skypwyth on the flag sheet).

Now, I really wanted to start with Yorkist troops but I can't seem to find any information at the moment regarding Sir William Skipwith and his possible participation in the WotR. Another probable ancestor, Sir Lionel de Welles, at least has some information available. There are also commercially available banner and livery decals for him, which helps in deciding on my first retinue to build and paint. That said, it looks like the Lancastrians are the only real option for me at the moment unless I somehow managed to stumble on information on the Skipwith connection that has so far managed to evade detection.

WRG resource books collection has begun!

First up:

Armies of Feudal Europe 1066-1300

by Ian Heath

Cities of the Lombard League

 The Lombard League (1167 AD - 1250 AD) was an alliance of Northern Italian cities formed as a defense against the Holy Roman Empire's attempts to assert influence over the Kingdom of Italy.

The cities represented in the League changed throughout its existence. These cities were as follows:

1167 - 1250 AD	1167 - 1208 AD	1226 - 1250 AD
Alessandria Bergamo Bologna Brescia Crema Ferrara Lodi Mantova Milano Padova Piacenza Treviso Vercelli Verona Vicenza	Alba Asti Bobbio Chieri Cremona Genova Ivrea Malaspina Modena Novarao Parma Reggio Tortona Venezia	Faenza Monferrato Torino Vigevano