The Armour Archive

There has been alot of different comments on the benefits and shortcomings of the various Osprey titles. My question to everyone is what are some of your favorite titles. Now I know that Osprey's should not be used as a end all research tool, but there are some excellent titles in the Osprey line.One right off the top of my head is Roman Military Clothing Vol.2 by Graham Webster.This is very nice little book with a good bit of info on the subject.I think because of their length(which is rather short) they are better when they concentrate on one aspect of a subject,like clothes,armor,and weapons instead of trying to cover to much in such a short volume.

I personally like some of the Japanese titles....

(WHAT!!!!???? )


Effingham

I also enjoyed some of the Japanese title's.Japanese Warrior Monks AD 949-1603 and Early Samurai I thought were well done.

Ambrosius11

Lolol, good one AJ...

I personally haven't gotten my hands on any Japanese titles that aren't by Stephen Turnbull, so I can't comment on any of your own titles, Mr. Bryant!

I really like the "Medieval English Knight" series by Christopher Gravett, as well as most of David Nicolle's work.

-Gregory-

(p.s. Ambrosius, if you didn't catch it already, Effingham was talking about his own books, he wrote the following:

Early Samurai: 200-1500 AD (Elite, 35)
Samurai: 1550-1600 (Warrior, 7)
Sekigahara 1600, The Final Struggle for Power (Campaign, 40)
The Samurai (Elite)

My apologies if I missed any! Just used Amazon to search for them...)

Nope, you got 'em.

Sekigahara is my personal favorite.


Effingham

Note to self: Think first - post second.

All of the Japanese titles sucked.

Except for four of them.

[trying to pull us back from AJ and back to topic... ]

I think the Osprey titles are killer for basic information. They're usually quite good for the bibliographies at the end. That makes them a good starting point that has the added plus of pretty pictures.

Trouble is, they're by and large not much good for much else. They're generally -- especially the Man-at-Arms series -- much, much too general for much use. Remember their genesis: As vague reference works for military wargamers. We've come to rely on them waaaaay too much in the LH scene, such that noobs waving Osprey books generally get politely snarked at.

Hows the Authenticity (spelling ??) ratings on the books dealing with the 100 years war ?? Perticularly with the English side ??

I think the Warrior Series book on Italian Militia. The plates are great and the B&W photos show a lot of frescoes that show contemporary illustrations of armour. Those have to be the best collection of infantry armour I've seen.

"Armies of Medieval Burgundy" (Man at Arms series)is a decent book, as is
"The English Knight" 1200-1300, 1300-1400, 1400-1500 (Warrior Series). More recent campaign series books are decent as well, begining with Bosworth 1485, and continuing along through Towton and Tewkesbury.

For late Medieval titles, the artwork done by Gerry Embleton (who no longer works for Osprey), and Graham Turner are reasonably reliable as secondary sources, and well researched. All others need to be taken with at least a grain of salt.

The titles are what they are, they were intended as wargaming guides, and work reasonably well for that. They are often good introductions to a complete novice on the subject matter, presuming you are using a book written by a author knowledgeable on the subject, and the artist is familar with the material as well. When I first got out of High-School, oh-so-many years ago, I bagan building up my library on the Wars of the Roses, and Late Medieval Burgundy by referencing the bibliographies of these books. I don't think anyone on the board would be unimpressed by my library concerning these subjects - I have far more money invested in books than I do in harness.

Often, the photos of original artifacts included within their pages are the only inexpensive and easy to find way a novice can collect such photographs - an excellent example of a useful series of photographs for those interested in the subject of 15th century armour is the series of photos of the Avant harness -dissassembled and opened up, in the tite "The English Knight, 1400-1500".

In short, I really think a lot of the better titles are too readily dismissed as sources by people like me, who have the training and experience to find better references.


Some titles should be avoided, containing information so dated as to be next to useless, or just written by an author who has a famous name, but no knowledge of the subject he happens to be writing about, and some artwork is so dreadful as to be revulsive to the eyes of the knowledgeable. Most of the Earlier Hundred Years War MAA series titles fall into thism catagory (It should be noted that the Campaign Series "Crecy" "Poitiers" and "Agincourt" (campaign series, not the MAA title) are very good ). "Irish Wars" is an abomination in regards to artwork. The most recent Niccole MAA series regarding Scandanavia and Russia are practically laughable for most artwork - the combination of MacBride and Niccole are enough to have me avods any such title discussing Medieval Europe itself, although some of MacBrides earlier work "German Armies 1300-1400", for example, was respectable.

I think mcBride is more comfortable doing more earlier period pieces, because it seems his earlier period work is always better.The more recent Warrior title from Osprey, Roman Legionary 58BC-68AD Mcbride was the artist and he did a excellent job.

