6mm ECW: Victory without Quarter

 Today we tried out a set of ECW rules called 'Victory without Quarter' that are freely available on-line.This is a set of rules that I have fancied trying for some time now as they read like they will have a good 'in-period' feel to them. Although really written with 28mm or perhaps even 15mm figures in mind we used our 6mm figures as that is the only scale we have enough figures ready painted, (my own 15mm collection is only about 9 units strong, and all Parliamentarian whereas we can field about 100 painted units in 6mm between us). 

For a first game we used small, reasonably balanced sides and fairly open terrain so we could concentrate on learning the basics of the rules. Ian and Nigel took charge of the Royalists whilst Howard and I lead the Parliamentarian forces. It was lovely to get Howard back gaming again. 

Our armies are all made up of 6mm Irregular Miniatures, they paint up really well.  

Parliamentarian forces deploy, the infantry were to hold the centre whilst their cavalry would try to outflank the Royalist Infantry.  

Royalists deploy with their cavalry trying to take the village opposite and their infantry hold the centre. We discovered at this point that we had deployed a little too far apart but at least there was plenty of room for manoeuvre. 

Victory without Quarter is a card activated game and my Cavalry were in luck early on and managed to speed across the table. The card activation worked a good degree of uncertainty  into the game. Movement, Shooting and Melee are easy to work out making for quite a fast moving game in which all players are kept involved. 

The Parliamentarian Dragoons took cover in the woods and harassed the advancing Royalist cavalry. Rules for the effects of terrain on moving, shooting etc... are simple, another positive point for us.  

Sensing victory, the Royalist infantry advance. 

My Trotters perform Caracole in front of Ian's Royalist infantry, but the dice were against us and Ian forced my cavalry to Rout with his superior shooting. Things were not going well.  

The Roundhead guns open up on Nigel's Royalist gallopers, but caused little damage.

But Nigel gets to charge and disperse our guns. You can also just make out top left where the Parliamentarian Dragoons are routing from the Royalist Dragoons.

We sadly ran out of time to complete the game but the Royalist forces certainly had the upper hand so victory to Ian and Nigel. 

As for the rules, at about 12 pages long they are brief and a few area's of the rules were a little vague but we managed to work our way through them. There is an interesting section on period specific random events and also a chart to add random abilities to your command figures. We play again next week but will deploy a bit closer. We may also tweak one or two other parts of the rules once we have had a re-read to see where we went astray. 

Overall we enjoyed the rules and they are a keeper!

Finally, last week Ian was disappointed that I did not mention Larry Hagman in his jeep who scouted  ahead of the American forces and managed to destroy the German Nebelwerfer and cause all sorts of problems.