FK&P - Heavy Going to Start With

I've had a couple of sessions familiarising myself with the For King and Parliament rules. Slow going, thus far - of course, it is possible that I have finally become too old and stupid to learn anything new, but mostly I have been having problems with the rule book.

Early experience-gainer tests. Everything vanilla - all the units are seasoned, no terrain effects to worry about, and so on. If you screw your eyes up you may see the pencil lines, which will be gone by lunchtime today. 20mm soldiers, 7.5inch squares, half-size playing cards, buckets of counters and wooden cubes standing by.

I would hate to say anything rude or unfairly critical of this game, so I must state right away that the booklet is enthusiastically and engagingly written, the style is pleasing and (a true rarity!) it is grammatically correct and the spelling is good, and the whole production is very attractively laid out.

I am happy to accept that the evidence is that this is a very enjoyable game, and that I will get up to speed eventually, and all will become clear. Good. My problem, I think, is that I have not come to this game after playing To the Strongest, so I am not quite on the right wavelength to start with, and also the authors - who have definitely come from the direction of TtS! - obviously understand the game and know what they mean, but sometimes I found it hard to pick up the key elements I need to get started from what is a mixture of design points, examples (which are useful and entertaining, but a couple of them seem to contain errors - or at least points which I couldn't find in the main text), tables, illustrations and playing tips.

Portent? - the very first activation card I played in this game - ever - was an Ace, which is a very bad card for activation. It makes a welcome change from bad dice rolls.

There are a number of examples of special exceptions to standard rules, which seem to be mentioned once only - some of them do not seem to be reflected in the summary tables, and often I found that I was unable to find the reference when I searched for it. The impression gained is that a number of post-prototype fixes were put in, and that an editor should get his head in there before the 2nd Edition appears. I am used to things being cross-referenced - especially if they haven't been mentioned yet. On a few occasions I came across terms I hadn't seen before (or at least couldn't remember seeing!), which a few pages later were explained and defined. None of this is serious, but I've found it a bit tricky. I like to remember rules in terms of norms which usually apply, with the necessary exceptions as a short and manageable list - if there are real weird cases which don't happen very often, then they are the things you know you have to check in the rules as and when.

The Quick Reference Sheet reproduces full details of unit properties - all or nothing - and undoubtedly lists some key information, albeit in a rather lengthy and waffly style - QRS's are usually brief and punchy. Oh - and they should be complete  too - rules for shooting and melees only appear here in the QRS by implication - and artillery ranges aren't set out (I couldn't find them, anyway). Since I've now read through the rule book four times, I would expect to have a better grasp of what is needed. I'll definitely produce my own QRS - that's a priority - but for some of the key rule sections - activation, combat, saves - I'll produce very short notes and tables of my own, with stuff explained as departures from a basic standard. I haven't got room in my head for amusing stories about all the features of Swedish horse - though I can maybe retrofit that sometime later.

So I shall plug away, but there is going to be a power of typing going on to get me up to speed! One further thing which is gently catching me out at present is that some of the TtS jargon is counter-intuitive to a newbie. In FK&P, "hits" means what in other games I would regard as "strength points" (or even "blocks"!), "disorders" means "losses", and there are a few other conventions I just have to get used to - OK - I can manage that. I also had difficulty finding the exact timing of tests for officer casualties, and thus far I haven't found out how far a melee attacker has to pull back if he doesn't eliminate the enemy.

Last night I did some cavalry melees, which were slow because I haven't got the hang of everything I need to know yet. First things I have to fix are:

(1) the tabletop - my original intention was to put pencil lines on to mark complete squares, pick out the corners of the square cells in black Sharpie pen, and then paint out (or erase) the construction lines. After I'd got the boards marked up, I reckoned I'd give it a go with the pencil lines still in place - they are not very visible anyway. Bad news is that it became obvious last night that the playing cards are going to get very grubby with raw pencil on the table (however discreet), so I have set about painting over the construction lines. We'll just have corners, as recommended, and as I originally intended.

(2) the half-size playing cards are OK - it is necessary to work at keeping things tidy and organised, or the result is a terrible mess, but I expected that. However, in the absence of proper counters to keep track of ammunition, "dash" (for horse), pursuits, "disorders" and all the other things you need to keep track of (and this is before you get to whether the cavalry are badly mounted, whether the units are raw/seasoned/veteran, the characteristics of individual leaders, the "gallant gentleman" classification...), I used a variety of coloured tiddlywinks, which won't stack without falling over and spreading about, which are not really very easy to handle and which look just awful. I can't be doing with very much of that, so some quick progress with proper tracking systems is necessary, or I'm going to shelve this. I'm thinking about it, and have had some useful ideas from commenters (thank you, chaps) and via email.

