Most of my ECW troops are Museum Miniatures; bought as army packs many years ago. They are rather stereotypical "old school" ECW: most of the pike in half-armour, all the shot in floppy hats, and all the horse either floppy hat no armour Cavaliers or big buff coat and lobsterpot Roundheads. They have too many figures in felt hats, and not enough in Monmouth caps (none! in monteros), but they make some very nice figures. Their website (http://www.museumminiatures.co.uk/) is a REAL challenge to understand ( Editor - I couldn't get this website to work at all ) , but it's not actually broken. It opens a second browser window, and that's the one you actually interact through. And instead of having navigation links on the left side, the way most sites do, their navigation is located in a scrolling window at the bottom of the screen to the right. Others: Donnington seem a little wooden in their poses. Freikorps seems to be stuck in the Hollywood ECW like Museum minis. Gladiator likewise and poor quality to boot. Rules Warhammer ECW is, well, Warhammer with ECW names and characters. C'est jolie, mais ce n'est pas l'histoire. And it requires very large numbers of figures even for fairly small battles. I tried computing what it would take to build the armies for some of Montrose's battles in inexpensive 25mm--Old Glory--and it came to well over US $200 per side. Forlorn Hope: I have read these in each of several editions, but I have yet to try them. They appear to be overly complicated and seemingly clumsy, but experience with playing them may ameliorate that perception. Given what I've heard, it may, however, answer one problem I have with the only set I've played much (see below). Several members of our local group have tried DBR in both condensed and normal scale for ECW. It's, well, all right, but not stellar. Like most of the DBx games, it paints in very broad strokes so as to be able to cover five continents and 200+ years. My impression is that in condensed scale one loses all sense of the variation among horse and that shot are unnaturally devastating. I haven't played any games in normal scale, but others in the group who have say that caracoling cavalry become like tanks, spewing destruction everywhere. In any case, combat among horse is, to my eye, far too swift and decisive. On contact a quarter or more of engaged troops disappear in the space of a few minutes' action. One chap in the group has found some online free rules at (http://users.erols.com/rckfllr/). We haven't had a chance to playtest them much yet. Back to Frontline Vol. 3 Iss. 1 Table of Contents Back to Frontline List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Rolf Hedges This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com