Some more Warrior ECW goodies.

 Well I'm starting to make inroads into my ECW backlog and have managed to base up some more of my units. I also was able to finish my two Warrior personalities. King Charles and his nemesis Olive Cromwell. Both figures are very characterful [is there such a word?]

 Naturally Cromwell needed some divine inspiration, this time a very old Warrior figure given to me by John Reidy who has kept this chap since the 1980's. Its a shame Warrior no longer produce him.

 I also put together a royalist foot regiment using part painted figures from my York purchases and unpainted new casts.Its came out very nicely if a bit bright. Between the gloss varnish and my highlighting all the uniforms they do stand out somewhat. To be honest it is what I intended,.I thought it captured the 1980's very nicely. Bugger reality and instead lets have some brightness on the table.

 This time a part painted royalist horse regiment, repainted in the main, again in bright colours to catch ones eye.Gilder knew how to capture the 'dash' of the Royalists, a lovely old figure. Well for me it is. So my ECW old school armies are starting to progress nicely and I hope to use what is painted very soon, no doubt like all newly painted units they will leg it.

 Finally, a scraped together Union regiment. This time Sash and Sabre castings. They are very nice figures with a lot of action in them. I've cobbled together some more to paint as a Confederate unit but more of them anon. Once again wargaming habits reared their heads and I 'had?' to purchase a new regiment of Union figures from the new North Star releases. Now I know I dont need them and the chances of them being used frequently are pretty remote but they were such nice figures I had to possess another Irish Regiment, this time barefooted. Mind they were also on offer, so technically I was saving money. 

 As many other wargamers will have noticed as one gets more mature it seems pieces begin to fall off you with regularity. Never mind having  back jip I now have a grandchild's plague courtesy of my daughter's off spring. So between sitting on one cheek of my backside and shoving tissue up my constantly running nose I'm doing okay thanks very much. Still I've got my toys so one cant really grumble too much.

Old Warrior ECW.

 Where has the time gone to since my last post? It is one of the longest delays between posts ever and I'm not really certain why considering how many games John and I have played in that time.We have refought Edgehill twice and played a very large ACW scenario plus Ive been away for the last couple of weekends. Unfortunately I didnt attend Hammerhead due to it falling on my wife's birthday. I hardly think the journey could be justified somehow? Still it looked a good show albeit containing dozens of small bite sized games.
Sadly my win rate was dire with the battles we fought but all the games were brilliant and very tense affairs. I especially enjoyed using the Parliamentarians at Edgehill, it was a very bloody affair but for a change the cavalry gave a good account of themselves.

 I have been busy in several ways including progressing my ECW old school project. I was lucky enough to buy off E Bay three regiments of old Warrior foot owned by Stuart Asquith and I had to have them. I touched up the Warrior figures and then padded them out with the newer Warrior casts to make up my regiments. The grey coats regiment is the first one that is based. The other two are ready to base and will join the royalists.
Yes they are quite crude looking.
Yes they are small in comparison to Renegade, Front Rank etc but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I like them. I only wish I could have got more of them.

I really enjoyed the writings of Stuart Asquith especially his wonderful ECW scenarios and battles in the old Battle and Military Modelling.I also enjoyed his prickly observations in the Observation Post. If only things weren't so bland nowadays and a spade could be called a spade. 

I finally completed a Yellowcoat Regiment that has been sat waiting completion. These again are a combination of old painted figures and new castings. Yes they are bright, but I do like colour even though it isnt accurate for the period.These represent one of the London Trained bands.

I also completed my final artillery piece from the box of metal I purchased at York. Amongst the metal I found an old Minifig figure in the box and repainted him. He's the guy with the barrel and morion. Because of his diminutive size he is my powder monkey.                   

                                   

Next we have another ironside regiment using old figures from my York purchases, painted/re painted.The Hinchliffe figure is a lovely casting and for me looks the part.They are for Cromwell's brigade.

 Amongst my purchases on E Bay was a number of cuirassier officers by Hinchliffe. I have painted these up as the King's Gentlemen Pensioners and they will accompany my king on the battlefield.
                                         

 I also picked up some cheap ACW personalities several weeks ago and painted up Jackson for my armies. I do find switching subjects helps me keep interest.

 Finally Jason kindly sent me a couple of odd horses and a figure from his spares box of figures from the Old Wargames Holiday Centre collection.The gendarme in white is a beauty with a Lamming head and greenstuff plume. The other is one I put together using a Hinchliffe body, Perry plastic head and a Eureka French archer arm.The horse is a WHC from Jason with the beautiful wipe off oil technique on show.

 Again a painted WHC horse with Hinchliffe gendarme body, Perry head and Eureka arm. I know the head looks slightly out of scale, but he does fit in well with the unit.

One thing I've noticed these last couple of weeks is that I am struggling to paint more than an hour at a time nowadays due to back problems. After that I need to go and rest, walk or simply do something else.
 I am in constant awe of painters who can churn out large numbers of painted figures in a short period without suffering pain or discomfort and wonder what their secret is?
  Personally I attribute the back problem to the numerous road accidents I was involved in during my former life. People talk of nine lives but my tally of write offs and serious bumps was past that total and yet I was lucky enough to walk away from them all. I liken it to a footballer who ignores the knocks until he discovers it all catching up with him.
But basically all is well in my wargaming firmament and if anyone wants to offload some Stuart Asquith ECW figures, I'm your man.