That's about it for the moment. I've started touching-out the pencil lines, and I'll do a bit of typing of CONCISE tables, and I'll be back on to trying out aspects of the game this evening.

Lots of Django Reinhardt on the CD player at the moment - that keeps the painting speed up! Just thought I'd mention it. Oh yes, and while I'm digressing, I've finally chucked out the remainder of the Nescafe - we bought two large jars of bog-standard Nescafe instant coffee a while ago, because they were on special offer with some rather handsome mugs. I am afraid that I do not like Nescafe - I realise this is entirely my own problem. I could, of course, have disposed of the actual coffee and simply regarded that as part of the cost of the mugs, but - no - this particular mug is far too mean for that. Eventually, halfway through the second jar, I have disposed of it. To be more accurate, my wife got tired of my complaining about it, so she threw it out on my behalf, and I've gone back to my preferred Douwe Egberts instant. Good. A bit like the relief when you stop banging your head on the wall. Some strange ritual, suffering, so as not to waste anything. Hmmm.

For King and Parliament

Plain side of the boards now have squares on

So what's all this, Foy?

Well, in common with a lot of other chaps I have been looking at the For King and Parliament rules, which are a recent ECW extension of the popular To the Strongest Ancient/Medieval game, and I have to say I am very impressed.

I am pretty comfortable with my own current C&CN-based ECW game, which handles very large games splendidly, but there are a few characteristic subtleties of pike & shot warfare which I have struggled to build into such a high-level rule set. Having received good reports of To the Strongest, I purchased the FK&P rules, and am currently on my 4th read-through. They look good. They seem to offer a very entertaining game, not too complex, the philosophy of which is very much in the spirit of how I like wargames to be, and they handle some of these aforementioned subtleties rather nicely. Hmmm.

I have reached the point where it would make sense to try the game out. My two overriding concerns are whether it really would handle what I regard as a large battle, and - to be frank - I am a bit alarmed by the amount of clutter associated with it. I don't care for roster systems, so having all necessary information on the table, with the units, is very acceptable. On the other hand, this game involves copious use of playing cards (it is a dice-free system, though there are dice-based alternatives), ammunition chits of three varieties (pistol, musket and artillery -  why three varieties? - is this because infantry may have light artillery attached?), "dash" chits for cavalry, "untried" markers, pursuit pointers, victory "medals", disorganisation chits (= losses in the terminology of most other games) and assorted information about specific leaders and units. I have obtained some half-sized playing cards, but I am concerned that all this stuff might reduce the tabletop (especially if the tabletop has me attached) to a state that in a less correct age would have been termed as like a tart's handbag.

I'm working on it - I have consulted the Jolly Broom Man, who is also looking to adopt these rules, and he has some constructive thoughts on how it may be possible to reduce the depth of laser-printed MDF counters so that one may see over the top.

First practical issue for me is that the game uses a square grid. I have no problem with this at all - I am very much in favour of grids - except that I do not have such a thing handy. Well, I didn't - I do now. I gave some thought to tweaking the game so it would work with hexes (I have boards, scenery, all sorts for a hex-based game). The Northumbrian Wargamer's excellent blog explains the adaptation to hexes, and it seems to work OK. I decided against that, to give the game a fair trial in its intended form.

I came up with a simple way of adding a square grid to the reverse (plain) side of my existing warboards - a solution which could be quickly and easily painted over if I lose interest in the idea, which understates the square pattern in the interests of avoiding dizzy turns, and is subtle enough to be ignored if an un-gridded field is needed. The picture makes it clear what I have done - this is one of the table sections, freshly marked out on the reverse side. To allow room for the 60mm square bases I use with my ECW troops, I settled on 7½ inch squares. This may seem like an odd size, but it works OK with my unit sizes, and it very conveniently divides into a 5-foot table width to give 8 squares deep. I have marked out the boards so that I can have a 12 x 8 cell standard table, or 15 x 8 if I add in the (5th) extension board . That's all fine - I haven't tried it yet, but it seems workable. I will have a problem to solve for roads (which run through the centres of cells, but I don't have any suitable bits for 8" squares) and streams (which run around the edges of squares, a system which seems more intuitively comfortable than the C&CN arrangement, but - again - I will need to set something up). Most of the other scenic bits I can probably hash together from what I already have.

Despite my (predictable?) carping, nit-picking approach, I am enthusiastic. If the rules really do allow very big games to be fought then I am ready to make FK&P my ECW rules of choice. If they work well, but don't handle anything as big as Marston Moor (etc), then I can still turn my boards over to the hex side and use the C&CN-based game for special whoppers. A lot will depend on how comfortable I am with the amount of clutter involved.

