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!

Bunker Hill Project

Seeing this post some time ago on the blog Tarleton's Quarter really inspired me to get into gaming the AWI period and helped to give me more of a focus for this project.

I bought a copy of the 'British Grenadier' rules which Giles uses (these seem to be very popular with a lot of other AWI players too) which includes a number of scenarios, one of which allows the recreation of the battle of Bunker Hill, originally fought on 17th June 1775 using a 1:20 scale.

This post will list all the figures I need to recreate the battle and I will keep coming back to it to cross off each unit as it is bought and painted.

British Forces
2nd Marines [Purchased/Painted]
28th Foot [Purchased/Painted]
43rd Foot [Purchased/Painted]
52nd Foot [Purchased/Painted]
63rd Foot [Purchased/Painted]
Light Infantry [Purchased/Painted]
Grenadiers [Purchased/Painted]
Royal Artillery 6 pdrs [Purchased/Painted]
Royal Artillery 12 pdrs [Purchased/Painted]

American Forces
1st Militia [Purchased/Painted]
2nd Militia [Purchased/Painted]
3rd Militia [Purchased/Painted]
Skirmishers [Purchased/Painted]
3 pdr gun [Purchased/Painted]
4th Militia [Purchased/Painted]
5th Militia [Purchased/Painted]
6th Militia [Purchased/Painted]

Welcome!

This blog was created with the intention of documenting my foray into 18th Century wargaming from WAB Ancients. I intend to refight battles from the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and the American War of Independence in 1775 using the 'British Grenadier' rules.

My first aim is to build two opposing armies for the Bunker Hill scenario in the 'British Grenadier' rule book which should give me a good base of figures to push on with and play some of the others listed in the rule book.

The blog will be updated regularly with pictures of completed units, vignettes, battle reports and anything else modeling/wargaming related.

Please 'follow' the blog to keep up to date with what's happening and feel free to leave comments/feedback as I'm eager to know what you think.