This post was inspired by a comment made
along the lines of “what are the best ECW rules, and why do you like them”
after I’d confessed to buying Warlord Games’ Pike and Shotte set recently. Inspired by that set to and went
through how many sets I actually have for this period.
First a bit of background. My interest in the ECW dates back to
probably the tweens and reading the Shire Battlefields of Britain books.
We used to go to Newark when I was a child
quite a lot. In those days (late
sixties, early seventies) then it had lots of antique/bric a brac/junks
shops. In those days anything old
didn’t necessarily command a premium price and I got some ex army stuff
(badges, berets etc) to play dress up with, along with an almost (2 cards
missing) set of cigarette cards on military uniforms (some 15 years I got the
missing cards as singles in Leicester from a stamp cum coin shop), so my
parents used to go for a day out and a general poke around the shops. I don’t really remember that they ever
bought very much that came back with us.
Well, after reading the battles books there’s the Museum to now visit. My parents were vaguely aware of the
siege of Newark (Nottingham itself being of course for Parliament, except that
Charles had raised his standard outside one of the pubs in the early days), and
especially so that they had made their own money.
So, it’s off to the museum. I suspect I’m eleven or twelve. And yes, we have siege
money.
John Kinross in the shire book does a
slight dis-service at this point – in the visiting bit, he makes reference to
the book, Newark on Trent, The Civil War and Siegeworks. No book on display to buy – quote
curator “It’s quite an expensive book and we don’t normally put it out”. 17 shillings and sixpence – or roughly
four shire books – which today would be 4x say £7, so say £20-£25. I didn’t have pocket money then but my
parents (bless ‘em) bought me the book.
I think by this time the realization had sunk in that Football, Football
annuals and the likes of Bobby Charlton and George Best weren’t going to
feature highly in my life.
The cover is a bit creased and the pages
yellowing (well the book is forty years old) but the spine isn’t broken and the
map is still neatly folded and not torn.
But more was to come – equipped with
knowledge from the museum and book, then off to the Queen’s Sconce on the way
home (not much of a detour). My
Dad and I climbed to the top and looked out…
A few years later Hinchliffe introduced
their English Civil war range.
If I knew then what I know now then I should have been buying Les
Higgins 30mm ECW figures (does anyone know where those moulds are?) instead. Miniature figurines also expanded their
range – in essence the range now had older, poorer sculpts, and newer much
nicer sculpts although the “round bottomed” horses seem to persist.
The very first set of ECW rules we had were
the Musketeer Rules by George Gush.
I can’t find them right now, but they were the forerunner of the WRG
rules. We played a few games
with them. My memories are that we
struggled with the whole unit/sub unit thing and that Halbardiers and
Cuirassiers were the most effective troops in melee. We never had very large armies, especially cavalry, and
generally spent time on large Napoleonic battles with plastic Airfix figures
supplanted by the odd metal unit, cannot etc.
My gaming chum for this period then
discovered squash, girls and music (and I would ultimately by his figures from
him so he could spend money on these things) and I discovered Dungeons and
Dragons (amongst other things) so the ECW gaming went on the back burner.
So, we come now to 1979-1980 and
University. D&D is still the
big thing but someone has two Thirty Years War armies. WRG is one of the big names in
historical rules at this time (I always had and have a spot for lots of the
Leicester Wargames club rules – lots of which ended up with Tabletop etc). Again the whole unit/sub unit concept
deters us and we don’t get enough games in to really explore and understand the
rules.
Mid to late 1980’s and now that I’ve been
in work my spending power has increased (if my painting time has decreased) and
we’re seeing the “explosion” of rules and figures. Front Rank appear with an ECW range, Redoubt do some and
Wargames Foundry is there somewhere as well. Essex have lots of strange
horse positions to my eye, and
occasionally I feel that their human anatomy was a bit oversize, especially
when mixing it in with other ranges. I buy the WRG army lists during this period and I do
like the idea of the “baggage camp” and points for its loss, as so many battles
seem to have the Royalist Cavalry in search of loot and baggage.
DBA/DBR was flavour of the time in many
quarters. Bought the books, never
took to wanting to game it. (I was
still roleplaying at the time though, and discovering the Chaosium rules
system, especially Pendragon).
Tercio is copyright 1986 and I can see that
I’ve made notes at the back on the army lists about what figures I had. I would presume that this would
probably date from a shopping trip to Nottingham and a visit to Tabletop
Games. Likewise would be the
skirmish rules “Sword and Pistol”.
The big news from this period though would
be Forlorn Hope. 1988 amended edition, almost certainly purchased at the World
Championships (although I don’t think they were called that then) at Derby
Assembly Rooms. My gaming
chum bought lots of figures and I bought some (especially dragoons) from Front
Rank. And then disaster struck as
we’re trying to paint figures to play games – he gets a new job in Oxford (from
Leicester) (although I shall return to him later) and I get a promotion but
which means 12-15 months of continuous assessment and an exam: both things
curtail gaming big time. I painted
quite a lot on this period though– Lord Brooke’s Purple Coats, the yellow
Regiment of the London Trained bands and John Hampden’s Green coats, whilst I
was doing Foundry in Red and Blue coated regiments with swappable banners to
provide a Royalist opponent– I fancied early Parliamentarian (so Edgehill) that
morphed into Eastern Association.
Forlorn Hope had (and still has) lots going
for it that I liked:
~Dicing for your army rather than points –
although they were available as well – so you gamed with what you got.
~A mechanism for determining varying ratios
of pike: shot in a unit and no messy unit/sub unit rules.
~Dicing for the morale of your troops, and
I especially liked the Edgehill option where this was done for this battle, the
first time they were called to test.
1991 sees the second edition, which I buy
(for some reason). It’s marginally
better laid out than the first edition, although still essentially done by
typewriter or early word processor.
This style of layout etc marks the
watershed to Part 2.