From being the only wargamer in the known universe who uses 7-inch hexes, I have moved on to be the only one to use 7½-inch squares. Whether or not this is progress will reflect how the test games go.

Guest Appearance: ECW Hinton Hunt

Steve Cooney sent me an email, and was kind enough to include some photos, which are definitely worth a look, I think. Steve makes the point that, for devotees of Hinton Hunt, since tabletop Napoleonic battles normally feature large numbers of units, the small matter (literally) of keeping the footprint down, plus the limited availability of figures, mean that there has evolved a standard battalion size of two dozen or so figures. On the other hand, the smaller numbers of units needed for ECW actions have allowed Steve to experiment with larger regiment sizes, with greater emphasis on the look of the thing. His preferred unit size is 42-45 men for foot - you can see the effect in the pictures.

Nice, eh?

Thanks Steve - I for one am now crippled with envy, but I'll be all right...

Blog Matters - announcement

I am delighted to note that The Jolly Broom Man has now launched his new blog, and a very fine thing it promises to be. The subject matter is the English Civil War, and we are marched straight into a very ambitious campaign, which looks very exciting, to say the least. The blog is entitled 1642 And All That (click to visit) and is thoroughly recommended.

The tabletop element of these activities is conducted in 6mm, and it all looks terrific. The blog is entertainingly and engagingly written, and contains much of interest - JBM, apart from being a noted restorer of ancient French buildings, also does a very nice job with a smaller brush, and has service as a re-enactor on his CV.

6mm Horse, ready for action - Baccus, I think

6mm House - there's also some very attractive scenery on show

So why are you still reading this? - get over there at once and check it out. Tell your mates. Here's another opportunity to click on the link. My enthusiasm is not just because the JBM is a friend of mine, by the way, and he certainly is not paying me for the plug (perish the thought). How could you suggest such a thing?

[The photos are reproduced without JBM's permission, but give an idea of what he's on about.]

ECW - The Battle of Marston Moor - 2nd July 1644

Hot Rupert came spurring to Marston Moor;
Praise we the Lord!
Came spurring hard with thousands a score:
Praise we the Lord!
Beleaguered York, that we lay before,
He knew would be ours ere a week was o'er,
So to scatter our hosts he fiercely swore.
To the Lord our God be glory!

William Cox Bennett

With the snow of recent weeks now merely a fading memory, we played the postponed Marston Moor game yesterday, here at the Chateau Foy. Excellent fun - using my Commands & Colors-derived rules, we fought the battle to a result in about three and a half hours elapsed, which is not bad going at all, considering that I was umpiring...

Baron Stryker, true to type, embraced the role of Prince Rupert with his customary zeal, while Count Goya played out the part of the canny Lord Leven with a more calculating, cautious approach which was entirely appropriate.

The battle was set out according to the most reliable OOB listings I could find. Rupert was given a couple of choices before commencement:

(1) he could, if he wished, reposition the two advanced units of foot on his right - his own and Lord Byron's regiments - which earned him much criticism on the day from Lord Eythin; he opted not to change the set-up, and left them in their historic position

(2) along with his own regiment of horse, Rupert started in reserve, off the table, and could appear on either flank, as he wished; in this case he chose to join Goring's cavalry on his left flank, rather than the choice he made back in '44, when he joined Byron and Molyneux on the right

The game had some strong similarities to the original battle - both sides won their own left flank - Cromwell and Leslie with the horse on the Allies' left were successful, after an initial struggle which could have gone either way; Goring (with Rupert) won the cavalry fight on the other flank for the Royalists - rather easily, in fact. In the centre, the Allied foot was more cautiously handled than in the original, and Rupert surprised everyone by attacking in this area. This was a bold move, though there is a reported eye-witness account which claims that at one point he was heard to say, "erm - I wonder if I should have waited for them to attack...?". 

With luck, some form of battle narrative should suggest itself from the photos. The Allies won by 14 Victory Points to 9 - the units and leaders eliminated being:

Royalists

Chisenall's Foot
Earl of Newcastle's Foot
Gibson / Ernle's Foot (combined)
Prince Rupert's Foot
Lord Molyneux's Horse
Trevor's Horse
Lord Byron's Horse
Chas Slingsby's Foot
Tillier's Foot
Warren's Foot
Cheater's Foot

plus a couple of cannons and a few commanded shot (which don't count), and also the following generals:

Lord Eythin
Sir Charles Lucas
Lord Molyneux

Allies

Earl of Manchester's Foot
Lord Eglinton's Horse
Bethell's Horse
Lambert's Horse
Earl of Manchester's Horse
Vermuyden's Horse
Fairfax's Horse
Fleetwood's Horse

plus one light cannon, plus

Sir Thomas Fairfax, who was killed in the cavalry fight near Long Marston

To my guests yesterday I offer, yet again, my heartfelt thanks for their good humour, patience, enthusiasm and excellent company. It should be recorded that, in honour of the substantial Covenanter presence on the field, our lunch menu featured haggis, neeps and tatties.

