The TYW in the Kings Country

After a long hiatus, the 28mm mostly Warlord Games plastic and metal figures have crawled blinking into the light again for a 3-game 1-day competition held in glorious rural Oxfordshire, on the edges of the King's Civil War Capital.

The TYW Germans - chosen because they have the nicest flags, as well as some little gunnes - take on the Swedes, the New Model Army and the French in three large format, widescreen big battle reports under FoG:R rules.

Be amazed how efficiently they progress through good planning and superior technology, and puzzle as to how Wallenstein and Tilly both end up on the same side in the same army as I deploy simply the nicest figures I can find and try and pretend there is a plan behind it.

There are three reports, complete with the full gamut of Germanic expressions of amazement and horror, lots of photos, ridiculous captions and a full set of post-game analyses from Renaissance Hannibal himself.

Get back to the 16th Century today with these 3 FoGR reports!

The Renaissance of The Renaissance - 3 FoGR Reports using the draft rules revisions

A subtle revision of FoGR Renaissance is in the offing, and to help test the rules the Kings Capital in Oxford is besieged by eager gamers all keen to raise the standard for King or for Parliament!

What will happen in an event where in previous year's I've taken Parliamentarians and Scots?

Why, it's One for All and all for The King!, as we shop at the Waitrose of Life, not the Lidl of Despair for 3 FoGR reports!

L'Art de la Guerre Renaissance...

ADLG Renaissance is in development... and even with having not actually played it or laid eyes on a copy, I do know that it will probably involve "double units" for Pike & Shot.

The idea of rebasing is a frightening one, but amazingly, on examination of my Renaissance collection, I have spotted that I have at least a couple more bases of ECW/TYW Pike & Shotte than I actually need for any conceivable FoGR army I might wish to use in future... who'd a thunk it?!

So, knowing I have plenty of spares, I decided to test-base some Pike & Shot, using "second line" figures who won't honestly get an outing anyway just to see what they might look like.

It's an "Impetus-style" basing methodology !

Not sure that having 3 ranks of each is entirely right, but as a first experiment its a pretty decent look I think.

15mm FoGR Markers

With the tweak of the FoGR rules which is now on the near horizon, one of the changes is to revise how Commanded Shot work when they are supporting friendly mounted troops.

In essence this will see the bases of Commanded Shot removed (together with the rather significant in game terms 50% extra frontage it created for Supported mounted units), and replaced by markers attached to the mounted units.

With a load of blank MDF disks hanging around from ADLG casualty marker making, this seems to be an ideal opportunity to conjure up some Commanded Shot markers for my FoGR armies, using some of the many spare/excess normal musketeer bases as the components.

And here they are - not that complicated or exciting, but nice none the less.

These are old Minifigs musketeers, together with some Carbine-armed horse from QR Miniatures from Poland - see more of them here.

The Covenanter's make it to the Kings Capital!

In three fleetingly (thankfully?) brief battle reports, enlivened by some tremendous 15mm eye candy and the usual videos, the Scots Covenanter's  appear in FoGR and take on three Royalist armies in a one-day competition with pre-set terrain.

See how the forces of anti-papery did in these highly accurate historical rematches, including far more Poor quality troops than have been seen on a Renaissance battlefield for quite some time.

10 FoGR Army Lists now posted

Army lists from the competitions at Oxford and Reading now added to the FoGR Wiki:
Lists include:

• Buccaneer
• Tatar
• League of Augsberg Anglo Dutch
• Later Louis XIV French (Alasdair Harley Special)
• Later Polish & Lithuanian
• Early Swedish (x2)
• Later ECW Royalist
• Later Imperial Spanish (x2)

25/8mm ECW/TYW at Farnborough 2013

There are three battle reports on their way (eventually) but in the meantime here are a handful of photos I took from some of the other games at the recent 1-day competition in Farnborough. Click on any image bfor a bigger version...

There Be Trophies !

