Guilders - Royal Guard and Crossbowmen

 In Guilders: A Life In Shadows the last tier of guards to enter the conflict is the Royal Guards. These guys are extremely deadly for the players. They're wearing heavy armor, shields and have a high fight stat. These guards are better fighters than even many experienced player characters. They are however slow in their armor and cannot climb after guilders. 

The best thing is to avoid causing so much Alarm that these start to enter (Overall Alertness hitting 30). We've only experienced it a few crazy games where we were very violent. Almost all characters are able to outrun the Royal Guards, so the trick is to not get cornered by them. 

You will very rarely need a lot of Royal Guards. I've painted up my Basilean leader types from Kings of War: Vanguard to use as these. They look might imposing. At some point I'll revisit the banner and add a few lion stencils or a golden free hand lion. 

Almost all scenarios in Guilders start with a few ranged combat guards on the board. These are often placed on roof tops and can provide a lot of trouple for the guilders. Shooting attacks can be very deadly, especially if a character is all in the open with no cover. In that case the modifiers will quickly boost the ranged guard a lot. 

I made my guys with some Perry Miniatures European Mercenaries. The crossbow bits are from different GW sets I think. All the helmets are old Brettonian men-at-arms helmts. I wanted to make the shooters stand out a bit, that's why I picked different helmet types for these guys.