Commanded Shot

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Here is the first of the two Commanded Shot battalia that I have planned for my ECW collection.

These are 15mm figures from Peter Pig, painted with my now usual Contrast Paints from GW.

One more battalia of these to go, and then I’ve broken the back of the infantry that I need. I’ll probably paint up another couple of standard battalia to allow for the odd bigger game, but the main hurdle still to come is the Dutch Horse: 4-5 units of nineteen cavalry each. Other than that, it’s the fun stuff that gives you quick gratification as it doesn’t take long to finish a piece: artillery, officers, attachments and the like.

I need Dragoons as well, but can’t decide whether to paint up the entire mounted-horseholder-foot mixture required for a full representation, as I read that in the ECW, Dragoons only ever fought mounted once. I shall have to see how keen I am on painting up even more ECW when I get to that point.

First of the Dutch Horse

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Regular visitors will know that I am currently building a collection of 15mm ECW figures with which to play For King & Parliament.

In FK&P, cavalry generally comes in one of two formations: the more modern, single-line Swedish style; or the more archaic, double-line Dutch style. So far I have painted up quite a few units of Swedish horse, but no Dutch.

All my ECW troops are based in big elements: bases that are roughly 12cms wide and 6cms deep, with a foot battalia being 24 figures (plus command). A Swedish style unit of horse is 9 figures (plus command) strong, a Dutch style unit therefore 16 figures (plus command) strong.

Big bases!

I was worried that differentiating between Dutch and Swedish styles needed more than just figures on a base, so wanted to try a different manufacturer as well. I also needed a break from painting Peter Pig figures (the vast majority of the army so far): not because I don’t like them any more, quite the opposite, but just to get a bit of variety in the brushwork.

The first manufacturer I tried was Blue Moon: lovely figures, so I ordered some cavalry, but when they came, they were distinctly larger than the Peter Pig cavalry that I already had. I mean grossly larger: they just would not do. I’m all for mixing and matching (people are different sizes after all) but this was ridiculous.

Off to the Internet, and I discovered this excellent blog post from the charmingly-named Madaxeman in which he posts pictures of all the different types of pike and shot infantry figures available. This was very useful, so I carefully scrolled down to where the Peter Pig figures started to appear and checked out which other manufacturer matched them for size.

There were some real horrors on the sizing and quality of figures front, but the two potential matches were with the Naismith line and/or the Hallmark line from Magister Militum. I couldn’t work out whether the Naismith line was still available to buy, which left MM’s Hallmark line as the range of choice.

And the winners are…Peter Pig on the left, Hallmark on the right.

An order and some nice prompt delivery later, and I had the figures for a unit of Dutch horse to paint up. The figures looked quite ornate to me, so I decided to make this first unit very much a unit of gentleman cavalry:

I’m very happy with these, so another order has gone off to Magister Militum (I can remember the first show they were ever at, just after they opened) for more horse and, this time, some infantry as well.

Looking at the MM website, you can ignore a lot of the detail and paint the cavalry in plainer colours, so that’s what I’m going to with this next unit.

And how do they compare with the Swedish horse. Here’s how:

Very good: exactly the effect I was after. I’m now off to wait for the postman…

More ECW Foot Figures

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My ECW collection is coming along nicely: today’s addition is a third battalia of pike-heavy foot.

As usual, these are 15mm Peter Pig figures painted with GW Contrast Paints and mounted as one element on a Warbases’ Vehicle Base. The flowers are from Boontown.

I’m intending to use these for For King & Parliament, the ECW version of To The Strongest, hence why they will work well as a single base of figures.

What I need to do now is to swap my efforts onto the units of Dutch-style horse that my collection requires.

The main difficulty is that I would like to make the Dutch horse even more distinctively different to the Swedish-style horse I already have, so have been looking around for a different manufacturer to try.

I did try Blue Moon, who have some very nice figures, but they are distinctly bigger than the Peter Pig ones, especially the horses, so don’t really fit. I’m usually pretty tolerant about different figures sizes (after all, you do get a variety of sizes in real life), but these are really very much bigger. So if anyone wants a few packs of unpainted, untouched Blue Moon ECW horse, I’m happy to look at swapping them for something. E-mail me at the usual address (right hand column gives it).

Off to the Internet to see what I can find…

Cuirassiers!

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I think that Cuirassiers in the full plate sense might have been dying out by the time of the English Civil War, but the book assures me that I might need a smallish unit for some scenarios, so it was off to the Internet to buy some figures and then to paint them.

These are 15mm Peter Pig figures painted using GW Contrast Paints. The horses are Cygor Brown thinned down 50/50 with the Contrast Thinner. The armour is Templar Black very lightly dry-brushed with Leadbelcher, except for the commander at the far end, who has a light dry brush of a dark gold colour.

The unit is shown as a Dutch- rather than the more modern Swedish-style formation i.e. two ranks deep relying on brute force rather than one rank deep relying on firepower. It’s still a smallish unit: being only four figures wide rather than the usual nine (which is going to make the larger Dutch-style units very heavy indeed at 18 cavalry figures to a base!).

The bases are Warbases vehicle bases flocked all over. The flowers are from Boontown, and are absolutely excellent.

More ECW Figures

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All this Working From Home (WFH) has given me time to finish off a couple of pike and shot units that have been sitting on the painting table for a bit. It’s all down to no commuting time: gives me an extra 2½ hours a day.

Anyhow, here’s another battalia of pike-heavy infantry:

And a small unit of Swedish Horse to represent Lifeguards or some such:

Both units are 15mm Peter Pig, and all painted with GW Contrast Paints. The pikes were from North Star Figures.

More ECW Figures

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I’m still slowly working my way through what I need to field a decent sized English Civil War army.

Today’s unit is the first of the pike-heavy foot battalia i.e. where there are equal numbers of pikemen and musketeers in the unit rather than the more usual 2:1 ratio in favour of musketeers.

These are Peter Pig figures in 15mm painted, as usual, with GW Contrast Paints.

I wasn’t sure how to represent the difference between standard and pike-heavy units: I wanted something that could be seen easily on the tabletop without the need for additional markers.

I had thought of narrowing the unit by putting the extra pikemen in a third rank in the centre but, in the end, settled just for keeping the same shape of unit. Looking at a standard and pike-heavy unit next to each other, I’m quite happy with the way they compare: the difference is subtle but obvious.

A Bit of Painting & Building

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Here’s everyone busy playing IABSM left right and centre, and all I can find the time for is to paint and build a little bit of terrain!

As regular visitors will know, I’m currently putting together English Civil War forces to use with For King & Parliament. I’ve already finished enough standard troops to play one side of the sample scenario in the rulebook, the Battle of Montgomery, but hadn’t had the chance to complete any command figures. Until now, that is, so here is the first command stand: Colonel-level, so two figures.

These are 15mm Essex figures. I’m using Peter Pig for the troops, Essex for the command stands, and mostly GW Contrast paints to, er, paint them with.

Nice figures, although I couldn’t quite work out what the thing the Colonel himself was wearing on his chest. I’ve painted it as a sort of yellow/gold braid effect on top of a red waistcoat, but now I note that the painted version on the Essex site has it as a sort of chainmail vest. No matter: at three foot away, what’s the difference!

I also needed some buildings to represent a village in the second scenario I want to play, so found these rather spectacular “Timber-Framed Houses” from 4ground Publishing.

These come in the usual flat-pack format, but are relatively easy to build: I did all four in a single evening. They are also very tolerant of idiots: you can’t see it, but I completely mucked up one build and, as I idiotically use Superglue when putting things like this together, trying to fix any mistakes can be…testing, shall we say. Despite my cackhandedness, I think you have to agree how good they look, and that’s straight from the packet: I’m sure that better modellers than I can customize them to look even better.

Anyway, that’s four lovely houses done and dusted. Price for all four was £47 plus postage: which I think is a fair price considering I now have all the buildings I need for a 2-4 square FK&P town.

Here’s a close-up of one of the timber-framed cottages:

ECW: The Battle of Montgomery

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I’ve been playing the Ancients rules To The Strongest for some months now, and really enjoying it as a fun, fast-play, grid-based game that gets plenty of figures onto the table and avoids most arguments about whether one unit is 33mm or 35mm from another etc. Looking for some army lists (free to download), I noticed that BigRedBat also do an English Civil War variant to TTS called For King and Parliament. I’ve never really played Pike & Shot before, but this sounded like a good way to start, so I bought a copy and started working out what figures I would need.

Conveniently, there’s a sample scenario with OBs in the back of the rulebook covering the Battle of Montgomery, 1644, so I used that as the basis for the start of my collection. As those of you who visit this website regularly know, the Christmas holiday provided time to paint enough troops to field the Parliamentarian side of the battle, so when John offered to bring round his collection, we were ready to give FK&P a go.

