FoGR TYW/ECW additions

 More plastic TYW/ECW units off the production line painted speedily with speed paints!

The 'Orange Coats'

The 'Purple Coats'

The Dragoons:

The infantry I did with blue sashes for use as Swedes mainly but the sashes are not that noticeable compared to the flags which can easily be switched.

I'm definitely impressed with the speed paints, for the right units they look great and are so quick to complete a unit once you get used to them. I now have twelve pike and shot units which is probably far too many for any table size I'm likely to play on!

Now I just need to finish off a couple of extra units for the Catholics and all the Swedish cavalry (plus guns and gunners).

ECW For King and Parliament Scenario 2 "Widbrooke Common" Royalist v Parliamentarian

 Dave and I played the second game in the "Marlowe to Maidenhyde" campaign, this one entitled "Widbrooke Common". In this scenario the Royalists have just crossed a stream when they are attacked by the Parliamentarians. 

The Royalists are stronger in Horse and weaker in Foot than their opponents with a number of the dreaded "untried" units (all the Foot and around 1/3 of the Horse).

The Royalist right flank Horse, facing a maze of hedges and a village:

Sir John Boulters with his Lifeguard and Foot in the background. It appears King Charles has leant Sir John his Standard!:

The left flank Horse in more open ground opposing their Roundhead counterparts:

The whole Royalist army deployed with their opponents ready to engage:

The Roundheads being their attack:

One Royalist Horse unit outflanks the Roundheads while a second charges into contact:

The Royalist right flank Horse advance but it isn't clear what they can achieve. The village is held by a Royalist Forlorn Hope for now at least! The Royalist Foot have also advanced, they are pike-heavy battalia so are better off in combat. They leave Oxford Musketeers behind as they have been dispirited by artillery fire:

As seems to be the usual case the charging Royalists gain a small initial advantage but fail to break their opponents:

The second Roundhead cavalry unit charges and breaks the untried Royalist horse they are facing. The third Roundhead horse ignore the infantry to their front and turn to support their colleagues:

The initial Royalist cavalry break their opponents, so far it's one unit down each:

Both victorious units gallop away in pursuit leaving the two units that were hoping to exploit a flank facing each other!:

In a rare burst of movement Sir John leads his Bodyguard to the opposite flank to help out his failing cavalry wing. In the centre the foot are about to clash:

The untried Royalist foot are unhappy at being fired upon and both lose a hit. The Royalist right flank cavalry still mills around with nothing much to do while the Forlorn Hope shoots it out with Roundhead foot:

More cavalry clash on the left:

The Royalist Purple and Green Regiments charge home! Being pike-heavy they have an advantage in melee but they are already suffering one hit. The Purple Regiment breaks and runs from a combination of defensive fire and combat:

Sir John and his Bodyguard charge the pursuing Roundhead cavalry in the flank breaking them:

The Royalist Red regiment moves up to replace the broken Purple foot. The Green regiment is on the verge of breaking:

Roundhead Dragoons shoot enough of the pursuing Royalist horse to break them:

The Red regiment breaks. The Royalist army is beginning to disintegrate:

The Greens flee as well!:

There is still time for another Royalist triumph though as Sir John and his men charge the sole remaining Roundhead cavalry in the rear while they are already engaged frontally. The Roundheads rout:

The respite is short though as Roundhead foot shoot up one of the right flank Royalist horse units to break the Royalist army:

A fun game and great to get the figures onto the table again. Dave had lost 9 out of 14 points so I was at least two units from breaking his army and in the end I think it was a comfortable win for him.

I'm still not that keen on the rules (but then I really liked FoGR so that probably prejudices me a little), they seem quite clunky with little scope for manoeuvre other than ploughing forward (which may be realistic of course) and the utter lottery of the "untried" category especially for the smaller two-hit units which can break very easily.

I think I've also been spoilt a little on the campaign front with the CoC PSC making CoC games much more interesting and Gary's SP campaign greatly improving SP as a game. This FK&P campaign isn't really a campaign at all, the results of each game have no influence on the next and, in reality, you are just playing a number of games where the army composition, deployment and terrain are pre-set so all you do is advance to combat taking out much of the game. Dave thinks that perhaps this is to introduce you to the rules slowly which it does but I'd hope for more from a campaign though really.

Despite the above I've enjoyed both games so far, the armies look great and I'm looking forward to playing more (and perhaps persuading Dave to try FoGR!) especially if we can pick our own armies and deployment (yes I will drop all the untried troops!).

