Roundway Down chez Andrew Brentnall

Yesterday I travelled to the deepest wilds of Suffolk for a chat and game with FK&P stealth co-author Andrew Brentnall. He has a lovely dedicated gaming area and set up Roundway Down in a corner of it. I volunteered to play Sir William Waller's Parliamentarians at the top of the hill, and Andrew led Wilmot's plucky, outnumbered (but well-hard) Royalists at the bottom. All the minis are 10/12mm from his collection, and we used Andrew's variant of the scenario for the deployment, as opposed to my variant which has the Parliamentarian horse a little further forward. The unit cards were designed by chum Ian Notter. 

Here's a shot early in the game. Wilmot's own command piled into Heselrig and the other two commands are inclining towards the Parliamentarian left.

Above, brave Sir Arthur led his London Lobsters into one of Wilmot's units. I played a nine for the first activation, attempted a general's replay to get a lower chit and pulled a ten! Don't you just hate it when that happens? Still, I got to watch Andrew's jaw drop as I pulled two further tens to activate it twice more (3 tens in a row, the odds of that are rather to the north of 100 to 1, as there are only 8 in the bag), and managed to ride down a unit of cavalier horse before being slaughtered by a flurry of flank attacks. Those are some of the new yellow and white activation chits, by the way, very classy.

Here's the situation late in the game- the roundheads had closed on the left of my line, which I had held back so that I could support it with my foot. In the ensuing melees the leftmost "Dutch" unit broke through the Royalist line, and pursued the survivors down the hill, pursued in turn by Crawford's two units of reserve Royalist cavalry. Luckily for me my Dutch outran their Royalist pursuers, because I only had three medals left! But Andrew, by this stage, only had two himself.

And here was the last decisive melee. Requiring two medals to win, I managed to activate this disordered and exhausted unit of horse no fewer than four times. On the final activation I hit and the cavaliers failed their final save, giving me the last two medals that I needed.  It was a very narrow victory, indeed!

It was a great day out and a great delight to see Andrew again. Glorious weather, to boot. We had a sensible chat about the Thirty Years War in general and Lutzen in particular, and I feel a new scenario is coming along.

Sir Marmaduke Langdale

Here's Sir Marmaduke Langdale, commander of the élite Royalist Northern Horse in the English Civil War. He was a tough commander and needed be, as the Northern Horse were well aware of their own value and could be very undisciplined.

He commands my own For King and Parliament Northern Horse. I have three regiments of these, a mighty 54 men, but I realise that I've never taken a proper photo of them! I'll put that right, soon. But you can just make out some of them on the right in this link. They are hard men; they took out the Ironsides (left) in this battle.

If you are at a loose end, tonight at 8PM UK time I’ll be joining the Pile of Shame Broadcast on Youtube. 

I’ll  be talking about what I’ve been writing and modelling recently, and what I have planned. You can join us at the below link, hope to see you there!

 

https://youtube.com/channel/UCS7347mT9uSFHblr9f6xGcA

Edgehill Scenario and Unit Cards published!

I've just published two exciting new downloads for use with the For King and Parliament ECW rules.

The first download is our Edgehill 1642 scenario. Edgehill 1642 was the first major battle of the English Civil War, and amongst the largest. The 18 page PDF includes a brief account of the campaign and the battle, reconstructed orders of battle for both sides, deployment diagrams and photos of beautifully painted wargames figures. It can be viewed on a tablet, or printed out and bound. The scenario, designed for the TtS! For King and Parliament English Civil War rules but could be adapted to work with other rule systems, too. It is a large and well-tested scenario that will suit two to six players.

The second download, below, is a 17 page digital file of unit cards, which can be printed, cut out and used to re-fight Edgehill, in conjunction with the scenario and the For King and Parliament rules (although the cards could be used to fight the battle with other rule systems, too).

There are cards representing all the general officers, some colonels and all the units that we have been able to identify as present at the battle. They are additional cards for Parliamentarian reinforcements that might have influenced the battle, had they arrived in time. There are also cards permitting an alternative deployment of the Royalist foot in a Thirty Years War "Swedish" style, which may have been used in the battle. There are card overlays that will indicate whether your horse is pursuing, or your foot formed up in hedgehog. Lastly, there's an explanatory booklet which explains how to prepare and use the cards.