Just finished off the trophies for this weekends Southern League FoG:R competition - using some spare figures and trees, and one of the Empress Miniatures Naseby Battlefield Trust Special Figures (£1 from every sale goes to the trust) This chap is the "Cromwell" figure.

Empress Miniatures Cromwell

A Redoubt Miniatures infantryman who came with 2 officers on foot, who are now Great Commanders for my 15mm armies.

No idea where this chap is from I'm afraid !

For added interest I include on each base a replica English Civil War era coin - another late night eBay purchase from Warstore Flags webstore along with the bases from JP Designs.

I'm quite pleased with them - let's hope there are some worthy winners!

The wee Jocks come up a little short

Just finished the last game in the round-robin phase of our Club 650 points FoGR competition, and despite a heroic attempt my 1639 Scots Royalist army fell just short of qualifying for the knockout stages of the competition even after recording a rather tasty 67 points (in BHGS money) over 4 games, with a rather uneven mix of scores of the order of 19-25-1-22.

This chunky score placed me 3rd, behind two other players both tied on 70 (one of whom I lost to 1-24, and one of whom I beat 22-3 in the last game, when needing a 24-1 to overhaul him... shame about the 3 generals killed in combat or it could have been even closer!

The choice of army for each player was done on a sort of reverse seeding, so the more experienced players got "worse" armies - however what we seem to have proved so far is that in a tightly themed ECW period, a cool army is generally no match for experience !

The lists I used in this 5'x3' table 650 point competition are now on the FoGR Wiki

More Scots..

This time to give some extra short-range firepower to the Scots, it's Peter Pig's rather dinky little Frame Guns that get an unveiling

 These also feature at least one Essex artillery crewman (the chap in the hat on the left of shot)

 A very by-now traditional Armypainter Dark Tone has brought them up very well. I also used brush-on Testors Dullcote as I didn't fancy getting a spray can out for so few figures.

I've done one gun in brass, and one in a more iron type metal - I suspect the real things were leather but metal looks a bit more, well, gun-like.

Those Scottish Cavalry are done...

As promised to my Facebook subscribers just after Christmas, I've been finishing off a dozen or so Peter Pig Scottish Cavalry to go with the infantry I finished back in November - and very pleased with them I am too.

This is the full unit - I bought two packs of 4, plus the command pack which only has three models in it, so I added an extra infantryman (who I think is from Essex) to round out the set.

The actual cavalrymen come in two poses, looking left and right

 These were all undercoated in white, and finished in Army painter Dark Tone to match the Scottish Infantry regiments I did earlier

 Unlike the infantry I also painted the straps on the back of each figure - the straps on the infantry were a bit thin and cast in a lower relief than these, and also I did the infantry in a bit of a rush to be honest.

 This chap in the middle is one of the officers and Generals pack (Pack 40 from the Regimente of Foote range "Scots Gens (3)")

 The pack also seems to have a chap in full armour - lucky devil really for the Scots of that era - unless he snuck in from another pack on my very messy painting table without me noticing...

Here is the final General, with a bit of a Puritan haircut and an Essex figure (I suspect from a Jacobite Rebellion range, but who's counting..?) to round them out.

The more of these figures I paint, the more I like them. The temptation to buy a whole army of them is growing stronger....

Donnington Scots Pikemen in 15mm

Another Warfare purchase was 8 Donnington Scots Pikemen to go with my existing Minifigs Scots musketeers - Minifigs sometimes being a bit variable, and with no pictures on the website I saw these chaps who looked similar and so picked up a set.

Keeping Scotland thoroughly Protestant ...

Some basic tartan patterns using my Tartan guide from another post

Simple but relatively effective

The command figures are generic ECW ones 

And here they are with the Minifigs musketeers - marginally taller, but close enough for wargaming purposes - the style is pretty similar which is almost more important

The interest in painting up Scots is not only for our club competition, I've discovered a lot about them from this book I've been reading recently on the whole Civil War(s), which I'm thoroughly enjoying.