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What Is This All About Then?

I am embarking on an English Civil War project as well as my Oldhammer WFB 3rd edition project; Warm Ale and Mud.


I decided to do this as my WFB ‘armies’ are complete and whilst I have plenty of buildings and villagers to do, the hankering for a force took over.

Combine that hankering with the fact that much if not all my Warm Ale and Mud terrain and buildings could pass as English then I would not really need to make much if any ECW terrain at all. 

So it seemed to make sense, a nice diversion but without too much extra work.

Now, there are many ECW rules out there but if any of you are familiar with my Warm Ale and Mud WFB project you will know that I like small scale skirmishes that are story driven and entertaining in their own right.

Big battles are not what I want with my 25mm games.

So ruleswise I wanted something that would work at smaller scope clashes and ideally as teeny tiny scraps, almost like rpg scenarios with just a dozen or so models per side, much as with my WFB.

Enter then, Warhammer English Civil War.  (WECW from now on).




I shall be using these rules as I am familiar with the game mechanics and they allow ‘skirmishes’ and ‘brawls’.

I know NOTHING about the period but some quick reading has increased my knowledge from 1 on a scale of 1 to 100 to a 2. So double, which can’t be bad!!

As is my want I am not doing it quite as one would expect.

I have opted to go Parliamentarian as my home town of Birmingham seems to have been aligned with them more than the King.

BUT….  My ‘army’ is obviously not a regular army.

It is a company, sort of.

It is a free company of soldiers, mostly foot with a troop of cavalry and a gun.

It is Captained by Andrew Stockton of Irish decent who made his money in the printing game in Hamstead in the Midlands.

With war having broken out and being mostly Parliament loyal he and his lads attach themselves to whatever regiment is near by and they fight with them. Except when they don’t. Often as not Stockton takes his company off to do whatever he fancies at the time, that could be a spot of looting, some robbery, smuggling, special assignments from a rich employer, or sometimes just settling private matters with the lads.

In game terms, this allows me to wander around fighting in full scale pitched battles as part of a regiment, to small clashes with his company, and tiny covert assignments of just a handful of men.

Quite probably not what happened, but then again who really knows, but more importantly, fun to do.

Figures are ordered and I shall update the blog when they are here.


Thanks for dropping by!!






Comments

  1. Replies
    1. Cheers dude.
      It will take a while to get going but it should be fun once it does.

      Delete
  2. Excellent! I started recreating my C18th Altefritzenburg ImagiNation in the C17th and need to get back to it. Looking forward to seeing what you do. What figures are you using?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You should. I will go back to your blog seeing as I now have another slight distraction.

      I was torn between Perry Perry and Perry Foundry - Which unsurprisingly scale well together and Bicorne Miniatures and Bloody Miniatures, the later being especially to scale with the former.

      I went for Bloody and Bicorne as even though a touch more expensive, they have a greater offering and Bloody have some really good figures for low key skirmish type games.

      Delete
    2. dang, slight diversion I meant.

      Delete
    3. Bloody Miniatures are bloody excellent! I've already painted a few of the Renegade Miniatures I have but need to get the Bloody ones started.

      Delete
    4. Shame that Renegade are defunct. I must start going back to wargames shows and check out historicals and bring and buy.

      Delete
    5. Actually after waiting for the order from Bicorne to be cast I have come to the conclusion, that they may be too big and that Foundry would be a better match with what I have.

      So I have e-mailed Bicorne and asked them to cancel the order before they get around to it.
      I did also suggest they keep a certain % of the money as way of apology.



      This does mean that I will have less options going forward and that it will cost more.

      But they are more likely to fit my 20mm x 20mm bases, they will be quicker to get (I can always drive down and pick up an order), plus they speak to me more.
      They are not quite as nice as the excellent Bloody Miniatures and Bicorne, but they still feel better somehow.



      Well I e-mailed Bicorne yesterday and left a voicemail this morning to check and confirm.
      They just e-mailed to say they never saw my e-mail in time and it has already been posted.
      They will of course let me return it to them, but they expect me to not have the postage refunded.

      I have e-mailed back to explain that I will of course pay to return it to them myself, but that withholding the postage to me is illegal.
      Is that actually what they mean?

      What makes this even more annoying is that when I e-mailed them to say I am cancelling I said to keep some of the money as way of apology for the hassle, then they try to get away with not giving me a full refund?

      It has to be said it has left a bad taste in my mouth and has somewhat dampened my enthusiasm for ECW, however once I do get my full refund I will carry on, though for now this has vexed me a treat.

      Delete
  3. Pleased to see you have turned out for the right side. My eldest is Oliver for a reason!

    ReplyDelete

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The Troops Are Here Sir!!

So as I mentioned in my first post, the idea for this WECW project is to have my ‘army’ as a bit of a what if. However I wanted to make it at least semi plausible. A quick bit of rooting around tells me that Lord Brooke was a Parliament man and he had a regiment in the Midlands as well as down London way, which suits what I wrote about Andrew Stockton earlier, him being from Birmingham. Lord Brooke was killed at the siege of Lichfield in March 1643 and his regiment seems to have been disbanded. It seems the colours of his London regiment of foot was purple, which is quite unusual by all accounts and maybe his Midlanders also had fancy duds, or maybe not. With them being disbanded it seems records of their attire and so on was lost? So Andrew Stockton was a part of his Midlands Regiment and once it was disbanded he took his men and went a bit solo/rogue. Not beyond the realms of possibility I reckon. It suits my narrative and has an element of historical authenticity about it....

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