A Seven Years War Encounter using Honours of War [amended]

When Osprey Books released Honours of War by Keith Flint in 2015 I will admit I was very excited. The rules were inexpensive and specifically covered the War of Austrian Succession and the subsequent Seven Years War. The rules were pretty straight forward to use and I particularly liked the command system for the brigadiers and commanders. Overall I thought they were exactly what I was looking for. 

Sadly over a number of battles I began to realise that there were some issues with them as regards the need to constantly withdraw units in order to rally causalities and also what appeared to me the overwhelming power of the artillery. The final straw was during a weekend refight where the Prussian commander created a grand battery of 'Brumbars' [thats 32pdr's which was an historical fact as regards their calibre] and proceeded to dominate the centre of the battlefield literally wiping out any opposing troops who were unable to manouvre out of their long reach. I couldnt blame the Prussian commander although he was using anachronistic tactics but I just felt the balance of the rules were wrong. I simply stopped using my SYW armies and went onto other projects. 

 A couple of year on and we went back to Blackpowder which was fine but somehow I felt just didn't capture the uniqueness of the period. I never said anything but John began secretly working on tweaking HOW. Yesterday he appeared with a set of ideas incorporating Honours of War and Blackpowder. He had asked me to set up a battle using my SYW collection and basically we set to, using the 'new rules.'

 John had kept with the command system from Honours of War and also the national characteristics. So being French my commanders could never be classed as 'dashing' and also had a stronger chance of being classed as 'dithering,' which is not advised. For John I had selected an allied army made up of Hessians and Hanoverians. So his commanders potentially could be better. We used the move and firing ranges and game sequence from How which were fine. The actual firing system was Black Powder with their saving system and a couple of other tweaks. I hope to type up John's work and post it at a later date if anyone is interested because there were other little things that were incorporated into the rules. 

 Anyway on to the battle which involved three brigades of infantry each and two brigades of cavalry plus light troops.Again some of my figures had never been used since they had been painted several years ago. I expected these would rout immediately but was surprised when they didn't.

I even got my French guard out, plus some of the household cavalry. I selected a brigade of Wild Geese but gave them no special characteristics. John had the Hanoverian guard plus two battalions of grenadiers. The idea was just to make a balanced game to test the rules.

When we tested for our generals we ended up with Dependable generals and only one dithering general each. Mine officially commanded the French guard! In the preliminary moves John couldn't get his dithering brigade to move even when he attached his C in C who was dependable.He had deployed all his cavalry on his right wing facing my guard which didn't help me to be honest.

What I liked about HOW was the feeling that one was gaming in the Age of Reason period where units maneuvered before they closed in for the kill. John did however allow infantry to actually melee if they wanted. a la Blackpowder. It made the battle even more bloody.

Marshal Saxe was clearly off his game and was only classed as Dependable. I blame his fondness for loose women and port. Still he was better than the Guard commander who was no use for anything and stood around looking confused. 

 My French guard blazed away at the combined Hanoverian grenadiers but couldnt make an impression until in the end I withdrew them intending to use my cavalry to finish the job. It never happened. John simply withdrew the grenadiers and my cavalry failed to move..

This regiment of Dragoons hit first one disordered unit which routed and then pursued into the Guard Lorraine who had become disordered by the routers.It didnt end well Im afraid. These Lorrainers are Black Hussar figures and had never been used before.

Here a regiment of Hanoverian dragoons hit my poor Irish who failed to stop them with musket fire  and were swept away, one regiment at a time.You will notice that I have managed to send a regiment of French cuirassiers to their aid.

With the demise of the two Irish regiments the Hanoverian just kept on coming and piled into my cuirassiers. Result!  Notice how my regiment are supported by the French Gendarmerie. What could go wrong?

Everything actually. My cuirassiers fought abysmally and routed, they did however mange to stop the Hanoverian cavalry's uncontrolled advance. 

The Gendarmes of the guard seemed to spend the entire game moving from one crisis to another and never actually came to blows with the enemy. So really very accurate I think.

                            Nothing like a bit of overkill. The Hanoverian right wing.

My Scots somehow had to face the onslaught from some cuirassiers who again weren't stopped by musket fire. They did manage to hold on in the melee and turn them back, but it was very close.

My cavalry looked impressive as they moved to support my guard. Sadly they were disappointing and couldnt get to grips with the Hanoverians until it was too late.

Instead of using French hussars I deployed Saxe's bodyguard. They did okay but eventually were forced back due to causalities. They did add some colour to the battle though.

  After four hours of battle my French were on the brink of collapse with two out of three infantry brigades shaken and retreating off the table. I was surprised how John also was on the brink of collapse but through judicious dice rolling had somehow managed to rally some of his foot regiments and hang on. The amended HOW rules worked very well and seemed to redress what I thought used to give an imbalanced game.We soon remembered the original rules and the only anomaly regarding evading light troops was quickly sorted to our satisfaction.All in all a really enjoyable game even though I lost.It looks like I will be returning to HOW albeit the amended version.

 Some Black Hussar figures hiding near the battlefield.