Very open terrain - view from the South-West (Allies on this side)...

...and from the South-East - the edge of the village of Long Marston is off the table,
and only there to provide some scenic context

Same two views, with the armies in position

Prince Rupert - his dog featured in the scenario rules. Earl of Newcastle's carriage
in the background.

Cromwell attacks the cavalry on the Royalist right flank

In the centre, Rupert shocks his opponent by attacking

Meanwhile, on the Royalist right, only a battered remnant of the horse remain, and they are
about to be finished off

...there you are - they've gone, and Lord Byron is now taking refuge with the
Foot, a bit further along

The battle in the centre is now building up, though Rupert could have done with some more troops

Having defeated the Royalists' horse on their right flank, Cromwell turns his attention to the foot

Meanwhile, on the Royalist left, Goring has virtually eliminated Fairfax's horse - this
was the most successful bit of the Royalists' day. The day before the real battle, the Allied
soldiers and horses exhausted all water supplies in the village of Long Marston - you
can see that we were taking no chances yesterday. [To even up the accidental advertising
 in this report, the sharp-eyed reader may observe that I have requisitioned a number of
Tesco's charity tokens to augment the stock of order counters - that's the blue, round
things - more accurately, the blue, round things which have "Tesco" written on them]  

Rupert running out of steam in the middle - the VPs are mounting up

Goring has complete control of the Royalists' left flank, though by this time it doesn't
really matter any more. Rupert, with his own regiment of horse, is in the centre of the
picture. Rupert conducted himself with conspicuous gallantry, as you would expect,
though he appeared to be the object of some personal vendetta from Lord Loudon's
Glasgow Foot (who, luckily for Rupert, couldn't shoot for toffee). Both Rupert
and his dog survived the day. Hurrah! 

Appendix 1 - afterthoughts...

With the battlefield dismantled and everything put away, the dining room returns to its normal calm. With Glenn Gould playing Bach on the hi-fi, it's hard to believe that so many thousands fought and died here just yesterday, a feeling which is not unlike what I experienced when I walked across the Marston Moor battlefield in the pouring rain only a few weeks ago - it's just farmland now - odd how the years take away the suffering...

So, if one day the battlefield archeologists visit my tabletop battlefield, what will they find? - just a family dining room?

Not necessarily! - they might find evidence of my splendid new play-mats from the Early Learning Centre, which add greatly to the stability and the evenness of my battlefield, and would probably serve to deaden the sound of tiny hooves in the basement below - if we had one, that is.


Appendix 2 - the Rules

Mostly, everything went well. The game is intended to allow a large action to be fought to an understandable finish in a short time, and that was accomplished without problems. A couple of things I learned, which may appear on Version 2_70 in due course:

(1) Artillery is worse than useless - arguably even more useless than it should be. Easily fixed - I'll go back to fielding two artillery pieces in each unit of medium or heavy field artillery - that should fix it. 

(2) The scenario rule to handle parties of commanded shot attached to units of horse was something of a wash-out. Since loss of these musketeers did not involve Victory Points, it would have been better to state that if they became separated from their parent unit of horse (normally as a result of the horse galloping off at cavalry speeds, which happened a lot, both in the real battle and the toy one) then they would simply retire quietly to a nearby hostelry. Trying to keep track of them and make sensible use of them after separation was not useful.

(3) The latest version of my rule which tries to give "Galloper" cavalry a reasonable advantage over "Trotters" has become too fiddly again - it would be handier and simpler if they just got an extra Battle Die in all combats. My attempts to do something more subtle really only produced a small extra measure of irritation...

ECW - Marston Moor? - Maybe's Aye, Maybe's No....

Game is scheduled for Saturday, but current weather situation here on the East Coast of Scotland is not promising. I live next to the sea, and we hardly ever get snow (though we have a little today), but my gaming companions have to travel from higher, more northerly lands and that may be a problem.

Tuesday and counting - only a little snow here, but we rarely get any at all

Last credible local forecast I saw said that it will be pretty terrible here Wednesday and Thursday, but might well be OK Friday and Saturday. Thus we live in hope (which, as discussed previously, is a small village not far from despair).

I've set up the battlefield - making everything fit on the table is a starter challenge. If I have to tidy the thing away again without a game that's all right - we can rearrange when the Beast from the East (as the literati in the popular press call the present storm front) has gone. I have a photo of how the field looks now, so it will be an easy matter to set it up another time.

From the South West - behind the Allied left flank

...and from the South East. Table is 17 hexes x 9 - that's 10'4" x 5'

Very plain battlefield - the ridge is on the Parliament side, there are a couple of enclosures on the north side of the road, the infamous ditch/hedge feature is fairly trivial, and only a couple of portions of it appear. The roads themselves have no function at all, other than to give the battlefield some recognisable shape - no movement bonus, no cover. The little wheat fields up next to the village of Long Marston are a bit tricky - broken ground - troops arriving on one of these will have to stop until next turn; also, any horse occupying or attacking such a field does not get to count any "Galloper" bonus.

That's it really - I'll set up some soldiers later on - I was going to leave it until we had a better idea of the weather, but I decided I would rather enjoy setting the troops out and, if necessary, putting them away as well. I may publish some pictures of the armies in position - on the other hand, it only makes it more awkward if we have to cancel; I went through a bit of that last year with my over-publicised Siege of Newcastle...

Maybe's aye, maybe's no. We'll see.

***** Late Edit *****

All right, all right. I set the armies up as well. Note the little packets of commanded shot attached to the horse, and deployed in the hedge.

Hooptedoodle #293 - Rage over a Lost Pike

Bad title - couldn't think of anything decent, offhand. In fact it was hardly an episode worthy of rage, a few minutes anxiety, at most; also, the pike was not lost, it was simply - erm - in the wrong place, so "found" would have been closer.

Marston Moor game coming up next weekend. I've had a lot of very enjoyable sorting out to do - some figure painting (to make/balance up the numbers), some scenario tweaking for the rules, and - over the last few days - an extended wrangle to get a "best fit" of my available toy units for the regiments that were really present. Thus (for example), since I have a fair collection for the First ECW in Lancashire and Cheshire, the regiments of Assheton and Rigby and Tyldesley can simply play as themselves, and I have a fair representation of the Covenanters of 1644, so that also drops into place nicely, but the Eastern Association (for example) is outside my normal area of activity, so some role-playing will be needed. Robert Ellice's Welsh Royalists will be pressed into service as someone else, and much more of the same, so there will be plenty of scope for identifying wrong flags when the photos appear!

This "best fit" exercise involved more note-scribbling and fiddling about than I expected, so I decided to BlueTak some simple little labels onto the unit bases, to keep us right on the day and to preserve my studies so far. Thus I spent an excellent evening messing around on the dining table, cutting out laminated labels, attempting to get BlueTak to stick to something other than my fingertips, and so on. This required a lot of coffee and a few hours of Debussy.

Because Marston Moor will be the biggest pike and shot game I've ever attempted, I had to label up almost my entire collection of ECW figures, and then tidy everything away in the A4 box-files, ready for next week. Anyone with experience of Medieval and Renaissance wargaming will be aware of the scope for accidents and collateral damage when working with miniature pike-blocks.

I accept it as a necessary precaution to have a tube of superglue handy on the battlefield. My pikes are deliberately made of florist's wire, so they will bend before they damage the figures, and they will not injure any of the players (depending, I suppose, on how hard they are thrown), but they have certainly been known to detach themselves in the heat of battle. Hence the glue and the running repairs. If you leave it until later, the pike will be lost, or you won't get around to it, or whatever.

Well, I completed my labelling exercise carefully, managed to get everything tidied away, got the box-files back on their shelves without dropping the whole lot at once (one of the little-discussed advantages of box-files) and then, when I was sorting out the paperwork, I found a stray pike on the table.

Uh-oh! [arrows supplied by editorial staff so you can see the problem]

Right.

I've got pretty good at this stuff now - it took me only about 20 minutes to schlepp the boxes back through into the dining room (without dropping them), check each box of soldiers for missing pikes (all OK, in fact) and store them away again (without dropping them). Nothing missing, though of course there's that little thrill of tension right until the last box. The rogue pike must be from the spares department - looking at the type of wire, I guess it is from either the Mike & Whiskers collection I got from eBay or else some leftovers I have from a shipment of old figures I bought from Harry Pearson. Whatever it is, the important point is that it is not from my proposed field armies, so that is all right.

Pink = ECW

That's 16 of these beggars to check through

It also provides a timely reminder that PIKES ARE DANGEROUS, that some damage to the toys is inevitable when playing this period and - importantly - any damage should be recoverable and repairable with minimum effort. The florists' wire is invaluable, though I still wish they made it in brown. I have a factory process for painting green pikes brown - not a problem, but fiddly.

ECW - General Wm Baillie - Ox-Droppings Dept.

This follows on smartish from my previous post, since I was keen to get Baillie painted up ready for Marston Moor (next weekend). Still vaguely apprehensive about the political correctness thing, I decided not to use the camped-up conversion with the clown boots etc (not sure why, something to do with a feeling that using a contrived figure might be potentially more offensive), and instead used an Irregular Miniatures general officer (a bit small by normal 20mm standards) and mounted him on a 20mm scale SHQ horse.

Good - pleased with the result. A respectful depiction of a small man, at which no-one could possibly take offence.

Looking a little like a Hobbit-General, Wee Willie Baillie poses next to a nifty
pond I got for a knock-down price at the York Wargame Show.

Then I received an email from Prof De Vries. He asked me where I got the idea that the little man on the right-hand end of Van der Helst's painting (as shown in my previous post) was William Baillie. I replied that there are at least three blogs/websites that use it as a portrait for Baillie. One in particular goes into some interesting detail on how the site owner actually was William Baillie in a former life, which explains why he recognised himself in the Van der Helst painting, why he has always been able to speak Dutch, why he recalls a lot of what happened to Baillie during his lifetime and so on. It also explains why he has a special bond with a close friend of his, who looks very like the figure of (Baillie's friend and colleague) James Lumsden (next to Baillie in the big painting) and who may have been Lumsden in a previous life. If you are getting a little giddy at this point, and if you would like to see how General Baillie's later alter ego improvised his own ECW costume from motor cycle clothing, I recommend you have a quick look here.

Since I have experienced enough drive-by flamings to learn not to criticise anyone else's internet presence, I offer no judgement of these claims. The Professor, though, was less tactful. He reckons that the three websites which offer the Puss in Boots picture as a likeness of William Baillie have misled each other - what De Vries describes as the classic internet closed-circle of mutual confirmation. He also reckons that a person who spoke Dutch and had even a slight familiarity with Google would not have taken very long to learn the truth of the De Schuttersmajltid painting. The date, the event, and - especially - the people in the picture are known. 

The bad news? Too late; wrong people. Is that a klaxon I hear...?

In fact, the event depicted was a lunch in celebration of the Peace of Münster, 18 June 1648, held in the headquarters of the Amsterdam Crossbowmen's Guild (St George's Guard). 

The people portrayed are actually recorded as being: (right, with silver horn) captain Cornelis Jansz. Witsen, (shakes hand of previous) lieutenant Johan Oetgens van Waveren, (seated behind the drum, with flag) reserve officer candidate Jacob Banning, sergeants Dirck Claesz. Thoveling and Thomas Hartog. Additionally: Pieter van Hoorn, Willem Pietersz. van der Voort, Adriaen Dirck Sparwer, Hendrick Calaber, Govert van der Mij, Johannes Calaber, Benedictus Schaesk, Jam Maes, Jacob van Diemen, Jan van Ommeren, Isaac Ooyens, Gerrit Pietersz. van Anstenraadt, Herman Teunisz. de Kluyter, Andries van Anstenraadt, Christoffel Poock, Hendrick Dommer Wz., Paulus Hennekijn, Lambregt van den Bos and Willem the drummer.

Not a bloody Scotsman in sight.

Sorry about all that. I am left with the mystery of where Nigel Tranter got his information about Baillie. Frankly, I'm not bothered - Baillie, it is well known, was a small man with a squeaky voice - here's a squeaky model of him - do you have a problem with this?
 

ECW - Bill Baillie, won't you please come home?

De Schuttersmajltid (Van der Helst)

A few years ago I bought a big load of pre-owned ECW figures via eBay. They came from a Belfast charity shop, and had formed part of a vast collection included in the estate of a gentleman who had recently passed away.

The good news was that these figures were very cheap, were of the correct scale (mostly SHQ and Tumbling Dice) and - unbelievably - were very obviously intended and organised to fight the campaigns of Montrose, which was exactly why I had wanted them. The bad news was that, though they were simply but adequately painted, they were finished in a strange mixture of what appeared to be cat hairs and boat varnish. It took a lot of work to get them into any kind of shape. My long sessions attempting to clean up and rebase these figures seem to have deranged me a little, and I recall that I used to have long, rambling conversations with the previous owners, whom I named Mike and Whiskers. Most of the conversations were connected with varnishing figures with a bucket and a broom, from the far side of the yard, and involved a fair amount of profanity.

Anyway, I got through all that, I came out with a load of useable Scottish and Irish units for my ECW armies, and I still have a big box of spare figures left over - the best of them are fairly good, in fact, but there are a lot of marching figures which don't really suit my ECW set up.

Among the spares I found a strange little figure, mounted on a full-sized horse. When I stripped him, it was obviously a conversion - someone had manufactured a personality figure of some nature, by using an underscale officer casting (late 17th Century, I guess) and soldering on big gloves and boots and giving him a big hat. I did nothing further with it, but it has always seemed to me that, given the very specific Montrose nature of Mike and Whiskers' collection, someone had obviously gone to some trouble to produce a very small general.

