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.

Project Naseby pt 2 - selecting the figures

So with the terrain researched it was time for me to buy some lead.  Off I went to Irregular Miniatures website with a burning desire to spend money!  Problems arose within moments as I realised that I needed to ensure that the 2mm blocks were going to have the proper footprint on the table and the website didn't (and still doesn't) provide details of the size of the castings.  A quick search on Google later and I had found the Tiny Tin Troops website: http://www.tinytintroops.co.uk/Res/2mm/2mm_blocks.htm which gave me the details I needed.  Backed up with frontages, depths and descriptions from that site I was able to decide which castings looked to be the best fit to the fighting frontages commonly quoted in the drill manuals of the period.

Not wanting to waste money I bought a few samples first before settling on the Horse and Musket range of infantry castings (BG32 48 foot in 3 ranks or BG31 48 foot in 6 ranks) for shot and the large Swiss/Landschnecht pike blogs (RBG9A&B) for the pike armed troops.  I had to trim flags off the shot castings until Irregular started to provide a version without the flags.  For the horse I used the Armoured Pistoliers (RBG31 15 horse in 3 ranks).  On top of which I used a variety of different castings for generals individual foot figures to add to bases etc.

I used one block of pike to represent 100 pike in 6 ranks and two blocks of shot to  create 100 shot in 6 ranks.  Three blocks of horse side by side give 45 horse in 3 ranks plus some individual single figures as officers to bring it up towards 50 horse per element.  A mix of artillery types was used from the renaissance list with the addition of limbers and ammunition wagons to the base to make it look like a working gun team.

As I'm blogging this in my lunch hour I don't have photos to hand so those will have to wait for another time.

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.