Following my Pulitzer Prize winning post on rebasing ECW armies, Steve Cooney sent a very kind email, including some welcome photos of his own ECW troops - a lot older than mine, mostly Hinton Hunt figures and featuring some interesting conversions.
As ever, thanks very much Steve - always good to see proper Old School ECW troops on the march!
My health appears to continue to improve, for which I am grateful, and I hope to get back to previous levels of activity on the wargaming front. However...
...my eyesight, though quite a lot better, is still not really up to figure-painting quality, so for a while my priorities should be things I can actually manage.
First off, I shall get myself better organised - for years my wargame scenery boxes have been in a big cupboard upstairs, so carrying the box with ALL the hills and the box with MOST OF the houses downstairs (and then back up again once the game is done) has become a ritual. It feels kind of worthy, since it is hard work, and it may even be useful exercise, but it seems to me that my Preston Grannie would have identified this sort of activity as daft. For a start, and most seriously, it is a glaring example of a Lazy Man's Load, which is wasteful and sinful for all sorts of reasons. Preston Grannie came from a background where a working man might spend his days carrying bricks up a ladder, one at a time. He could also carry a large hod, bearing many such bricks, which might seem quicker, but he might hurt himself or - more seriously - he might hurt someone else; also, his boss paid him to carry bricks in an approved manner, and to exceed that - especially if the boss made money out of it - was wicked. My Grannie would have pointed out that, since I don't need anything like all my hills and houses around to construct a battlefield, it would be sensible to remove the pieces I needed for a particular project from the box, and take just those downstairs.
Even better, I could organise myself so that the big boxes were stored downstairs (which requires swapping some boxes around, which is in itself worthwhile and may even encourage me to chuck some stuff out, for goodness sake). So that is already proceeding as a background project - it will take me a while to get used to this, but I see it as a positive step. These boxes do not get lighter as the years pass.
I started work on my ECW project around 2012, and the original plan was to base the units so they would work with a number of rulesets, especially Victory without Quarter, which seemed very promising. After much thought and fiddling about, I decided to use 60mm square as my main base size (the figures are 20mm). An infantry unit would comprise 3 such bases - one had pikes and colours - 8 figures in two ranks; the other two each had muskets (including 1 officer or drummer) - 6 figures in two ranks. The cavalry units had 4 stands, each with a single rank of 3 mounted figures. Then there were all sorts of specs for generals, guns - all that. Looked pretty good, in fact, just like the drawings out of the VwQ rules. So I got cracking with building up armies using this system.
I soon decided that VwQ was not what I was looking for - in particular there was an activation system which (a) used scabby playing cards and (b) didn't work very well. So - one time among many - I started again with a home-brewed game of my own, converted from C&C. That worked much better, but it pushed me back towards using hexes - the only snag being that the hex side of my table was adorned with hexes which measured 7 inches across the flats, which is pretty close to 180mm. Which all means that you could deploy one of my infantry units in line, 3 bases of 60 x 60mm, but there was no space between them and an adjacent unit, and certainly no room for any scenery. So I stuck with my basing system, and wished that I had used 50mm squares for the next 12 years or so. My experience encouraged me to do rather better for my WSS armies, for which the standard bases have been 50mm wide from the beginning.
What I've done in the ECW, in fact, is de-emphasise formations - an infantry unit with 2 bases of musketeers in front and the pike base behind is regarded as being in whatever formation the sergeants wish, so that works nicely, until some well-intentioned soul complains that they are not properly in line. Normally, of course, the correct response is to smile pityingly, but it's true, and it does hurt a little - also, I can develop cramp in my upper lip after a few years. So - quietly, and inwardly - I have thought now and then of what I could do without breaking either the bank or my heart.
* I could live with it - I've managed thus far.
* I could rebase my ECW armies using 50mm squares. Points in favour? - well, not much really, but the bases are not flocked, and as far as I can remember just about all the soldiers are glued to their bases with white PVA. With luck, an overnight soak in warm water should loosen them pretty cleanly, then it's just a question of tidying them up and scraping off any surplus - Hmm - that's possible, I guess, but it doesn't feel good as I think about it.
* There are compromise versions of this, too - just switching the muskets to 50 x 50 would work - a unit in battalia (or whatever it's called) would then be 160mm wide, which would be OK. Rebasing all infantry on 50 x 50 would be even better, but the pikes probably wouldn't fit the smaller bases. Cavalry usually work with 2 bases behind 2 bases - i.e. in line - so I could leave those alone.
All a bit tricky. I even thought about mad stuff like sawing the edges off the 60 x 60 bases without removing the figures, but we all know how that would work out.
So - what am I going to do?
Well, probably nothing at the moment, but at least I know what the possibilities might be, and I have a clearer idea what it is I'm not doing yet. That's OK - I am not short of quiet time, so I could work at this slowly (whatever it is), and I'm not scared - I've been miserable before. I shall see how this new clarity develops as I let it simmer. I would feel even better if I wasn't sure I've been through exactly this same process a year or so ago, and probably came up with the same answers.
A visitor to my house recently made the mistake of asking to look inside the Napoleonic Cupboard, and was obviously (though politely) shaken by the experience. "But it must have taken ages...".
I said to him what I always say: "That's what hobbies are for, I think; I'm sure I've neglected something else along the way to free up the time, but I'm not sure what it was."
That is probably me trying to reassure myself, I think. Anyway warm water and glue, a load of bases, a can of the house pea-soup paint and sheets and sheets of self-adhesive magnetic sheet from Trevor. I could do that. The thing to do is probably try a few units, see if I survive, see how it goes. In light of that, I could abandon, or I could revise my estimates as necessary. The worst that could happen is that I end up with a few units the right size.
Rabachière was inconsolable. It is said that his language was so awful that he had to go to Mass immediately after the battle.
Well played, James - thank you for coming out to play - a fine effort indeed. Outstanding performances, I thought, were provided by the Hessen-Kassel cavalry kicking lumps out of everyone in sight and that remarkable last stand by Cadogan with Woods' Horse, which won the day. Rabachière's career may be on a slippery slope now - it could be fortunate that Louis XIV can't remember who is commanding his army in this area. However, I am confident that Charles Churchill's brother will ensure that this victory is overlooked by history
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