About three years ago, I purchased a series of plastic 54mm ECW figures... pike, and musketeers, and halberdiers. The manufacturing firm was British, and despite the nice sculpting of the figures, there were two problems with the line. First, no cavalry, only infantry. At one of the HMGS conventions, I picked up a couple of cavalrymen (different manufacturer) but their scale is a wee bit different, although it's hard to tell on the field. Second, the firm didn't have sword-and-buckler people. Again, I had to pick up another company's figures... this time, I purchased some Spanish Conquistadors, who, with their bucket helmets, seemed to fit right in. In late February, King James Butters the 42nd (known throughout the land as King Jim), fought the Parliamentarian forces of Colonel Cliff Sayre. King Jim was given about 13 units, and his objective was to drive through the blocking army of Colonel Sayre, and to proceed directly to London. The Parliamentarian army consisted of 10 units. All units, regardless of type, had 6 men in them. The forces, in theory, were from the very, very early 1600 period, and so there were no combined pike-and musket units. This really didn't bother us, since there were no cavalry on the field, hence there was no need to protect the musketeers from cavalry charges. I must report that King Jim did a whopping good job!... he thoroughly smashed Colonel Sayre's army, accumulating 32 Victory Points (VP) to Parliament's 9. Since only 30 VP were required to win, King Jim even had a wee bit of VP to spare! VP were accumulated in three ways: a. 1 VP every time an enemy unit failed a morale test. b. 2 VP for each melee your units won c. 1 VP for every man in your Rally Zone who failed to rally. All casualties were placed in a Rally Zone, and once each bound, they attempted to rally and rejoin their units. If they failed, they remained in the zone, but they furnished VP to the opposition. Thus by trying and failing, trying and failing, turn after turn, the enemy force built up its VP total, and it was this particular procedure that gave King Jim so many of his points, as Colonel Sayre continually failed to bring his men back on the field. All the men in a unit in the Rally Zone rallied together. The percentage chance to rally them was a basic 30 percent plus 10 percent for every man remaining in the field. Thus, if we look at a 6-man unit, where 2 men were in the zone, this left 4 men on the field, and the chance to rally was the basic 30% plus 4x10, or 70 %. I noted that Colonel Sayre played on offensive game. Despite being outnumbered, he advanced on the Royal forces, giving them little time to deploy. He also had a weapon of mass destruction, a rather large cannon (which, I think, was constructed for 90mm figures), and which, despite its impressive size, fired only once during the battle, causing the men in the target unit, the Royal Halberdiers, to laugh a little. Two ranks in a musket unit fired... each man in the front rank added 10 percent to the probability-of-hit (POH), and each second-rank man added 5 percent. Thus a musket unit with all 6 men in line (no second-rank men) had a POH of 60 percent, while, if it was formed in 2 ranks, its POH went down to 45 percent. The reason for placing a unit in 2 ranks was that in combat, it received a 'plus' for the second rank. Sequence The sequence was a simple, alternate one. For the half-bound, it was: a. The active side could fire its musketeers, if their weapons were loaded. b. The active side then moved all its troops. Musket units that had unloaded weapons could attempt to load. The chance to do so was 60%. c. The non-active side fired defensively (if weapons were loaded) d. Melee was resolved. e. The non-active side rallied its men in the Rally Zone f. Both sides could attempt to load weapons for all musket units that had fired. The chance to do so was 60%. Each missile unit had a 'fire-control' officer... if he was placed in front of the unit, that indicated that the muskets had been fired and needed reloading. If muskets were ready to fire, the officer Ws placed in the rear of the unit. In one particular melee, Colonel Sayre had ordered one of his pike units to charge and contact Royalist pike unit. I immediately gave each unit in the fight 5 Combat Cards from a deck of 16 cards. The idea for the cards came directly from Milton Bradley's DOGFIGHT. Each side selected a card and played it; the high number won the difference in points. The card values ran from 2 to 5. In addition to the basic 5 cards, I gave the units additional cards: 1 card if the unit was in 2 ranks 1 card if a sword-and-buckler unit faced pike 1 card if the unit had "Royal" in its name (Royal Halberdiers, Royal Fusiliers, etc.) 1 card if a pike unit was backed by a sword-and-buckler unit This last item I called the "Scruby card". In a current issue of Hal Thinglum's MWAN, he published a set of rules (circa the mid sixties) by Jack Scruby on the 30 Years War. Scruby's thought was that if you backed a pike unit with a sword unit in combat, the front pike unit would attempt to lift the opposing enemy pikes up, and the swordsmen would then be free to run out and begin hacking away at the pike. Thus the backed-up-pike got a "plus", and my "plus" was defined as giving the unit an extra card. From their total of cards, the sides would select the highest 5, and start to compare card numbers. He who won the most points in the 5 rounds received a +5 Combat Point modifier, used as below. Each side multiplied its total Combat Points by a 10-sided die roll, and the winner was the highest product, P, of: P = 10-sided die x (Number of men in your unit + Men missing in enemy unit +5) Note that the last term in the product, P, only applied to the unit that had won the card contest. In general, the card competition went over well, although everyone agreed that it was time consuming. In a one-on-one game, it was appropriate, but in battle between, say, 3 players on a side, it would slow the procedures down too much. Back to PW Review February 1998 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 Wally Simon 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