Andy Callan, the author of 'Never Mind the Billhooks' was asking for volunteer's to play test an ECW version of the rules ('Never Mind the Matchlocks') and I offered our little gaming group as guinea pigs. Happily Andy has kindly agreed to let us take part in the play-testing of his new rules so today we had our first game.
With the rules aimed primarily at 28mm figures we had a few issues to sort as we game the ECW with multi-based 15mm figures. However it was an easy fix as we simply used each base of our figures as 'counts as' and casualty markers to keep score of losses without figure removal.
Before today's game started I took a few photo's of some of my recently completed ECW troops.
Lord Bright's Regiment of Greencoate's, posing in front of some of our recently painted Hovel's buildings. Hovel's resin buildings are great, full of detail and look wonderful once painted.
One of two limbers I painted over the weekend.
I have also added 3 more bases of cavalry and thought a group photo could look impressive.
We are gradually collecting and painting a whole small town.
This photo shows the very good 15mm scale of the buildings.
Using similar and decent sized forces of 135 points per side, I had set up fairly symmetrical scenery. This was to be a straightforward encounter battle with the simple aim to capture the crossroads. Ian was in control of his Royalists aided by Nigel as his Brigadier of cavalry. I was in charge of all the Parliamentarian troops.
Alternatively deploying one Brigadier and the troops under their command at a time, final deployment looked like this, Royalist at the top, Parliament at the bottom.
The manoeuvre phase ended when my light cannon shot at the Royalist Musketeers heading down the road, three '6's out of four dice, great shot!
View from behind Royalist lines. Cotton wool denotes who has fired.
Note the church that Ian has painted this week, lovely model.
Red dice denote how many rounds a musket unit has left.
Ian now declared, 'this is how you do it' to Nigel as he charged his battalia in, only to be defeated in melee and then throw a double 1 on his Melee Crisis Test!
That gave us all a good laugh.
My cavalry attacked on my right but Ian passed a test to get his Pike and Musket unit into a hedgehog which then narrowly defeated my squadron of cavalry. In their rout they took another of my cavalry units with them and that was my mounted attack on the right finished!
The centre of the battle with units of Pike and Shotte in a faceoff/shootout over the hedges.
The failed cavalry attack.
Soon after this and with time running out, with the Royalists having 3 morale tokens left and my Parliamentarians just two, a narrow victory for the Royalists was declared. Both sides were in a lot of Disarray and most units had run out of ammunition.
This was a closely fought and fun game. The rules worked well and suit the period although we were having to check a few things in the rules as the game played out and we do have a short list of questions and suggestions for Andy to consider.
We play Never Mind the Matchlocks again at our next meet on Jan 9th.
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