The cards were designed by chum Ian Notter, based on the Naseby Streeter engraving, and the detail is stunning. They can be printed and cut out either for use with a 10cm grid (9' x 4' playing surface) or a 7.5cm grid (6' x 3' playing surface). They can also be used in conjunction with miniatures, taping each card under a unit's base, so that only the tag with the unit's name and details upon it, protrudes. A really useful way of showing which unit is in which brigade!

You can buy the Edgehill scenario and/or the Edgehill unit cards here. 

Edgehill - Unit cards - Sneak peek!

Here are a couple of images from the Edgehill Unit Cards pack that will be published, shortly. The cards are designed by my chum Ian Notter, based loosely on the images in the Streeter Naseby engraving. Here is a page from the introductory pack that accompanies the cards, and, below it, an image of a sheet of the unit cards, themselves.

These are some of the Parliamentarian Edgehill foot; large units, eight  ranks deep, so with an extra (fourth) hit. We have added uniform colours, where known (not often!), sometimes we have guessed. The flags indicate who the officer for the brigades is, and his superior general. All the information needed for play with For King and Parliament is on the card tab (save, ammo, battalion guns and so forth). If you laminate the cards, then you could use them with a whiteboard pen.

The whole Edgehill OOB, with lots of "what if" units, will be included in the download. Hopefully I'll have it in the shop on Wednesday or Thursday. If it proves popular, we will give the same treatment to some of the other battles of the ECW; perhaps we could also produce a set of generic unit cards for use with the game.

Edgehill Scenario- sneak peeks

Here are a few sample pages from the imminent Edgehill scenario booklet- due out later this week.  :) 

Soggy Bottom is coming to SELWG!

Advancing Royalist foot- love that Gyronny!

Various chums will be helping me to bring "Soggy Bottom, 1643", the TtS! For King and Parliament demonstration game, to SELWG at Crystal Palace on Sunday 21st October. If you'd like to play in either the morning (11:00AM start) or afternoon (1:45 PM start) please drop me a line at simonmiller60 at gmail.com. 

Essex's regiment- or the "Smashing Pumpkins", as mate Shaun calls them.

Here are some more pictures, taken by chum Ian Notter at Colours. All the images will expand if you click on them.

Two battalia of the King's Lifeguard of Foot advance, with clubbed muskets. Salveeee!

Sometimes, the larger ECW regiments would arrive at the battlefield in enough strength to form more than one 5-600 man battalia. Above are two battalia of Lifeguard, which have some of the finest flags of the war. On other occasions several under-strength regiments might have to be combined to form a single battalia.

The Parliamentarian line

I confess to a regrettable preference for painting Royalists. Nonetheless, my Parliamentarians are gradually catching up in numbers, and, next year, I hope to double the size of some of the regiments so they can each form two battalia. One day I'l love to do Naseby, and recent research indicates that there were a heck of a lot of New Model foot.

Thomas Ballard's Regiment

Above, one of my newer regiments, mostly painted by Shaun McTague. As with all of my units they are mostly Bicorne with a few Renegade and Redoubt mixed in.

Parliamentarian "Dutch" horse

If you come to SELWG, you'll see that I am experimenting with teddy-bear fur. One can achieve some very realistic effects with it, especially with my wobbly-edged bases which sink right into it.

Each time I run the game, I try to add another unit or two. This time I plan to add another regiment of horse, as part of a big expansion of my ECW cavalry over the winter, for a planned Salute game. The ratio of horse to foot in the ECW is astonishingly (and inconveniently!) high, especially for the Royalists- consequently I find that I "need" another 200 mounted minis for my planned game.

Anyhow that's it for now- I hope to see some of you at SELWG! It's always a great show, and my last of the gaming year. Not too crowded, but crowded enough, with some cracking historical games and one of the last of the "Bring and Buy" stands.

Preparations for Salute

Above are the "reinforcements" for the Salute game- eight regiments of horse and six of foot- have a click!. Chum Ian has been helping me to grout the bases- just 2 regiments remain ungrouted- next week comes the dreaded flockathon that precedes any show game. 

A huge thanks to everyone who has bought the "For King and Parliament" rules so far- sales are off to a storming start! By close of play today I should have all the remaining orders despatched. At one stage, I ran out of chits but I have restocked, so if you couldn't get your dash chits they are in the shop, now.

Coming to a BigRedBatShop near you.... soon!

Boxes of rulebooks are stacked high in the hallway and the BigRedBatshop is configured... I hope to put the new ECW rulebook on sale.... tomorrow!  :-)