Brian Dewitt invited us to his house several weeks ago f or the debut of his new 25mm ECW army coupled with a new - fairly new ECW set of rules. I'm always interested in things ECW because my own ECW army of 30mm stretchies, i.e., elongated 25mm figures, has been in the making - still is - for well over a year. Brian had set up the battle of Cheriton, 1644, when the Royalist commander, Hopton, was defeated by Parliament's commander, Waller. In April of 1991, Tom Elsworth and I walked the field of Cheriton, which seems to be typical of most ECW battlesites. First, there is always a monument cleverly set up well over a mile away from the actual site. Second, there are always two hills, one for the Royalists, one for Parliament. And third, there is always a story of some act of stupidity which lost the battle for one side or the other. At Cheriton, the stupidity medal goes to Sir Henry Bard, commander of the cavalry on the Royalists right flank. The Royalists were doing fine, when Sir Henry decided, on his own, to charge down the hill into the valley between the armies. As Hopton shouted: "Come back! Come back!" Off went Sir Henry to be eaten up by the Parliamentarian cavalry, and there went the battle for the King's forces. Acts like that of Sir Henry's, which are not uncommon, caused me to include in my own initial set of ECW rules a - special movement phase for cavalry, during which ALL horse, of both sides, MUST move forward, regardless of what the army commanders wish. This precipitates quite a lot of unwanted cavalry-vs-cavalry combat, which I think is fairly typical of the times. Brian's rules used an alternate 5-phase sequence for each side, the basics of which are: a. Move/fire Not too much explanation needed here. b. Melee Ditto. c. Post melee results/pursuit Losers determine if they rout or just fall back, winners determine if they pursue. d. Routs/pursuit Affected units move. e. Rally Routed units attempt to rally if no longer pursued. Pursuers attempt to halt. The number of figures-per-stand was unimportant... they were "just for pretty". The key parameter was the number of stands per unit. Both the firing and melee procedures were computed on a stand-by-stand basis. Each musketeer stand that fired had a 15 percent chance of hitting a target in the open (10 percent if under cover); the stands in a regiment could total their percentages. The smallest musketeer unit had 4 stands, and so had a 60 percent chance of an impact on the target. Each hit caused 2 markers to be placed on the target unit. A grand total of 6 markers, and the unit was out of the battle. In melee, each side tossed a 10-side die, added a modifier or two, and high total removed one stand from combat. The winning stand fought on. Melee was thus a battle of attrition. The melee continued until all the stands of one side had lost. The losing unit received 2 markers, the winning unit received one. The number of markers on a unit affected its morale level. All units started at 100 percent, and each marker deducted 10 percent from that. For the larger pike-and-musket units, the markers could be used in two ways: If the commander tested either the pike or the musketeer components separately, each marker was valued at 10 percent. If the commander tested the entire pike-and-musket unit as a whole, the markers only counted as 5 percent. Thus if you wanted to risk an entire pike-and-musket unit on the throw of the morale dice, you received a slight benefit from the devaluation of the markers. Fred Haub and I were the Parliamentarians, while Brian and Jack Culberson fought for the King. Both forces started perched on their hills, some 40 inches apart, and both moved forward. Foot units moved 8 inches per turn, and cavalry moved 16, so that we soon came within musket range of one another, 8 inches. Our side was blessed with a cannon with a 30 inch range; it was under General Haub's command and I don't think it did too much. What really fouled up the Royalist cause, at least on my side of the battlefield - the Parliamentarian right flank - was poor shooting. As our forces approached each other, time after time the good General Culberson tossed his dice and hit... nothing! At 15 percent per stand, with 4 to 6 stands per unit, his unit probability-of-hit totals ran from 60 to 75 percent, yet he couldn't seem to throw dice under the requisite number. Jack's cavalry did better... he easily annihilated one of my units (the dreaded 6 marker total came all too soon) and caused another to flee off board. The problem was that his pursuing cavalry followed mine right into oblivion! His off-table victorious cavalry never appeared again. Pursuing cavalry, to call of f the pursuit, had to pass what was termed a "stress morale" test, a morale test at half the unit's normal morale level. With, say, 2 markers on a unit, each at 10 percent, the cavalry's morale level was 100 - 20, or 80 percent, and the stress morale test was therefore taken at the 40 percent level. Stress morale also was used for a cavalry unit to charge into pikes, and for one or two other nasty situations. Each turn, for 3 turns, Jack diced for the return of his cavalry. He had three chances at 30 percent each, and made none of them * obviously, the horsemen had found a baggage train or two to pillage. From my own point of view, we Parliamentarians weren't doing such a bang-up job, but evidently the Royalists saw things through an even darker pair of glasses... General Haub and I were quite content to receive their swords in surrender. One topic we discussed in the postmortem proceedings was why a hit on a unit produced 2 markers. In light of the 6-marker sudden-death rule, this took units out of the battle rather soon. Brian agreed held rethink this part of the rules system. In all, the game went smoothly and the only major point needing clarification concerned the treatment of the large, combined pikeand-musket units. These had about 4 pike stands and 4 to 6 musket stands. It wasn't clear whether the pike and musket components were to be considered independent units, with their own morale factors and markers, or as part of the larger combined entity. There is always a tendency, in ECW games, to break off the musketeers from the pike units, and once this is done, few rules clarify the result... when they recombine, are the losses of both components now attributed to the larger, single entity, or what ... ? The same sort of problem arises when, in Napoleonic battles, light troops are broken off from the main body as skirmishers. These skirmishers wander far afield from their mother battalion, and although I've seen fixed, arbitrary rules as to their effect on one another, I've never seen any that really made sense. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that when, sometime in the future, Simon's superior GREAT* ECW rules are introduced to the public, a solution to the problem will have been incorporated in the system. I can only caution all the readership to keep their subscriptions up to date. * Genuinely Realistic, Excruciatingly Accurate and True Back to PW Review March 1992 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1992 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com