Wargaming the English Civil War, American War of Independence and Sudanese campaigns in 28mm

Sunday 14 March 2010

English Civil War Project


Photo: Jeff Parker, English Civil War Society

Inspired by a recent visit to the Royal Armouries museum in Leeds and the rather incredible blog of Saxon Dog, my Dad and I decided to have a go at a small English Civil War project. Nothing too big, just a couple of units on each side, just enough to capture the feel of the period.

There's a lot of ECW history in the area, being so close to Newark and Grantham and then there's the siege of Lincoln Castle which is just down the road. It didn't last very long, the besieging forces blew a hole in the wall with their canons and the defenders surrendered immediately!

I have 4 regiment packs from Renegade Miniatures, each costing £11.95 for 24 metal figures! A bargain in my eyes. To buy the same number of figures for one regiment from another manufacturer such as Bicorne Miniatures would have cost me as much as the four packs from Renegade. I think I prefer the sculpts of the Bicorne models ever so slightly but cost always wins in my books, unfortunately. I do have a unit of 9 cavalry figures from Bicorne, as they are much better than those available from Renegade by a long way.

I will be trying to get as much of this project completed in my Easter holidays but before I do that, I need your help! I wondered if anyone could recommend any ECW rules? I would one day love to write my own rules for the period but that takes time! I also need to know how best to base my figures. The unit packs from Renegade include 4 command figures, 6 pikemen and 14 musketeers but I can't really work out how best to base them. One idea I had was to decrease the size of the units to 20 and base the figures on 60x60 bases with 6 on one, and 7 on the other two. That sound OK? The problem will come when a rule set is chosen and if this doesn't really fit.

Any help anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated!