English Civil War painting and rules

With the end in sight for the painting of my English Civil War (ECW) armies: 2 artillery, 3 cavalry and 4 infantry. I decided to purchase a few more figures for 2 commanded shot units from Hinds Figures Ltd who still produce the Hinchliffe range thank goodness.

These extra figures will delay me finishing the project by a couple of weeks. At present I am painting at a rate of 1 unit per week (slow and steady). The fact that I am happily gaming with the existing units I have painted makes the painting effort easier as each new unit completed soon gets recruited into the existing armies.

My house rules are starting to become more firm and I am now moving into the “rules tinkering” stage. As per usual the rules are aimed at playing a game with one hour and are inspired by One-hour Wargaming pike and shot rules. I have stuck with using D3 dice (1,1,2,2,3,3) for combat as I really like the concept of a unit’s combat outcome being treated as: below average, average or above average.

The arrival of cavalry

For the sequence of play I am trying to reflect the difficulty of organising movement for the army as a whole and not at an individual unit level. I did consider a DBA style player initiative points (PIP) approach initially, but in the end opted for the following approach.

At the start of each game turn both players roll a D6.

• The player with the lowest score goes first and is able to activate half their units, rounding up any fractions.
• The player with the highest score goes second and is able to activate all their units.
• Whenever scores are drawn there is a lull in fighting and both players can only activate their commanders.

This mechanism creates opportunities for one side to activate some units twice and capitalise on a situation, or be at the disadvantage by going first a few turns in a row. This second point lead to an optional rule whereby players are allowed to re-roll their turn dice. The number of time they could do this during a game would determined by their commanders ability. The greater then ability the greater number of times they can re-roll.

I will cover the other rules over the next few posts as the rules firm up.

A grid-based game

In the photos you will notice I have been playing games using both a grid and free movement. Although my leaning is currently towards using a gridded approach for the ECW period.