For King & Parliament "Marlowe to Maidenhythe" Campaign Game 1: The Attack on Marlowe

Having played several games of FK&P over Vassal during lockdown and both having as yet unused 28mm ECW armies Dave and I decided to try out playing on an actual table! 

One of the add-ons FK&P is a fictional campaign (in fact more a series of games) called from Marlowe to Maidenhythe which features Sir John Boulters leading the Royalists (me) and Sir Christopher Grey commanding the Parliamentarians (Dave). The first scenario sees the Royalists attacking Marlowe which is held by a similar sized Parliamentarian force.

The rebel forces deploy in front of the town:

The King's men deploy to attack the rebels. They are stronger in horse but weaker in foot:

Planning to avoid taking on the rebel commanded shot and forlorn hope in the maze of hedgerows the Royalist foot begins to move to the more open ground on their left:

On the right the Royalist horse holds back and awaits developments:

The left wing of the Royalist horse advances boldly though to pin the rebel infantry in place:

The rebels advance their cavalry slightly but otherwise remain stationary:

The Royalist foot continue to advance and open fire on the rebel Forlorn Hope:

The Royalist horse on the left have made rapid progress forcing the nearest rebel foot battalia to turn to face them:

The Royalist foot continue to advance:

The first losses of the battle as one of the rebel forlorn hopes is routed:

The second rebel Forlorn Hope is also quickly dealt with:

On the right the rebels have rushed their horse forward and engaged the Royalist horse:

Both rebel horse have charged home:

The initial fight goes well for the 'Swedish' organised Royalists against their 'Dutch' opponents:

However, they fail to build on this success and one Royalist regiment is routed:

The Royalist foot are making good progress towards outflanking the rebel line. Much of the rebel foot seems reluctant to leave the safety of the hedgerows:

Things get worse for the Royalist right wing horse as a second unit routs:

All is not yet lost though as the final Royalist horse take the victorious rebels in the flank and disperse them:

They follow up and break the second rebel unit! They promptly pursue the fleeing rebels off table:

Rebel morale is starting to fall with one battalia taking fire from the front and flank while Royalist horse prevent the other rebel battalia intervening:

Possibly too late in the day the rebel commanded shot begin to advance forcing one Royalist battalia to retire before it breaks:

Having weakened the enemy the Royalists charge into the flank of the exposed rebel battalia and break it. Rebel morale collapses and the retire from the field:

It had been quite a while since we had played To the Strongest FK&P so we struggled a bit with the rules and probably did several things wrongly. 

I tend to find the rules a bit clunky with so many markers and the use of playing cards to drive the game, while giving some interesting nuances, tends to spoil the visual aspect with cards and markers littering the table most of the time. When you do get into combat it also appears to rely to a large extent on luck (though perhaps it just seems that way with cards rather than dice!).

As for the result I felt that advancing towards Dave's superior firepower behind hedges was not a good idea while (slowly!) carrying out a flank attack would be more successful. I think Dave waited too long to advance his uncommitted infantry and by the time he did it was a little too late. I also seemed to remember that the 'Swedish' style horse with only two hits were considerably worse than the 'Dutch' three hit horse, while initially the Swedish ones do okay (and depressed Dave greatly) they are extremely brittle and don't fare well in the long run.

Having said that it was an enjoyable game and certainly looked spectacular, Dave thought he had painted his army maybe five years ago and never used them while mine had been in production for at least three years I think so it was great to get them into action!

The next game requires some 'pike-heavy' battalia for the Royalists so I might even buy a few more figures to add to my standard pike-and-shot units.....

ECW Scot's Lancers

12 ECW Scot's Lancers. Not by any means something I needed urgently or at all really but for some reason they made it onto the painting table! Having said that I sometimes use Confederate Irish or Scot's Royalist in the one day Oxford FoGR competition so you never know maybe they will get an outing:

Again a very basic paint job but they look okay from a distance:

To The Strongest - For King and Parliament ECW

For a long time FoG-R was the set of rules I played most often being very popular at the club and resulting in me collecting numerous armies for it.

Over the last couple of years though it has declined drastically in popularity making it hard to arrange games other than the occasional Oxford one day competitions.

Some people are now playing Simon's ADLG-R variant but the Renaissance period has been largely swamped by ADLG now and for me ADLG-R suffers from the same issues I find with ADLG.

