Rules for the ECW have almost reached completion.

Its taken a while, at least a decade in fact, mulling over rules, researching tactics, formations, weapon effects and doing the basic statistics and math to get things balanced but I'm on the finishing straight.  To be honest the core mechanisms have been there almost from day one and have needed almost no amending.  I have been able to play games solo without too many issues for around half of the time I have been working on the rules so the core of the system was something I was happy with.

What delayed matters was getting from the concept in my head to a written document that some body other than me could play the game from.  There were lots of things that I hadn't put down in writing and lets face it the whole point of rules is meant to be that that anyone can pick them up and after a couple of games understand how everything hangs together.  on top of which i wanted them to be laid out in a specific way with section and subsections clearly numbered to aid finding the answers to rule queries quickly and easily.  That took me a while to get to grips with as Words system while straight forward once you get your head around it doesn't work exactly as I want.  Which meant a certain amount of heart ache trying to get it to do things my way.  I failed, repeatedly and often to get the heading numbering system to do what I wanted and in the end I had to create a manual numbering system but that doesn't benefit from the automatic renumbering function when new text is added or old text removed!

So as of today I have all of the play sheets completed, 95% of the rules are done and I'm on to the final editing to ensure internal consistency.  I'm hoping that will take a week or possibly two and then I will have a complete first draft ready to go out to for proof reading/play testing.  I will probably need to add a few more examples and some more illustrations of play but the proof reading should flag those issues up.

I'm aiming to play a few solo games over the next few weeks to test the changes I have made.  So expect some after action reports.  Not quite the first 2021 project done but tantalisingly close!

Writing rules- its educational!

 I have said it before and I will no doubt say it again, writing rules shows up weaknesses in my knowledge!  Even if all that I intend is to amend existing sets by adding a few house rules I find that what I thought I knew is either slightly wrong or more often really badly wrong.  To get a proper feel for a period means diving deep into the nitty gritty details of the time, place and tactics and weapon technology.  I don't use everything I learn, as to me part of the rule writing process is to decide what to leave out as much as it is to decide what to include.

Its partly about the the level the rules are pitched at.  Grand tactical level is not the place to detail all the steps of loading a musket, rather its about the overall impact of a battalia of foot shooting, while a skirmish set will be interested in how long it takes to reload but still isn't that interested in all of the steps required.  But in both cases knowing that detail can help  make the relevant rules feel right.

Another issue is deciding which command decisions you want the players to focus on.  No set of rules will ever focus on every decision because every man in the fight is making decisions of some sort at some point in the fight.  Some of these we can merge into a sort of herd mentality test, although we call it a morale or a reaction test, others are the individual decisions of key men.  When does the battalia use salvee fire rather than firing by ranks, when does it move to close combat, does it pursue afterwards.  These are the decisions of single officers.  Further up the chain of command the decisions change again to when do I withdraw a battered battalia or brigade and replace with fresh troops.  Understanding who takes these decisions helps focus a player on a specific level in the command structure.  

Ultimately a decision has to be made on which aspect of command the game is going to focus upon and which are going to be abstracted or left out entirely.  An example is that in most wars logistics are vital and take up a huge part of a General's high level decision making.  Yet this rarely features in table top rules, not just because the key decisions are made before the armies clash, but mainly because it's boring!  I have never seen any rules which consider if the troops had a decent breakfast on the morning of battle or a good slug of rum before going forward into combat.  We just assume that some one somewhere is dealing with this stuff.  It's part of the playability to accuracy to fun trade off that has to be considered.

On top of all of that there is the actual discipline, or possibly in my case lack of discipline, in writing up the rules.  How do they flow, are they in a logical order, will people be able to find the key information easily.  There is the worry that what I will actually achieve will be a good, workable set that are hidden behind poor layout and phrasing or poor explanations.  Oh and learning all the techie stuff needed to format a 'Word' document so the version on the page looks like the one in my head.

