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Thursday, October 29, 2015

English Civil War Horse


Finished up a few more items for the English Civil War this week…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):


An element of ECW horse – I still need to do a cornet for this element but I can’t decide which one… I intended for this element to be a Knight or Cavalry General element for DBA-X or the command element for a unit of Cuirassiers in bigger unit battles.


Here is the same element with some previously finished Cuirassiers.

These are all from Old Glory Miniatures


I also finished up five more Scots Horse and rebased four others with them to make three elements of Cavalry or a single unit for big battalion battles. The figures are also from Old Glory Miniatures - with the exception of one fellow in the middle of the centre element – he’s from Dixon Miniatures.

This finishes up all of the ECW Scots Covanenteers that I have at the moment (Huzzah!) – Oh, I have LOADS of English yet to do and almost as many Highlanders (which are far more work on account of all that wretched plaid their wearing!?) AND I’ll probably have a few more Scots horse to paint up in the not-too-distant future (more bargains from The Assault Group that a friend picked up in exchange for me doing some painting for him…)


Also this week I played a game of Cruel Necessity with the kids as part of our study of the English Civil War. This was a fun little find - a solitaire/co-op game of the English Civil Wars. The player is a Puritan Parliamentarian trying to defend Parliament and forward Puritanism. Events and Royalist actions were determined by a drawing a card from a deck each turn and then the player (Parliament) basically had to react and work on their own campaigns - military or political - with a limited number of Zeal Points. It took a bit of time to read through and figure out the rules, but one they were figured out game-play was pretty quick and straightforward.

Overall I'd say I liked it. There was a lot of stuff to keep track of many, many choices to make and different things to concentrate your activities on. It was super hard, though. From the get-go it didn't feel so much like waging a war or directing a campaign as it felt like minimizing one disaster after another... We totally lost. While we did hold out until the Third Civil War, at the end of the Second, Charles I escaped after his sham trial and was never executed...

It didn't help that every time I had to roll anything but a one on a six-sided dice I would always roll a one - always... like three times in a row in a single turn... multiple turns in a row...

Actually if I had one complaint about this game is there was a bit too much randomness - There has to be SOME randomness, otherwise it becomes too deterministic - the card drawing was okay (Pandemic, for example, is driven purely by card draws an player choices), but the heavy reliance on a six-sided die to determine success or failure of every single action made it seem like we lost purely because of a long run of utterly crap dice rolls...

Since I've actually got some ECW miniatures painted up I'd like to get in a few games of with them using those - Ideally I'd like to get two more units of Horse and some artillery finished up for a big battle using Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames - though I could probably get away with what I have right now.... I definitely have enough that I could throw down a game of DBA-X right now. I also want to get some skirmish gaming in with the individually-based miniatures....



Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I never did post pictures of our game of Frostgrave on Sunday… perhaps I’ll get to that…

Also coming up is my Skirmish Saturday Halloween Horror Special (using Fear and Faith) so hopefully I’ll have a game report of that up on Sunday some time. 

28 comments:

  1. Stunning details on the cavalry...

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  2. Very nice.
    I have simply used Hott for my 28mm ECW :
    http://www.paniquedanslavitrine.com/2015/08/guerre-civile-anglaise-un-corps-de-plus.html
    Kind regards,
    Benoit

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    1. Merci Benoit!

      That is an amazing looking force you have out there! Using HotT is a great idea as well! I hadn't considered it before - but I will now!

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    2. To be honest, I had the idea of using Hott for ECW while browsing your blog :-).
      (It is all your fault :-)
      Kind regards,
      Benoit

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    3. And that is the very reason I do this. I can't count how many times things have come full circle like this - someone sees something on my blog, gets inspired but adds their own ideas, and then posts their results, which then in turn inspires me - or vice-versa!

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  3. That Cavalry is just lovely. Somehow I'm just not getting the same level of detail on my 6mm ECW Horse - I'll have to get my glasses checked :-)

    I got Cruel Necessity recently also. haven't played it yet but I was thinking it might make a neat campaign system for setting up tactical battles on the tabletop against a real opponent.

    I'm moving back to the same country, hemisphere and city as my gaming buddy at Christmas time and 6mm ECW is going to be one of our two big projects for the year (WW2 15mm North Africa being the other). We've set up a small blog here which you might be interested in.
    http://declaresir.blogspot.com

    Looking forward to seeing you try out the Thomas rules and just enjoying more of your eye candy!

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    1. Thanks Paul - I will definitely check out that blog!

      I've always looked at board wargames and wondered if they could be used as a campaign system or a scenario generator for tabletop battles. Cruel Necessity didn't really strike me as one that would work that well - though there are battles that come up and are worked out with a very simple separate battle sequence, which - now that I'm thinking about - could totally be played out using miniatures. I think it would be more the opposite of what I'm usually looking for - a boardgame that works as a campaign system/scenario generator - and be more of a using a tabletop miniature game as a mechanic to work out who won a battle in a boardgame...? Does that even make any sense at all...?