A while ago one of my friends suggested that we try 'To the Strongest - For King and Parliament' rules. I got a PDF copy of the rules but, after reading them and discovering that to play you needed three packs of playing cards each plus a bucketful of markers (plus they only cover the ECW) never got around to playing a game.

With the current lock down (and the possibility of playing it online) I thought I'd revisit the rules and have a short solo try out of the mechanisms to see how it plays.

The rules are based on a grid system which is fine as I have a suitable cloth for 15 mm figures. To try the rules I thought I'd use two simple forces, four seasoned pike and shot units for the Royalists and three pike and shot plus some dragoons for the Roundheads on a fairly open table. I didn't bother with the brigade commanders either:

The rules use an activation system with cards (or D10 in my case) needing a certain score to carry out an action depending on it's complexity. It is possible to activate units more than once per turn. In their first move the Royalists move forward and the Red and Yellow regiments open fire. Each unit has three ammunition markers that allow you to fire at long range (two squares) or double fire at close range (one square), the red counters represent the ammo.

It isn't that easy to hit, needing an 8 or more on a D10 to hit with the defender saving on a 7 or more:

A close up of the red and yellow regiments. The first row of dice behind them show the activation's; the red unit needed 2+ for it's first activation (to move) and scored 5. To get a second move it needed 6+ (higher than the first die) which allowed it to shoot. They did score a hit but the Roundhead grey coats saved it:

In their turn the Roundhead's close to short range and hope to open fire. Only the dragoons get to fire though and they inflict a hit (disorder) on the Royalist green coats:

With the Roundhead's failing to get a second activation the Royalist foot can now open fire at close range using double fire (and using up the second of their three ammunition counters). The fire only results in one hit on the grey coats:

The Roundhead's return fire in their turn but to no effect other than using up ammunition!:

The Royalist red coats charge the Roundhead grey coats after firing a volley. In the charge the defender fires first, then the attacker and finally there is a round of melee. All this results in the grey coats taking a single hit and the red coats falling back:

A devastating round of fire from the Royalist white coats inflicts two hits on the Roundhead blue coats breaking them as they already had one hit. The blue coats flee but the adjacent brown coats stand firm:

The Roundhead line is looking shaky, the blue coats have fled and the grey and brown coats have taken disorder markers. The Royalist line is undamaged but they have used up all their excess ammunition and can now only fire at close range:

The Roundhead's fire back with little effect:

A couple of rounds of desultory fire ensue in which the Royalist green coats take a hit but little else happens:

The surviving Roundhead foot fall back to try to rally. As they have used up their spare ammo the Royalists cannot fire at them at long range:

The Roundhead's managed to rally some losses off before the Royalist's closed in again. The dragoons are close to breaking the Royalist green coats:

Despite being a unit down the Roundhead foot start to hit the Royalist foot:

Losses mount for the Royalist's:

The Royalist green coats fall back before they are broken:

Three out of the four Royalist foot are now in trouble, the firefight is going against the Royalists as the dragoons start to target the white coats:

A few more rounds of firing and the Roundhead brown coats are almost broken as are the Royalist red and yellow coats!:

 The Roundhead brown coats finally flee giving the day to the Royalist's:

So what did I think of my first run through of the rules?

Positives

• Despite being slightly daunting the rules are actually fairly easy to pick up and after a couple of turns I think I had the basic mechanism down.
• The limited ammunition is an interesting concept, once you'd fired off your 'spare' ammo it was a lot harder to hit.
• Being grid based there is none of the fiddly movement of many rule sets.

Negatives

• As mentioned above once you'd shot off your spare ammo it was hard to hit, especially once units became disordered (only hitting on a 9 or 10 on a single die with the target saving on a 7+ if hit in the open) thus after a while the game became a little bogged down in numerous failed shooting attempts. Melee does not seem that much more efficient but that might change if you had pike heavy P&S units or with the cavalry.
• The number of dice and markers! Since you can activate a unit, activate other units then go back and activate the first unit again you need to keep track of all the activation's each turn. In a bigger game this may be slow. The infantry need markers for ammo and disorder (took me a while to work out that a 'hit' and a 'disorder' were the same thing) while the cavalry need ammo, 'dash; counters and disorder.
• It's actually quite easy to break combat and rally the infantry once everyone is on limited ammo so it took a while to get a result even with a small number of units.

I'd be happy to give them another go and might try running through some cavalry combats next. There are some variations in the troops (quality and ratio of pike/shot plus Highlanders for the foot, 'Dutch' and 'Swedish' trained for the horse) so that might make a more interesting game.