Rules for ECW?

Hi Dave

I have added the photo to your post. I think they look really good - thought I might go for 4 musketeers on each side rather than just two. I am tempted to mount my ECW on large 200 x 100mm bases so I could use them for TTS ECW or One Hour Wargames ECW or whatever and just mark hits. I have done this with my 28mm anciens and munted them in the same way as yours inside a movement tray with a lip - but permanently glued them in place.
thanks

Mike

The new To The Strongest ECW rules are now available. I played them at a demo game last year and they play well (although I did enjoy playing The Pikemen's Lament rules with Anthony at The Convention a couple of weeks ago - even though I lost!!!!!!!)

They're £19.99 for a hard copy and £9.99 for a digital copy.
There are also a range of markers/chits  available and If you use the victory medal option in the rules, there are 2 sets of these available.

I've just ordered mine!!

Best Wishes Dave

Perhaps you could let me know what you think of them Anthony.
I enjoyed playing with them (although knowing the Ancient rules helped) and as I know Simon and Andrew, I felt I should support them by buying a copy.

However, I did enjoy the Pikemen's Lament very much and was considering using those. With your much greater experience of 54mm gaming, I would be interested in your thoughts on these new TtS rules and how you think they'd play compared to TPL.

Best Wishes Dave

Played the TtS ECW rules For King And Parliament at Salute yesterday. Really enjoyed and with the "experts" on hand to help with the rules, I had a really good game.

If you know the Ancients set, then activation and melee and to hit events are very much the same.
However, with extra items like dash for cavalry, double fire, raw/seasoned/veteran units, Dutch or Swedish cavalry, untried markers, the flavour of the period is brought out very nicely
A good game was had by all. In spite of my glorious Royalist infantry moving forward and shooting for quite a few turns and eventually trying one or two attacks, my worthy opponent had a much better shuffling technique of the cards and got quite a few hits in (disordering and even double disordering my units) and many more saves than I did, resulting in my whole line (4 pike and shot units) being completely destroyed!!!!!!

Better luck next time.

Hope Anthonybhas better luck than I did!

Best Wishes Dave

Well, Mike and I had our first game of 'King and Parliament' last night. We played for nearly three hours before calling it a day. As the parliamentarians in the Montgomery scenario I had to earn 14 medals to win while Mike needed 13 medals. When weariness got the better of us both the score was 5-4 to Mike, an indication of how long the game took to get approximately one third of the way towards victory for either of us. Although it didn't help that we were both a little rusty not having played 'To the Strongest' for some time, we still felt that the game should have been a lot faster flowing than it was. Also, from a purely aesthetic point of view there were about three times as many tokens on the battlefield than a typical 'To the Strongest' game! It just didn't look that great.

Dave, I'm afraid my earlier prediction was right-it's Pikeman's Lament for me!

Cheers
Anthony

The problem with the game, that both Anthony and I felt, was that it wasn't decisive enough. In the original To the Strongest, the system models the grind of an ancient battle quite well but for ECW it seemed too slow and melees didn't resolve quickly enough. I think it is possibly a problem with moving to 8+ to hit for everything from the 6+ in the original system.

In FKAP, the ECW rules, you get a lot more attacks, but they all require an 8+ to hit and the target unit is saving on a lower score then your chance to hit. This tended to mean that few hits were scored and quite a lot were saved.

I did like the use of ammo chits for long range fire and the difference with short range not requiring a chit unless you wanted to fire twice. We never managed to get pike into meleee but the cavalry melees didn't seem very ECW in flavour.

Hi Dave,

Uniforms, such as they were, were the same for both sides by which I mean there was no difference between the two armies when it came to headgear and other clothing. This is why both sides often used field signs to avoid confusion on the battlefield, along with differently coloured sashes for officers and cavalry (Orange, blue, red etc). ACTA advertise their ECW figures as Parliamentarian or Royalist as a simple marketing ploy!

PS I know wargamers like to have easily distinguishable units on the table but when it comes to ECW cavalry probably no one wore floppy hats into battle for obvious safety reasons-both sides' cavalry would have looked like those sold by ACTA.

Best wishes
Anthony