Setting up the battle is simple. Royalists are up on a ridge. They outnumber the Roundheads with two cavalry brigades and two infantry brigades. Parliamentarian infantry, one brigade, is on a hill opposite, with a cavalry brigade next to them. Off table is another brigade of cavalry which is currently out foraging.

view from the roundhead right

Parliamentarians

Cavaliers

The Battle

As I was badly outnumbered in the centre, my plan was to win on my left flank, hopefully helped by my returning foragers, and then roll up his line from the left before he could beat me in the center and on the right.

I had the first turn, and therefore concentrated my efforts on my cavalry: my infantry remaining still. One regiment of cavalry swept forward and charged one of their opposite number. Unlike TTS, multiple combat cards are regular in FK&P with, in this instance, five going down. Result: three hits, not enough saves, enemy cavalry destroyed. This was a good start, but the same thing happened to me on the Royalist go, so after one turn we were honours-even and no sign of the foragers.

Fortunately his infantry were obviously still having their hair done (Royalist fops!) so hadn’t moved towards me.

Second turn, same sort of result as the first, but disastrously my Commanding General had (somewhat foolishly) joined the cavalry charge and was killed in the melee. This cost me a serious number of victory coins as, in FK&P, losing officers is really painful, and that’s in addition to losing their command abilities. Worse, this time some of his infantry were on the move. Things were looking a bit grim.

Third turn, however, my foragers arrived and tipped the balance on the left. Now here’s the real fun of FK&P compared to TTS: if you charge on the flank you don’t get a measly one extra attack card: you get double what you’ve earned for a frontal attack!

Here’s two shots of my returning foragers hitting the right flank of his cavalry:

And here’s all the lovely attack cards I got to play!

Note that despite the huge numbers of cards played, a couple of cavalry units did survive being hit in the flank…but not when they were hit again and again.

End result: a cavalry victory…but would it be enough bearing in mind what was happening in the centre?

No more Royalist cavalry to fight!

The Infantry Battle

By now the advancing Royalist infantry had cleared away my Forlorn Hopes and had just engaged my main battle line. By this time, I was suffering from a bad loss of victory coins: one more lost unit and that was it! You can see the cavalry melee just finishing in the background, so I wasn’t getting any help from them yet, and the only high point was that the Royalist infantry (pike heavy, so at an advantage in combat) were attacking piecemeal as they hadn’t been able to co-ordinate their attack.

Royalists coming up the hill

But wait, I hear you cry, what’s that other unit in the distance, by the bridge. well that, my friends, is the Derbyshire Horse: an untried regiment that had passed its first test and already seen off a partially blown enemy cavalry regiment.

The Derbyshire’s charged forward gloriously and, just as my left hand infantry battalia was about to crumble, smashed into the open flank of the enemy infantry assaulting them.

Huzzah for the Derbyshires

The enemy infantry were smashed from the field, relieving John of the last of his victory coins: Parliament was victorious!

Aftermath

A very successful game that literally came down to the last action. Had the Derbyshire’s not done as they did, I would likely have lost that last one unit: the red-clad infantry battalia was on its last legs.

John and I both agreed that For King & Parliament gives a great game and will be fighting other battles of the English Civil War soon. For me, as well, it’s back to the painting table to add some more units to my forces, so the old credit card is about to take a hammering!

My only regret: I have a horrible feeling that I shall be missing all the attack cards next time I play TTS!

Robert Avery

More Swedish Horse for ECW

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I’ve almost got enough figures now to field the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Montgomery, 1644: the sample scenario that appears in the For King and Parliament rulebook.

Today’s contribution to the total is a couple of units of helmeted Swedish Horse accompanied by two Gallant Gentlemen on foot.

The cavalry are all Peter Pig figures, the foot are Essex. All are 15mm and mostly painted with GW Contrast Paints.

I’m very pleased with the horses. As I couldn’t find a good horse-brown straight from a Contrast pot, I decided to experiment and buy the Contrast thinner and then see what happened when I did a 50/50 mix with Contrast Cygor Brown.

My main concern was what to mix them in, but then daughter number two gave me a little pot that she bought from the art shop for doing exactly this, and the problem was neatly solved. In went half a centimetre of Cygor Brown, in went the same amount of thinner, a quick shake and the brown you see on the models above is one coat of the mixture with no highlighting over Wraithbone primer. All I did do was paint the manes, tails and lower legs in undiluted Cygor Brown. Very quick and very easy. I shall be trying this sort of thing again…once I work out the best time to nip into my daughter’s room and steal the rest of her mixing pots!