I think Mr. McBride missed his calling - he should be doing fantasy art, Conan sort of stuff. He's better than Rothero, though, whose stuff is absolutely cartoony. McBride has no feel for plate armour; his portrayals always suffer from 'Michelin Man' effect, and the geometry is all wrong. His armoured folk do, however, look like a lot of British reenactors, who frequently look pretty bulky.

I just read Osprey 155, The Knights of Christ: Religious/Military Orders of Knighthood 1118-1565. I found the Terence Wise text okay for a beginning student: after thumbnail histories of the Templars and Hospitallers, there was a series of "this country had these orders, which did this and then that" subchapters -- just enough to say who had what, and when, and what their cognizances looked like. I wasn't wowed with the Richard Scollins artwork in the plates -- didn't really come up to armourcake anywhere in it. Wild mixes of various centuries in the same picture plate were particularly jarring in Plates D, E, and F -- there might have been some less distracting way to organize these. It looks like they were connecting things by Orders rather than eras.

We also get the Osprey trick of scattering intriguing pictures of stuff we don't normally see: the tomb effigies of Frey Martin Vasquez de Arce, Order of Santiago (cathedral at Siguenza) and of Don Juan Ruiz de Vergara (the old cathedral in Valladolid), both very detailed, and of no little artistic value. Appetites whetted much?

Konstantin the Red wrote:I just read Osprey 155, The Knights of Christ: Religious/Military Orders of Knighthood 1118-1565. I found the Terence Wise text okay for a beginning student: after thumbnail histories of the Templars and Hospitallers, there was a series of "this country had these orders, which did this and then that" subchapters -- just enough to say who had what, and when, and what their cognizances looked like.

Any information on the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star (Bohemia)?

Konstantin the Red wrote:I just read Osprey 155, The Knights of Christ: Religious/Military Orders of Knighthood 1118-1565. I found the Terence Wise text okay for a beginning student: after thumbnail histories of the Templars and Hospitallers, there was a series of "this country had these orders, which did this and then that" subchapters -- just enough to say who had what, and when, and what their cognizances looked like. I wasn't wowed with the Richard Scollins artwork in the plates -- didn't really come up to armourcake anywhere in it. Wild mixes of various centuries in the same picture plate were particularly jarring in Plates D, E, and F -- there might have been some less distracting way to organize these. It looks like they were connecting things by Orders rather than eras.

We also get the Osprey trick of scattering intriguing pictures of stuff we don't normally see: the tomb effigies of Frey Martin Vasquez de Arce, Order of Santiago (cathedral at Siguenza) and of Don Juan Ruiz de Vergara (the old cathedral in Valladolid), both very detailed, and of no little artistic value. Appetites whetted much?

Rick Scollins - May God Assoil him - was an intruiging artist (His career and life was tragically cut short when the car he was changing a tire of on the side of a road was swiped by another motorist). You should see his painting "The Battle of Flodden Field". His tallent was for depicting the front-line infantryman, and the mud, dirt, blood and raw horror of warfare - unfortunately, this does not lend itself to good 'armourcake', although I wager he could have grown into it, should he have chosen to, and had he lived. Of all the artists Osprey had who were working in the field at the time, he was I think the best touching the subject, besides Gerry Embleton (Graham Turner hadn't gotten into the field at that point yet, and the Hooks hadn't blossomed).

Just have to stick up for a good Yorkshireman, from a fellow Notherner from Northumberland (I prefer Northumbria), 370 years removed.

James Arlen Gillaspie wrote:I think Mr. McBride missed his calling - he should be doing fantasy art, Conan sort of stuff. He's better than Rothero, though, whose stuff is absolutely cartoony. McBride has no feel for plate armour; his portrayals always suffer from 'Michelin Man' effect, and the geometry is all wrong. His armoured folk do, however, look like a lot of British reenactors, who frequently look pretty bulky.

I have an old copy of Middle-Earth Role Playing (MERP for those of you who remember), the sourcebooks of which were illustrated by McBride. The artwork therein is inspired and gorgeous, absolutely how I imagined hobbits and stuff to look.

The Osprey Irish titles he illustrated make me want to find him and fetch him a clip on the ear with a pickaxe. He made the English look refined and, well, normal, while the Irish he painted to look like rejects from a Cro-Magnon graffiti party.

If you ask me, he should have stuck to fantasy and been done with it.

My biggest issue with Osprey books, especially the Irish titles, is that they mention something that MAY be considered a possibility as if it were a fact, or they mention how little is known and the theories offered on a particular item only to paint it as literal fact in their color plates.

They are inspirational, sort of a "See, authenticity is fun to look into" kinda thing. I see them as a beginning, not a foundation.

Ron Broberg wrote:Any information on the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star (Bohemia)?

Don't remember seeing mention of these -- and I took the book back to the library today.