How much is too much ECW?

Well just about finished my second last unit of ECW Irish Pike, while packing away last weeks paint jobs (Gordon Horse & Highlanders)I pondered "how much is too much"?

When I went to place them in my ECW tool box, I found I had a storage problem arising..... so I pulled out all of my painted, half painted and unpainted ECW figures and repacked what I could of the painted stuff into my tool boxes and moved the unpainted and half painted stuff into other storage boxes or onto the work bench.

The amount of lead in this 5 year old project is quite amazing (btw it started as a skirmish campaign), I have about 70 painted cavalry, with about 30 unpainted Scott lancers and dragoons to do, 9 fully painted pike and shot blocks of 24-32 figures, 96 highlanders, three part painted tercios, and two warlord plastic regt boxes, about 10 guns including two part painted and 30 odd club men which still need to be completed also.

Altogether a lot of figures, I should not be that surprised as this army reflects most of my collections, about a third too a half painted, a third part painted and a third bare metal. Granted this army has a lot of painted figures but I do every now and then ponder when should I stop.

Some of the guys in the club are interested in doing 30 years war, should I just sabot my bases for our Might and Reason adaptation " A Forest of Pike", or do I go and buy a few more boxes or warlord minis add some more floppy hats and feathers and add to the collection????

Pondering is dangerous stuff.................

Gordon Horse

The next unit returning to the fold is George Gordon, 2nd Marquess of Huntly's Horse.
They defected to the Royalist cause (George Gordon was Catholic). I still need to complete the flag for this unit as no marketed flags are available I need to hand paint the bugger!

The miniatures are from Eureka Miniatures, sculpted by Alan Marsh






cheers
matt

Montrose Highlanders Return!

I sold my Montrose ECW army two years ago and last weekend bought it back again at our clubs car boot sale. I am refitting all of them to my new painting style, washed in devlan mud then highlighted again.

The first unit I refitted from the army were the highlanders, I added some white and yellow to the kilt setts to make them more flashy. I made up the setts so they really don't really have any historical attachment, my ECW kilt research mostly describes 16th century setts as red and black. I have added a flag just because every wargame unit deserves a flag! This unit will also double for my Jacobite rebellion army so I probably should of painted them in a historical pattern......oh well live and learn!

So far quite happy with the result, another 20 odd figures to do, then I will attack the eyes etc by then my eyes will need a rest andI will move onto Gordon's horse next, then the Irish pike and shot, which I think I will increase in size by adding another eight pikemen to each unit and another four shot.










cheers
Matt

Victory without Qauter

The guys at the Goulburn Valiant Stormer’s are throwing around some ideas for the big project next year, a few of us think be 30 years war could be a possible front runner, as the warlord plastics lend themselves nicely to the period (still some discussion and dissention in the ranks as to basing conventions though), so with that thought a number of us have started to play test some rule sets. On Sunday Dave and I (we both normally play Warhammer English Civil War) had a game using the Free “Victory without Quarter” rules.

Using my ECW figs we each had a C in C, one cavalry general , two pike and shot blocks, one trotter and one galloper horse unit, one gun and a clubman for the parliament and highlanders for the Irish Royalists.

The game was played over 4 hours, I really liked the rules as I found they could be a little unpredictable and I liked the different factors for troop types and the card idea, although I think that VWQ will be a little slow for those players wanting to get two games in on a club day. VWQ still gave a satisfactory result and possibly would speed up after a few games; however I don’t think they would handle much more troop wise, two more pike blocks possibly and another regiment of horse each would slow it down even more. My ECW army is a mix of different figures, the Irish Montrose army are mostly Eureka, the pike and shot, horse, a mix of Old Glory, Perry and Eureka Highlanders and a Foundry gun and crew, On the parliment side, all Foundry and Perry except for the clubmen who are Warlord metals.

As the boys want to play a more grand tactical game I think VWQ will not be suitable for what we have in mind, although I would happily use VWQ for ECW. The next rule set we will play test is the Baroque set from the guys who wrote impetus.


Cheers
Matt

English Civil War revisited

Funny how I tend to have little things like TV shows spark my interest in periods again, I was watching "Supersizers" elizabethan food on SBS last night and they had a feast in a magnificent manor house. After the show I thought I would do some cruising on the net and I started looking at ECW sieges of stately homes, well that started it, I vsited TMP and asked if anybody had some ground and floor plans of maor houses and today instead of painting I was planning a ECW manor house with a church, a wall or ditch and perhaps a ravelin for a gun emplacement. I decided to have a look through all of my magazines and books today and managed to find several articles and a whole book I forgot I had on ECW archaeology, with articles on ECW seiges and buildings and lots of suitable structures feeding the fire, many were making there way into my sketch book for planning a suitable building(s). So this weekend I should have a start on some buildings for our club game later this month on the 15th. I also dug out my ECW figs and decided to move some into the production line this week, undercoating occured this afternoon of 20 odd Warlord Games clubmen and 10 more Foundry dragoons both mounted and dismounted. I also discovered that I had not put all of my flags on my built units last year along with one unit of pikes are incomplete, so some pikes to be made and some printing to be done this weekend as my daughter makes my flags for me with her wizz bang graphics program. I will post my sketches tommorrow when my vision is complete! cheers (excited) Matt