It couldn't be General William Baillie, could it?

For a start, I have no evidence that Baillie was small other than the fact that he appears to be so in his portrait at one end of Van der Helst's De Schuttersmajltid (the shooters' lunch), which shows a load of celebrities from Gustavus Adolphus' army in the Thirty Years War - and there are a lot of Scots present - James Lumsden and Alexander Leslie and - far right, with the orange sash - William Baillie, who I think was colonel of a Dutch regiment at this time.

The other evidence is that Nigel Tranter states (in whichever of the Montrose novels) that he was of very small build, with a high-pitched voice like a boy's. Did Tranter have something more to go on? Had he just seen the same Dutch painting I've seen?

I'm on shaky ground here - apart from my lack of real proof, I suspect I am potentially going to fall foul of some unwritten (or, even worse, written) rules of Political Correctness - an area in which I have an unfailing ability to put my big foot in it. Is it OK to feature some personal characteristic or disability of General Baillie in a model to appear in a game? Just a minute - it isn't me that is claiming he was in any way impeded by his lack of stature, is it? - that was implied by the PC lot. He had a long and successful military career, though he was not always a lucky general. He was one of Lord Leven's main men in the Covenanter army of 1643-44, and played a major part in steadying the Allied foot at Marston Moor. That was as good as it got. Subsequently he was sent back to Scotland to deal with Montrose, and his army was definitely of second string material. He managed his campaign with some skill, but was heavily defeated at Kilsyth.

Later he commanded part of the Duke of Hamilton's "Engager" army, now fighting against his former Parliamentary allies, and he was obliged to surrender the infantry of the army at Winwick Pass, after the Battle of Preston in 1648. The surrender was made to Cromwell himself, at Warrington.

Legend has it that Baillie was pleading with his soldiers to shoot him after Winwick Pass, to spare his disgrace.

Enough of this; this has been merely a brief headscratching moment, wondering whether I should bother to depict Baillie on my Marston Moor battlefield, and whether it would be correct (and/or acceptable) to make him a small man. My excuses are:

* I suspect Baillie was, in fact, a small man - if I field a small miniature, I am not mocking or criticising his memory [I shall avoid impersonating his voice, though].
* I don't pretend that Prince Rupert didn't have soppy long hair, do I? And a dog, come to that.
* Listen - if Nigel Tranter says Baillie was small, that's good enough for most people.
* I already have a suitable figure, so if necessary I could sort of blame Mike and Whiskers.

Does anybody have any further clues about our William B? Any of his relatives prepared to sue me if I go ahead?

Painting Royalists, a Minor-League Give-away and the Fog of War

Topic 1 - Painting Royalists

Reinforcements on the way

In two weeks the scheduled Marston Moor game should take place here, so I've been working away at some painting to boost the armies a little. The problem with Marston Moor, of course, is the number of troops - no, I don't have enough, but I worked out that I should be able to lay out a game at about ⅔ of the original size - the horse will be a little light, but that will be the same for both sides.

My original head-counting exercise was flawed - amusingly so, in hindsight. I very carefully put everything into spreadsheets, to work out how my toy regiments should best be given historical roles to play. I have a number of units which were deliberately painted to be capable of turning out for either side, and when I failed for the third time to balance the numbers of required figures I realised that I had, rather brilliantly, added these ambidextrous units to the OOB for both sides. [I used to work for an insurance company which, famously and allegedly, once did its solvency returns using this same accounting basis, so maybe there's an unconscious hangover there.]

Whatever, I decided that it would be better to paint up 3 extra units of Royalist foot, rather than start all over again with the calculations. I have enough spare figures, and I also had the remains of a pre-painted collection I bought a while ago from something of a wargaming celeb (by my standards, anyway) - they would require some repainting, and I'd need to add some 20-odd extra figures to make up the roll-call, but that would be a pleasing way to kill a number of birds with one shot.

These chaps are just about ready now - as ever, they are Old School in one of its more primitive forms, but they are fine. I still have a few officers to finish off, but they should be ready sometime today. One of the problems with using old 20mm figures is the lack of choice when looking for command figures and other odd-bods. I mostly use Les Higgins castings for the ECW - these, of course, are still available from Old John, who has added a good number of conversions and extra poses to the original range now. Higgins' 20mm ECW and Marlburian figures are small - noticeably smaller than their 25mm products, and too small to fit comfortably with modern plastics. I can mix in Hinton Hunt, and also (with careful selection) more modern products from SHQ. For the cavalry, I also use Tumbling Dice, though I mount them on SHQ horses to keep the scale creep to a minimum.

