Victory Without Quarter

 I have often fancied playing Victory Without Quarter English Civil War rules by Clarence Harrison, they are available as a free download link  but I never got around to making the cards required to play the game. Well, I have now managed to extract my digit and make some cards.

I have had a few games now and they have all been good fun.

Here are some pics of last nights game.

Rupert's Blewcoats break Cosgroves Greencoats.

Colonel Dove defeats his Royalist opponents.

But Colonel Oliver and his Ironsides are defeated.

Sir Marmaduke throws himself into the fight but falls dead as he gains the victory.

Rupert's Blewcoats are on the run having been roughly handled by Old Robin's Tawnycoats.

Lord Brooke's Regiment are in trouble.

The last unit in Col. Olivers wing are broken.

Lord Brooke's Purplecoats are shattered.

Sir Lesley Forster's Bluecoats creep up on the Tawnycoats and shoot them in the back!.

The Roundhead centre is crumbling.

The Tawnycoats scatter Bolton's Horse.

Sir Thomas Rainborowe's Foote are in dire straits.

Colonel Dove's horse are steadily being driven from the field.

Sydenham's horse are seen off by the Royalist Foote.

Old Robin's Regiment is charged in the rear.

Lord Charles joins Allen Apsley's Foote and charges in to break the last unit in Suffolk's battalia.

And Lord Charles gets the victory proving that he's no dummy!.

A grand game, I made a few house rules but nothing too drastic.

Baroque - English Civil War.

 Well I'm still battling away with me ECW toys. After many good games with "Furioso" rules I found the rule set I originally fancied at a good price.

These rules are entitled "Baroque" and are published by Dadi&Piombo. I decided to half my unit size to suit the rules on my small table.

The rules play well with commands activating by initiative as the opposing units may react to the activating sides actions. It is all very to and fro.

There is a very good blogpost featuring Baroque here... link It is well worth a peep for anyone interested, I have found it very useful.

I discovered that I needed a couple of camps to be protected so I set to and made some today.

I've spent some time improving my terrain a bit too, I've invested in some new trees, painted my fields and had a right good time of it.

I love learning a new rules set and I reckon Baroque is well worth learning.

Furioso

I got my English Civil War toys out and have had a lot of fun trying out rulesets with them. I played "Warhammer ECW" for a few games and that was enjoyable but didn't quite hit the spot.

 Then I tried out "Furioso" by Steve Danes, I bought these rules a couple of years back when I had wild ideas about wargaming the Italian Wars.

Furioso is designed to wargame the sixteenth century, somewhat earlier than the English Civil War so I had to use similar unit stats to suit my collection.

I enjoyed my first couple of games, I particularly liked the initiative system.

The next couple of games knocked me back a bit, one or two implausible events occurred. 

Then I found that I had missed some rules so I had another game which was much better.

I played more, introducing some skirmishers and found some more depth to the rules.

The upshot is that I am very pleased with Furioso, the rulebook was a bit hard for me to grok but definitely worth persevering with.

For those that are interested in Furioso there is a great blogpost here... link

The rules are available from Alternative Armies... link

I foresee plenty of good games ahead.

Great stuff!.

Pike and Shotte

This week I have been playing some English Civil War games using "Pike and Shotte" rules. I had forgotten how much fun can be had with the "Black Powder" family of rules and intend to use them more often.

Here's a few photos of the wee men on the table.

 It's been nice to get these old soldiers out again, I've had some of them nearly 40 years.

Happy days.

Memoir 44 in 15mm and English Civil War.

 After playing Commands and Colors Ancients to death over the last few weeks, I fancied a change. I brought out my Flames of War collection to play Memoir 44 on my board.

 I had to use 6mm buildings for the towns but it was OK.

 I played an Operation Goodwood scenario from the Days of Wonder website.

 Tigers on the prowl.

 The game played very well, but my collection has limited scope for Memoir 44.

 I could maybe use my 1/72nd models.

 Bit I think it would shine with 1/300th models.

 We had a visitor to the bird feeder today so I gave him some of the birds mealworms.

 He loved them and was in the garden most of the day eating and sleeping. Cute!.

 This afternoon I got out some 28mm English Civil War models and had a game based on Commands and Colors Napoleonics.

 I sketched out some rule amends and got to it.

 It played well also.

 Cavalry battles raged to and fro.

And the battle was decided by the infantry clash.

Loved it.

Now Tony at link has a well developed ruleset for Commands and Colors ECW which I will download and use in future. His blog is brilliant and has been a great source of inspiration for me.