Army Showcase - Redwall

I reported a battle between my Redwall matched army pair yesterday and promised an Army Showcase for them So here it is.

'Redwall' is a children's book written in the 1980s by British author Brian Jacques. It proved so successful that he went on to write around twenty more, three of which were made into animated TV series. The world of Redwall is one of anthropomorphic woodland animals (almost all native to the British Isles) adventuring mostly in an area called Mossflower Woods, but sometimes straying into other areas as well.

The books are very formulaic, which is both a strength and weakness. You know what you're going to get with each one, which is great, but the downside is that there are few surprises. They generally feature a heroic animal of some kind, plus companions, setting off on a quest, whilst evil forces gather and threaten some part of Mossflower. The morality of the characters is pretty much defined by their species (another area that has attracted some criticism). Mice, otters, hedgehogs, moles, shrews, hares and badgers are invariably good, whilst 'vermin' animals - rats, wild-cats, weasels, stoats, foxes and so on - are always evil. And within this each species has particular traits - for example, shrews are argumentative and militant (the author based them on Liverpool dock-workers), whilst the hares are heroic and talk like WWII British fighter-pilots.

The series jumps around chronologically; the books skip back and forth through Mossflower's history, and often the main characters only appear for one book only. Central to most of them, though, is Redwall Abbey, which features as a bastion of decency and community throughout the stories and it's around the Abbey that the first book in the series is set.* The story is simple. The peaceful Abbey is threatened when the mighty rat warlord, Cluny The Scourge, arrives with his horde. The inhabitants use wit and courage to defend it from his army, whilst a young mouse called Matthias begins to get dream-messages from a legendary hero called Martin The Warrior, and sets out on a quest to recover his lost sword and shield and save the Abbey.

It was my wife who started reading the series and suggested that there was a lot of potential for HOTT armies in it. The trickiest part was figure availability. There is a manufacturer who does suitable miniatures now, but twenty years ago (which is how long ago I put together these armies) there was nothing. I had to resort to conversion and scratch-building.

And here are the Defenders of Redwall

The army list is as follows:

1 x Hero (Matthias, with the sword and shield of Martin The warrior)
1 x Hero (Basil Stag-Hare and Jess the Squirrel)
1 x Horde General (The Abbot)
1 x Behemoth (Constance, the Badger Mother)
2 x Shooters (Mouse Archers and Otter Slingers)
1 x Warband (Heroic Abbey Defenders)
1 x Warband (The Guosim)
1 x Lurker (More Guosim)
1 x Flyer (Sparra Warriors)

And here's Matthias. He's the guide for most of the figures in this army; he's a Pendraken 10mm figure, with a head sculpted from Milliput, and that's pretty much the case for everything else.

Basil Stag-Hare and Jess. These are 15mm figures from Peter Pig and Irregular, but again the heads are sculpted. I might give Basil a sword at some stage. I can't remember why I didn't arm him originally.

Redwall generally has an Badger Mother, and during the events of Redwall the role was taken by Constance who proved a fearsome fighter. Classing badgers in the series as behemoths does not seem unreasonable.

Constance is an old-style plastic GW Skaven with the weapons and ears removed and more clothing added.

Although the various heroes and Constance provide the main fighting strength for the Abbey, it is still run by the Abbot, and so he is the general for the army. Classing him as a horde makes him suitably weak and vulnerable. Again these are Pendraken 10mm figures with Milliput heads. The mouse in the yellow dress is Cornflower.

The army has some conventional rank and file. These are its missile troops - otter slingers converted from Peter Pig figures and mouse archers converted from Pendraken figures.

There's also a warband, representing some of the minor characters involved in the defence of the Abbey - the otter is Winifred, and the hedgehog is Ambrose Spike. I can't remember who the squirrel represents.

The Guosim provide a lurker and warband for the army. Guosim? It's the Guerilla Union Of Shrews In Mossflower, of course.

Finally in the roof of the Abbey dwell a fierce tribe of Sparras (sparrows). Although they initially hinder Matthias's quest they end up as valuable allies of the Abbey. They are slightly modified giant eagles from Peter Pig's 6mm range.

Finally, of course, the Abbey itself. This was bought from Forgeworld who, many years ago, did resin models of parts of famous Irish castles. Needless to say that it cost me more than all the miniatures I used for the actual army.

Most heroic armies based in or around Redwall in the series would be similar to this one. The Sparra are written out early on, but a number of books feature helpful birds of prey that would make a suitable replacement.

And what of Cluny The Scourge? This is his horde:

1 x Hero General (Cluny The Scourge)
1 x Warband (Cluny's Lieutenants)
2 x Shooters (Rat and Fox Archers)
1 x Sneaker (The Shadow)
1 x Sneaker (Tunnelling Rats)
8 x Hordes (Vermin)

Cluny is big and fierce with one-eyeand a poison barb attached to his tail. I used a plastic GW snotling as the base figure, and added a plastic GW rat head. The sword and tail were scratchbuilt.

The rats that make up the bulk of Cluny's army are either from Pendraken or what was Chariot Miniatures. I liked the rat with the pirate hat, and thought it would make a good lieutenant for Cluny. The standard is part of a tapestry of Martin The Warrior that the rats stole from the Abbey. I scanned it from an illustration in the book, then coloured it.

Cluny tries a number of stratagems to get into the Abbey, and these are represented by two sneaker elements. One represents his attempt to dig a tunnel under the Abbey walls, whilst the other represents his mysterious assassin, The Shadow. The tunnellers are converted from Chariot figures, whilst the Shadow is a Pendraken rat.

The Archers are foxes and rats. They are all from Chariot - the foxes are dog-headed archers from their Fantasy Egyptian range, with Milliput tails.

The Hordes. Pendraken and Chariot again.

The two sneakers make this army tricky to use, and I'm inclined to consider adding another warband and downgrading one of the sneakers to a lurker instead.

Cluny's army is pretty much the prototype for all vermin armies in the books - not all of the generals would be heroes, but a mix of warband, shooters and, of course, hordes would pretty much cover most of them. The corsairs of the island of Sampetra offer an interesting addition of monitor lizard shock troops which are best represented as spears. And there is one all-aerial horde; the ravens and crows of General Ironbeak.

The other main army of the Redwall series is that of the mountain stronghold of Salamandastron, which is ruled by a badger-lord who leads an elite army of hares called The Long Patrol. This would be best represented by a behemoth general for the Lord, maybe a hero to represent the bravest or most skilled Long Patrol members, and then a mixture of blades and some shooters for the rank and file.

*The first book, 'Redwall', was written as a one-off, so there are a lot of things in it which are not consistent with the later books. Some of them are explained in later books; others are simply ignored.