ECW Pike and Shotte in 10mm

 Pike and Shotte

The challenge: Do it in 10mm keep basing simple and standardise to other 10mm games we play HC! and a Fantasy addon game I'm developing.

The participants were a Teacher who had written a thesis on the ECW for his masters, a reenactor-wargamer and myself a simple wargamer, but my business life had been spent as a project manager. As a team we work well get ideas, facts and concepts sorted.

We wanted to do it in 10mm and we didn't like the idea of the Combined P&S unit's Shotte sub units walking off to some other location away from the Pike, which we have seen done by others. So we resolved to base them together so nobody could separate them. 

Then in the 'To Kill A King' supplement. we found on pages 144-147 special units for the period. So that is a must purchase alongside the main rule book if you want to play ECW.

As with many games the desire to play sometimes comes before you've managed to paint the armies so for a change we decided to use blank bases to represent the units. 

Board Armies

In the end the standard frontage is 100mm and small units 50mm, Horse and Combined Pike units being 60mm deep and normal infantry 50mm deep. 

Galloping cannons (Infantry) are 30mm x50mm. Medium cannon are 50 mm wide by 60m deep.

Command units are on 40mm discs, the General on a 50mm disc.

In the board armies the Parliament army is Red and the King's is Grey, you'll note the difference in the Combined P&S units more Pike and less Muskets in the King's army whilst the reverse is true of the Parliament's army which is represented below.

For actual models we decided on the above layouts.

The agreed opinion was to make it look as much like a real unit would with a lead drummer 'D' by the CO 'O' and drummers behind and to the rear that would echo the command.

The Regimental flag 'F' would be at the front with the CO and the company flags in the second rank.

In reality this was the parade position, in battle the flags would be moved to the rear ranks to protect them. Pike is either 'P' or 'X' if armoured and of course the 'M' is for musket. I've chosen to have less armoured pike in the Parliament army. 

At the rear of the block would be a lower ranked officer and two NCO's 'J'.

And it would look like this from above.

To my shame I've not yet finished the armies but I plough on.

A Brigaded Musket unit and a small unit that would support the Cavalry units. 

As units are completed they replace the blank boards.

We played a number of games with these and they worked well, all ranges and movement were as per the rule book we didn't reduce them we saw no need to do so. In the opinion of the Historical elements of the team they fought as they should and lost or won in the correct way. Unless I started rolling super dice, I habit I have that upsets people. 

Image of games played with tokens, I'd certainly recommend the idea as it gets you playing and encourages the painting, yes it's a little like playing 40K with unpainted minis, but who didn't?

Wound and Stamina marking - Why are there little pegs on your bases?

The Cannons arrive