      I'm hoping to get in a few games with these next week - both with a DBA/HOTT type rules and Thomas' One-Hour Wargames.

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    2. I think I followed that! Of course I would much rather play a proper campaign but completing a smaller, more realistic project is usually far more enjoyable than starting a more ambitious project which gets abandoned.

      Will look forward to hearing what you think about Thomas's rules. They look a little bland to me to be honest, but I haven't played them.

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    3. I agree, Thomas' rules are VERY simplistic. I've played Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe a few times and, simple though they may be, they outcome never seemed very far off what anyone playing imagined a battle of that period would turn out like.

      Some of my favourite games have been the most simple... So I am curious how One-Hour Wargames will play out.

      He admits in his extensive design notes that he believes that making your own rules is the height of the wargaming experience and that the one hour wargames was as much meant to be a springboard or an inspiration to others to write their own rules in sort of a "see how simple a game can be, now why not try and write your own game?" way. I mean, I'm already planning to add artillery - which aren't included in his Pike and Shot rules in the OHW book... I might try adding some sort of command and control element to the game...?

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    4. I enjoyed hi 19thC book too and as I read it I found myself agreeing with his abstractions and logic.
      But when I sat down to play I realised that a lot of the flavour had been watered away.

      I think the addition of Artillery (though its effect was moderate at best) and C2 are good ones. The latter will be particularly important when adding in elements like Highlanders who weren't as disciples as more typical Foot units.
      Thats why we are going with 6mm for our ECW - so we can have the experience of the higher commanders will multiple brigades. Maybe we are just megalomaniacs at heart!

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    5. I am TOTALLY a megalomaniac at heart! That's why I always dream of grand campaigns - the DBA and HOTT campaigns I have orchestrated have been the pinnacle of my wargaming experience. At one point I thought I might try organizing a ECW campaign weekend using the same rules... Maybe someday I will...? But I have a few more armies worth of stuff to paint before that happens! (and I have a feeling I'll be moving on to another period shortly - in terms of miniature painting - as I continue through the history program I'm going through with my kids).

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    6. "I am TOTALLY a megalomaniac at heart! " - Good Man!

      I recently came across this chap, whose "super campaigns" have taken war-game campaigns to a whole new level

      http://palladian-guard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-chattanooga-campaign.html

      So I requested he post more about how it was done and he has started with these entries:

      http://palladian-guard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/how-to-run-supercampaign-part-i.html

      http://palladian-guard.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-to-run-supercampaign-part-ii.html

      I now dream of running an ECW campaign having having all the player notes etc turned into a book like he did.
      What a geektastic accomplishment to aspire to!

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    7. Part III in the series just got posted here:
      http://palladian-guard.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-to-run-supercampaign-part-iii.html

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  4. Fantastic looking figures. Osprey will be releasing a ECW skirmish game in around a years time, which should be just long enough to finish some of my units.

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    1. Thanks Matt!

      I take it you are referring to The Pikeman's Lament? By Dan Mersey and Michael Leck? I follow both their blogs and am pretty excited about it as well - as I like Lion Rampant (though I haven't gotten to play it much...) and Dalaupror's had some great playtest game reports - with lots of great pictures! I have been cursing that I have to wait until 2017 for it! Good things come to those who wait, though, right?

      Also, in the new year, there is a new set of rules from Osprey and Craig Woodfield (author of Ronin - which I have played a lot of and enjoyed thoroughly). I'm hoping some of the ECW foot figures I've been working on will be able to pass for swashbucklers!

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    2. I'm hoping they dont induce me to start playing ECW in another scale as well so I have have both Skirmish and massed battle experiences...!

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    3. Part of my planning with these ECW units has actually been to make sure I'll be able to use them for Pikeman's Lament through a mix of the multi-figure bases and individually based minis! (assuming they'll be using similar unit structures to Lion's Rampant - i.e. 6 or 12 per unit).

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    4. A clever way ahead indeed. I did something similar with my Dark Ages forces.
      Nevertheless, my ECW is all 6mm - a touch svelte for good skirmish gaming :-)

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    5. I don't know... there used to be a guy who did a blog about skirmish gaming in 6mm...? Dang, what was his name...?

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  5. Oh I found it - Maksim Smelchak. he had a blog 6mm Minis:

    http://6mm-minis.blogspot.com/

    doesn't look like it's been updated in a while...

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  6. I know Maksim well, he'll get a chuckle out of this!

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    1. Did he not do 6mm skirmish? I seem to remember reading something on his blog about it years ago... but maybe I'm getting mixed up with someone else...?

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  7. Yes, I do some 6mm skirmish... LOL ;-)

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  8. Great looking ECW figs I've got to finish off my Scots, I like the osprey skirmish rules so far all the best Iain

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    1. Thanks Iain!
      I've been having fun trying out all the new Osprey skirmish rules (well... most of them...) and some I've loved, some are okay, others... I'm not so interested in...

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