Not how I want my rules to read

 Rules creation and writing forces me to challenge what I know, to check it against reality and to change my views.  This is an additional bonus beyond getting a final set that cover the things I think are important in the game.  Like I said, it's educational.  

  

Project Naseby - 4 - an update

I have made some more progress on one of my projects for 2021; my ECW rules 'Project Naseby'.  Originally I wanted to use them for a refight of that battle but things moved on and now they are aimed at covering the entire British Civil Wars plus I'm looking at adding enough extra material to cover the Thirty Years War as well.  Talk about scope drift!.  I haven't posted about these for a couple of years (I just checked make that five years!) but all I really need to do is to complete the section numbering and to tidy up some explanations after which I will do some more play testing.  So to give you a flavour of what I have been creating here is a slightly edited version of the introduction to the rules.

It's taken so long to write these rules it feels like I started with this technology!

The rules are intended for use with 2mm figures using a one figure to one man ratio and a ground scale of 1mm to the yard, so there is a near 1:1 relationship between figure size, ground scale and terrain height. 

One issue which seems to come up a lot in rule reviews for this period is what the combat formations should be called; are they regiments or something else? The answer is that the standard combat units were given different names in the various armies of the period.  Regiments were administrative organisations and could be merged with other Regiments or split into smaller battlefield combat formations.  Within my rules rules I have used “Battalia” to describe the basic infantry combat unit and “Squadron” for those of cavalry or I use the term ‘units’ if talking about both together.  These will be formations of roughly 500 – 1,000 men for the infantry and of about 150 – 500 for cavalry.  Artillery is deployed as single guns and their train, as was the practice at the time.

Foot units are made of several bases of 100 or 50 foot.  Each infantry base is either all shot or all pike.  Only shot bases may shoot but both shot and pike bases can fight in melee.  Infantry units with no pike bases will be at a disadvantage against horse in melee.  Cavalry units are made up of several bases of 50 horse which may shoot but are primarily melee troops.  Artillery units are made up of a single artillery piece along with a limber, team and a wagon all mounted on a single base.  All bases of a unit must maintain contact with each other, unless they are dragoon horse holders. As the commonest formation for the period was for a battalia to be drawn up with a pike centre and two sleeves of shot it is possible to mount all of the pike on one base and the shot on two bases which makes moving units faster.  However, that makes redeploying into other formations impossible although given the relative low cost of 2mm figures separate models could be deployed where required.

A random ECW re-enactment photo to keep you interested

Play follows an IGO-UGO pattern.  All units utilise action points (AP) to perform moves, manoeuvres, formation changes and combat in their turn.  Each unit has 3AP to use in each action phase.  It is a core concept of the rules that these can happen in any order during an action phase.  So a foot battalia is able to stand and use 3AP for shooting or use some AP to move and the balance to shoot or to shoot then move or any other combination.  The only limit is that the unit must have sufficient AP available to carry out the action.  Players will have to decide how to allocate each unit’s allocation of action points between activities each turn.  Units cannot move, manoeuvre, shoot and then launch a melee attack all in the same turn as they simply do not have the AP available to do this.  APs represent the time taken to carry out actions so cannot be saved or transferred to other units.  With one exception they cannot be carried over from turn to turn.  The exception is to allow the AP to be reserved to allow defensive fire as during the other player's move. 

Another core concept is that units will want to maintain formation to ensure that their command and control is not disrupted.  Disruption can occur as the result of combat or a reaction test.  Disrupted units will perform significantly worse than units who attempt to avoid becoming disrupted or who take the time to recover by rallying.  As with any wargame the mechanism for measuring a unit's willingness to continue to follow orders is critical.  There is no "Morale Phase" in the rules instead reaction tests are taken at the point where events occur or circumstances change and require the unit’s reaction to be reviewed. 

As 2mm figures are cast as blocks there is no scope for figure removal so the unit’s continuing ability to fight must be measured in a different way.  This is by using a “Combat Effectiveness” value (CE).  The starting CE derives from a small number of factors including the units training and experience and is calculated pre battle.  Casualties are not tracked in the game, instead the reduction in CE is tracked.  This reduction covers not just casualties but fatigue and the general erosion of willingness to fight. 

The rules are divided between standard and optional rules.  The optional rules add extra period flavour at the expense of slowing play a little.  Optional rules include chain of command, weather and tactical style (Dutch, Swedish or German) to the mix.  The rules provide detail and clarify issues which may arise in play but the core points of the rules are on 'play sheets' and a game can be played using these in isolation after a read through the main rules.  I hesitate to call these a quick reference sheet as they don’t boil down to a one-page summary but they should allow play without turning to the main rules every turn.

So there you have it Project Naseby is still moving forward.  It is playable in its present state but whether anyone but myself can understand the rules as written is open to debate until I throw them open to peer review.

In Other News - The First Time

 In other news will be where I post non wargaming stuff that doesn't fit in as a random thought.  

This post is an adapted version of something I wrote for the newsletter of my Sealed Knot re-enactment unit, Colonel Robert Hammond's Regiment of Foot.  As a bit of background no one is allowed to fire a musket (using black powder only I should stress, actual musket balls are frowned upon!) with the Sealed Knot without taking and passing a safety test to ensure they are competent.  It's an important part of what we do to ensure safety during displays and passing is not guaranteed.  The test happens after a musketeer has done a  couple of events as a non firer to gain some experience of the display environment but its usually pretty early in their Sealed Knot life, so the test is seen as a big deal and they have no idea what might be thrown at them by the tester!  Now that is clear what follows might make a little more sense.

The First Time

The first time I put on a musketeer’s clothing and equipment was in my back garden, God alone knows what the neighbours must gave thought! I was being lent a full set of kit ready for my first event and I was checking that it fitted. A few years earlier I had done a short stint of American Civil War re-enactment and a friend, who had also involved with that, had gone on to join the Sealed Knot and was musket officer with the Tower Hamlets Trained Bands. He suggested I give it a go as a musketeer. Of course this was before I saw the light and joined Hammond’s. 

Previously at his invite Mrs E, myself and the children had gone to an event to see what we thought of the Sealed Knot. We had enjoyed it so much that we joined on the spot. So my friend had visited a couple of times before the first event I was going to take part in to teach me musket drill and safety so that by the time I turned up at that first event I was supposed to have a vague idea of what I was meant to be doing. 

This was back in 1989 so there was no SK website, no Facebook and no mobile phones. All contact was either in writing, by old school landline telephone or face to face, with no way to view images of SK events unless given photographs. So my expectation of what an SK muster would be like was based on my previous experience of ACW events. It didn’t prepare me for what I was about to take part in at all!

So it came to pass that bright and early on a Saturday morning I jumped into my car and following hand written instructions drove to my first ever SK muster. Driving onto that first SK campsite was an eye opener as it was twice the size of anything from my ACW days, and this was only a Mini! (the smallest event that is open to all members). I had no idea how to find my regiment amongst what seemed like hundreds of tents. With no way to contact my regiment or my friend I was reduced to asking for directions. Still that meant that I learned how friendly the average Knotter is towards fellow eccentrics. 

I eventually found the regiment after a couple of wrong turns. Well I say ‘regiment’, at this particular event we turned out something like five participants! To be honest I recall very little of the battle other than an hour long nagging feeling of panic, as I had no idea of what was going around me, or what I was expected to do next, or what the hell introduction or extroduction were. As for counter marching, well let’s just say I might as well have been a sheep as I was simply dragged from place to place by the people around me with no idea of what I was meant to be doing. I was told to stay out of hand to hand and if anyone attacked me to just lie down and play dead, which suited me just fine as some of the opposition pikemen looked pretty damn scary. 

Despite all of this I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and turned up to do it all over again on the second day. This was when things became ‘interesting’!  I was told to get ‘kitted up’ including all the musket equipment, grab the musket I had been loaned and was promptly taken off to do a musket test. I was about to be tested by the fearsome head of the musket inspectorate ‘Tig’ Wright. I was told that she would be tough and that she would try to find any weakness in my understanding of the safety rules. To say that I was nervous would be a huge understatement. 