So the new/old units of foot are now just awaiting the last few officers. The drummers will be Higgins - they are almost ready - and the two colonels still to be painted are from SHQ - strictly they are a tad hefty, but they are OK. I was very pleased to be able to draft in an Art Miniaturen ensign - these are normally too big, being sort of plastic-sized 1/72, but in a packet which I've had lying about for 5 years or so I found a 30YW standard bearer who is a bit smaller than usual, and offers a decent match with the Higginses. He's a little stout for a fighting man, but presumably he paid for his own rations, and he has very thick hide underwear under his finery.

I still have to polish up the scenario notes, with OOBs and rule-tweaks for the day, but it's going to be fine. Marston Moor. Yes.

Topic 2 - A Trifling Giveaway

This is the dealer's own image

This may be of no interest at all, in which case no harm done. I recently ordered up a couple of 3-D printed medieval towers from a firm which sells via eBay. Part of this was a consequence of my general interest in the whole subject of 3-D printing - I thought I'd have a look at a sample before rushing to order up their very impressive Waterloo-type farmhouse. I ordered the towers in 15mm scale (since I use one-size-down buildings with my 20mm figures). I've now built one, and it's very nicely made. I haven't painted it up yet - it will not fit into a walled town or anything, so it's more a sort of pele tower, such as we get up here in the Border country. In truth it is rather more Warhammer than I thought - the point is I really don't need two. If anyone would like the second one, as a gift, please just send me a comment or an email explaining how desperately you want it, and how you will use it. I'm looking for some entertainment here, so "You owe me a tower, you bastard" will not score highly, even if true. As ever, the selection criteria will be completely subjective and unfair. Only restriction is that you must either be a known follower of this blog or else someone who corresponds with me by email.

You will have to glue together the [small number of] components and paint the thing. It stands some 138mm high, and the door is about 25mm high, so I reckon that, though it is officially 15mm scale, it would also work as a nice bijoux pele tower in 20mm scale or HO.

Check out these people's products on eBay, by the way - I have no stake in this, but it's good to see 3-D printed products getting better and cheaper and more widely available. The farmhouse is particularly good...

Topic 3 - Fog of War (painting with dodgy eyesight...)

A friend tipped me off that I had been mentioned in someone else's blog. This was a couple of months ago, in a blog which I used to read fairly regularly when I had more time and possibly more patience.

I was very surprised that I was taken to task for being rude about 5mm and 6mm figures, and for implying that they were difficult or impossible to paint. The gist of the message was that, even in jest, this is an irritant, does the small scales no favours, and that anyone can easily paint 6mm castings, regardless of the state of their eyesight.

It is possible that the bloggist should cut down on his coffee intake, because I meant to be neither critical nor disparaging about the little figures - I am really quite a fan, and the post to which he took exception was merely an affectionate look at the old 5mm Minifigs blocks (which were a bit unsatisfactory, in fact) and an old chap I once knew who used to use them for wargaming. Though I had several attempts, I could find nothing in my text nor the comments which might reasonably give offence. Still, if you give offence you have done it wrong, whether or not you meant to, so I can only repeat my eyebrows-raised disclaimer and apology. No harm meant.

On the other hand, one element of the response did manage to ruffle my own feathers just a little, so let's return the favour here. Anyone can paint these figures? Well I couldn't, old bean - no chance.

I am still doing a fair amount of painting, but it is getting slower and is harder work. Last year it was confirmed that I have the beginnings of cataracts in both eyes - nothing dramatic, no hard feelings - this stuff comes with the turning of the seasons. I can now paint only with very bright light, and a x2 jeweller's loop device (which reminds me - must get the prescription checked again), and I'm having difficulties with certain colours. I have given up on black undercoat - if I try to apply dark blue or brown over black I can't even see if it's going on - hopeless. I've changed to mid-grey undercoat, which is far better. If I have black or dark brown paint in my palette, I need a bright light, carefully angled, to be able even to see when my brush makes contact with the pool of paint. If I have to paint a belt behind a sword (for example) I have problems getting the 3D to line up properly - my focus is distracted by the nearer object.

None of this is serious or especially worrying - I can still drive without problems, my life is unaffected by any concerns about my sight, but painting soldiers is harder and slower than it was, and I am aware that figures I painted 30 years ago - even in the days of Humbrol enamels - are often far crisper than I could manage now. How quickly cataracts progress is variable - and they can be fixed, of course, though they will have to get worse before they are made better, I guess. In the meantime, I am enjoying my painting, I subcontract some big jobs - it all works out.

I mention this not because I am feeling sorry for myself - heaven forbid - but because I really do not appreciate being told what I should be able to paint.