More ECW Horse

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There do seem to be an awful lot of “Swedish Horse” units required for my first ECW army: the Parliamentarians at the Battle of Montgomery (the sample scenario in the rulebook).

Here’s another unit finished:

The figures above are all 15mm Peter Pig.

I also needed some “Gallant Gentlemen”: the For King & Parliament equivalent to heroes in To The Strongest. Here are a couple of mounted GG’s: both 15mm from Essex.

Forlorn Hopes for the English Civil War

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My ECW armies are based on one figure = twenty men i.e. a foot battalia of about 500 men is represented by 24 figures plus three command figures. That allows me to show the difference between a standard battalia, a pike-heavy battalia, an all-pike battalia, and a commanded shot battalia just by varying the ratio of musketeers to pikemen.

Similarly, a horse regiment of about 200 men is represented by nine figures plus two command figures, with the difference between Swedish, Dutch and Cuirassier formations being shown by the way the figures are placed on the base: one line for Swedish horse, two lines for Dutch horse, with Cuirassiers being a smaller unit altogether.

How then to represent a Forlorn Hope: a much smaller foot unit of around only 150 men?

I have settled on using just eight figures, plus two command figures, which makes one of my big bases look very empty indeed:

For certain Forlorn Hope units, if only for variety, I am going to do a little diorama. Here’s a very simple one involving just mounting the figures behind a couple of sticks:

Looks good!

ECW Horse

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Here’s another unit for my growing English Civil War contingent. Regular readers will know that I am basing each individual unit on a single base with a 12cm frontage: proper elements!

This unit is a regiment of so-called Swedish Horse. Not that they actually hail from the land of IKEA: it’s all to do with their fighting formation and technique.

These are Peter Pig figures in 15mm painted with GW Contrast paints. A single line of nine figures plus two command figures forward.

Another ECW Battalion Added

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As this year’s Painting Challenge draws to a close, I am frantically trying to hit my target of 2,000 points. I’m currently on 1,947 so, as I paint in 15mm, have four days to paint 53 figures or nine vehicles. That’s quite a tough prospect, but I can’t get this close only to fall at the final hurdle!

Here’s another English Civil War battalion to help me on my way:

The figures are all 15mm Peter Pig, painted with GW Contrast Paints.

A New Project

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Regular visitors will know that I enjoy gaming the Ancients period with To The Strongest.

That rule set has a companion set covering the English Civil War (1642 - 1651) called For King & Parliament. A month or so ago, I invested in a copy and started thinking how I would create forces for both the Royalists and Parliamentarians.

To match my grid-ed gaming mat, I need units that are about 12cms wide, which means that a double-ranked unit would be about 24 foot strong, assuming 1cm frontage for each figure. This worked with the numbers given in the rulebook, so 24 men per regiment it was.

In FK&P, foot regiments are of different types: standard (2 musketeers for every 1 pikeman); pike-heavy; shot-heavy; all pike; all shot and smaller units for Forlorn Hopes, dismounted dragoons etc.

What I initially thought of doing was to have separately based blocks of musketeers and blocks of pikemen, a combination of which would allow me to build the different types of regiment that I needed for a game. After a lot of experimenting with paper and pen, however, I realised that this wouldn’t work: it would be fine for a standard, all pike or all shot units, but wouldn’t work for the -heavy units and their 3:1 ratios.

Good luck against the tank in the background, lads!

After a lot more thought, and more pen and paper, I realised that the easiest thing to do would be just to mount an entire regiment of up to 24 figures (plus 3 command, so 27) on a single big base. In effect, I was doing what many 6mm gamers do, but in 15mm.

A quick trip to the Warbases website to discover that they actually do a suitable base as a standard product. It’s called a Vehicle Base, and is 12cms wide by about 5cms deep. It’s the one marked as 110x40mm, which is the rectangular area in the centre of the base, surrounded by curvy bits that give it its 12cms width.

Okay, so it’s all feasible…but rather than cough up huge amounts of cash for a whole army that might not work, let’s try one unit first. Easiest place to buy figures so specifically is Peter Pig, so a quick trip to their website to discover a very nice and comprehensive ECW range. I bought four packets only: one pike, two muskets (one firing, one reloading) and a command pack.

The results you see in the pictures, above. I rather like them, and I really like the big base effect. I did have a little problem with warping, which surprised me given this was a 3mm deep “hard” base, but I could use the lip to flatten the base for a couple of hours and problem solved.

So that’s one unit done and more ordered!