Project Naseby - The story so far

Project Naseby - The story so far

I have always had a bit of an obsession with trying to create a complete representation of any army involved in a battle that interests me.  A while ago I decided that I wanted to do Naseby.  But not just one army but both sides.  Then I thought why not do it to a figure ratio of 1:1 its not quite as insane as it sounds when you realise that I am doing this in 2mm using Irregular Miniatures range.

That's when the megalomania started to really kick in.  I could match the figure scale to the ground scale if I aimed for 1mm to 1 yard/metre.  How hard could it be I thought.  The armies are not that big and the battlefield isn't huge.  All I need to do is get the respective orders of battle, recreate the terrain based on the OS map adjusted for the more open landscape of 1645, buy some figures and that would be that, easy..... right?  And so Project Naseby was conceived , or should that have been misconceived?

Early research went quite well, I created a contour map of the area of the main fighting area and was able to make the adjustments for the period land use based on the English Heritage battle field report.  Problems started with creating the two orders of battle.  I quickly realised that most of what I thought I knew was wrong.  so off I went to the best primary sources.  Symons diary is good for Royalist Horse but information on the foot is variable.  On the New Model side pay returns give an indication of numbers for the foot but not for the horse, and so it went.  In the end I based my forces on the Naseby Battlefield trust information.  That allowed me to buy some figures.  Although I did have to decide on a few other points first like frontage and formations so I knew what to buy.

More on that and my attempt to write rules in a later blog.