Now the first thing to be checked on a musket test is that all of your licences are in order, so I dutifully handed them across for checking. Tig took a long time scrutinising them and then asked a question I hadn’t been primed about! ‘Is this really your date of birth?’. It took a moment for it to sink in, then I had a moment when I wondered if she was thinking I was an imposter or something? Well you read about people doing that for driving tests, maybe it was a thing with musket tests too. It’s funny what races through your mind at moments like this. I must have managed to confirm that it really was my actual date of birth because the next question thrown at me was ‘what time were you born?’ Another question not on the expected script! This was trickier than expected. ‘er….. about 9.30 in the morning as far as I know, why, is it important?’. At which point Tig grinned at me and said ‘Oh yes, I need to know if you are older than me ….we share exactly the same birthday.’ 

As it turns out I am actually younger by about three hours, but we agreed that for all reasonable purposes I was going to be the older of the two of us. She still refers to me as ‘old person’ thirty years later! Oh and after all that I still had to take the rest of the test, but I did pass it.

New year - new projects

With the New Year come new resolutions and projects, 2020 was the first year I actually tracked them and I'm going to do the same for 2021 as it helped me to keep on track.  I didn't hit all of my objectives but then again I didn't really expect to.  Those I didn't achieve have rolled over into 2021's list.

The big misses from 2020 was the failure to complete my ECW rules (for what is probably the 10th year in a row!) along with not finishing my DBA Dacian army or to fully convert my Maurikian Byzantine army from Irregular Miniatures figures to Baccus ones.  There is nothing wrong with the look of the Irregular Miniature's offerings other than I simply cannot use the close order castings due to them being modelled shoulder to shoulder.  That means I can't space them on the bases in the way I should like.  That said I met more of my objectives than I failed overall so I'm fairly happy with that.

I have made a good start on the Byzantine army conversion process, with five elements finished and another two on the painting table.  I have figures I can proxy for psiloi but I need Baccus to re-open so I can order some extra regular Sassanid infantry and cavalry to proxy for Skoutatoi and half armoured Byzantine cavalry  

In fact the need to order from Baccus is going to be a continuing theme for this year.  I have set a target of creating the three main armies from the DBA lists covering the late eleventh century in Spain, the age of El Cid project let's call it.  That's going to need a fair number of new figures from ranges I haven't previously ventured into.  Berber and Andalusian spearmen and archers can come from the crusades range using the Sudanese figures, Cavalry from the Bedouin light cavalry or Mameluke cavalry.  Spanish knights will be Norman armoured cavalry and spearmen either Norman armoured infantry or Welsh spearmen, plus Frankish crossbowmen.  I might add in some Gothic medium cavalry for the unarmoured cavalry.

This year the objectives are:

1. Finish the Dacian DBA army
2. Convert the early Byzantine's from Irregular to Baccus castings
3. Finish the 1940 British and German armies I bought 3-4 years ago
4. Finish the WW2 rules I started last year
5. Finish the ECW rules
6. DBA WOTR Yorkist army
7. DBA WOTR Lancastrian army
8. DBA Andalusian army
9. DBA Feudal Spanish army
10. DBA Islamic Berber Army
11. Finish the TD ironclads
12. Finish the H&R WW1 aeroplanes
13. Rebase my 6mm ECW collection

plus I have thought about a small 1980's Cold war gone hot project.  Based about 1982 as that is the war I would have fought in if it had all kicked off.  If I do go with that it will be 6mm probably H&R.  I will of course stray off the path described above as the 'ohhhh shiny' complex will no doubt kick in at some point!

I have already set the ball rolling for this year with the first models coming off the painting queue being Tumbling Dice screw and paddle gunboats or sloops, I can't tell them apart and forgot to label the castings.  It would help if TD had images of all of their range.  These are really nice models and from what I have seen the newer versions are even nicer.  

First off the painting desk in 2021- Gunboats and Sloops