F

Well, I bought my first unit at Warfare in Reading the other week. I was really intending to buy the Crusader figures but having looked at both those and the Gripping Beast figures I went for GB. I think it was the level of detail I was impressed by and the fact that the Crusader figures have rather odd proportions. The GB figures are not ideal and the faces, in particular, are very crude but we will see how they paint up. I have based a unit of twenty foot. But they also have nice Normans (which I hadn't looked at before-not as nice as the Perry Crusaders but still nice), Islamic figures, Rus and others which will all be compatible.

I bought:

BYZ05 Command with large teardrop shields 1 pack (I went into a panic when asked which type of shield I wanted as I hadn't thought about it-I think this is right for the period).

BYZ07 Armoured Infantry attacking 3 packs

BYZ08 Armoured Archers 2 packs

I have now based them as a unit of 20 with 5 archers in the rear rank. I used a mixed foot archery unit in an Armies of Chivalry game the other week and they work quite well but as you round down for the archers firing (only half can shoot) a five man rank will only give me two shots. I don't want to go down to four figure ranks as one casualty means you lose rank bonus but 6 figure ranks tie up quite a lot of figures when most people in the club seem to use 4 or 5 figure ranks. Combats never seem to last long enough to bother about having figures for lapping around. I also prefer the look of figures with odd numbers of figures as it means I can have my command group surrounded by equal numbers either side. I can always build bigger units later.