"Starting out in the ECW" Topic

I've contemplated upon doing a mid-sized ECW project for a while (like 20 years) but am thinking I might actually get around to doing it for my next endeavor. I'm soliciting some input on books, figures, and rules.

Currently my small ECW book collections is:
All the King's Armies – Reid
Decisive Battles of the ECW – Wanklyn
Edgehill – Scott etc
The English Civil War – Purkiss
Cavaliers & Roundheads – Hibert

What "must have" books are out there that I should pick up?
Update- I just found the other thread on this topic, I should have scrolled down the list of posts a bit :)

For figures I'm thinking Perry, unless someone has a better option they'd be kind enough to suggest.

For rules I'm kind of stuck as I don't know enough to make a sensible choice. Sets like "Victory without quarter" or "To defy a King" seem decent but here's where some help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards & thanks!
Tom

For rules I'd definitely recommend Baroque.

Hi mate.

Cavaliers: The Royalist Army at War 1842-6 by John Barratt
Arms and Armour of the English Civil Wars by Dr David Blackmore
Naseby: The Decisive Campaign by Glenn Foard
ECW Fortifications by Peter Harrington
Pike and Shot Tactics by 1590-1660 Keith Roberts
Edgehill 1642 by Keith Roberts and John Tincey
Flags and Colours of the English Civil Wars by Stuart Peachey and Les Prince

A shout out does need to be given to Stuart Press Publications and Partizan Press from Caliver Books. Both Dave Ryan and Stuart Peachey have been movers and shakers within reenactment and the revisionist stance of English Civil War studies for the past 30 years, many of their publications covering the niche subjects not often covered.

From my point of view, Century of the Soldier 1618-1721 from Helion Publishing is a publisher that needs to paid attention to. A new series, they already have books out on the Irish Involvement in Montrose's Campaign's in Scotland, Royalist Oxford, Officer Lists for the NMA, George Lisle, the Battle of Montgomery and the War on the Marches, with a forthcoming reissuing of Chris Scot and Alan Turton's seminal work Old Robin's Foot: Equipping and Campaigns of Essex's Infantry, 1643-45 coming up in the new year. They also jointly publish with Bicorne Miniatures (my favourite range) The Kingdom is Ours Rules, which look to be gaining quite a following. They are also publishing my book The Arte Militaire: Applying 17th Century Military Manuals to Conflict Archaeology later this year, focusing on the reality of battlefield formations in Britain and the low countries, so I definitely think they are the bees knees.

Hope this helps :)

As to figures,the range from Old Glory is generally considered one of their best. If you are in the US,the OG Army discount will save you a bundle,though if you can afford Perry's,this may not be a concern. The consensus seems to be that they mix well together.

A TMP search for "Old Glory ECW" will bring up some past discussion,if you want more opinions. The first couple of years,demand was so great that Russ said he was straining to keep up. That says something.

Definitely buy Flags and Colours by Peachey & Prince.

Old Robins Foot by Caliver is also excellent even if you don't model Essex's own forces it's very useful.

The two Osprey Elites no 27 and 28 are good for painting. Haythornthwaite is also worth getting as it has great colour plates but be aware some of these tend to be considered a bit fanciful today.

Glenn Foard's Naseby is excellent.

Rules
I played WRG a lot and it still works. I think it handles the period quite well but it is a real pig to play IMHO. It gets criticised by some who don't like the idea of sub-units and especially sub-units routing while the parent body remains however, if you read the exact wording it states that sub-units will automatically rally behind their parent unit. Having sub-units does mean you can get involved in lower level tactics. However, that comes at a price – time and playing WRG means you spend a lot of time working out morale tests which I don't find very interesting.

Forlorn Hope has a good feel for the period – I'm endlessly tinkering with it and have finally got somewhere close to what I want. As written I think the way the P:M factors work out in melee favour small units with a high ratio of P:M over larger units. It's a bit odd as the larger table-top units may often have more pikemen (if you work out the ratio) but get penalised by their actual game P:M ratio. With that flaw fixed it gets better but I've also added card activation, diced movement, done away with a lot of the morale tests and altered the way cavalry fight and think it's much better for all of that and it plays faster.

Most rules, but not all, base their cavalry combat factors on what happened at Edgehill and consequently the Royalist horse then tend to have too significant an advantage no matter what whereas the historical reality was that they were often beaten.

There are stacks of good ECW ranges of figures out there. If you want a head start I'm selling some nicely painted Perry. PM me if you like.

One of the best books i have on the ECW is called The English Civil War An illustrated history by Philip Haythornthwaite. It briefly covers the history,the armies,organization,the first and second civil war, uniforms,flags and gives a list of some of the Regimental colours, all with colour art work through out.
Look at it as a beefed up 160page Osprey book and can be found cheap enough on ebay!

Thanks much guys! Plenty to go on.

Lascaris,

Do NOT look for ECW rules. Instead look for an OPPONENT and play whatever rules he prefers.

Be practical and find someone to play with before you commit yourself to any rules, figure scale, figure lines, basing, etc. . . . First priority is to find someone to play against.

There are lots of good books, rules, figures, etc. available but you cannot just order up an opponent. If you live in the UK, you are likely to have someone in your area if you look hard enough.

On the other hand, if you live elsewhere or in a rural area you might have to play solo (but you never know, your neighbor might have an interest).

One of the rules you mentioned, "Victory Without Quarter" also works very well as a set of solo rules even though it is designed for face-to-face play.

But most of all, ENJOY the ECW.

-- Jeff

A big Perry fan with seven different armies from them, but the Empress ECW are what is tempting me into this period.

In my experience, the Helion titles vary considerably in quality. I have also noticed in more recent times that any pretense of editing and proof reading seems to have gone out the window (as far as I can tell, Caliver/Partizan never even made a pretense of such). The maps also tend to be dodgy. I am still grateful to both publishers for putting out titles that might never otherwise see the light of day, but it is still annoying (when you are paying 30 pounds for a book) to see some of the horrible writing that gets through.

A regular opponent of Jeff and I has just forwarded me a link to an older book; could be educational:
link

Don't brush aside some of the older books,
Peter Young books on the Civil War the installations now look dated, his references and notes can not be faulted, just his conclusions are dated with the time they where written.
He owned a lot of period papers.
Just keep an eye out for His Edgehill, Marston Moor and Naseby the other are good, he dose keep using the same data.
All in all good reference books and a easy read.

Wouldn't the newer conclusions just be a reinterpretation of the same information Peter Young and other older authors had access to? So… does it invalidate the conclusions of those older authors?

Conclusions of those older authors ?
The older authors have had to cut through the earlier interpretation of history as we do, Cavaliers with long hair and floppy hats and Roundheads with cropped hair and a 3 bared helmets.
We look at things more from bottom up, how was a trooper, musketeer, pikeman etc where trained, clothed, feed and drilled.
There is a lot more discussion these day about all aspects of the Civil War, that how they sell new books.

I have been sniffing around trying to find information about how exactly troops fought on the battlefield. There sure is a lot of interpretation; not a lot of direct description so quite a bit is left up to the imagination it seems.

I would certainly look at anything by Stuart Reid especially if looking at the Scots connection.
Rules Baroque or maybe Pike and Shot.
Foundry make an excellent range designed by the Perry's

Is there a source for printed "cards" for Victory without Quarter?

Filed of Glory:Renaissance is a very good set of rules.
To Defy a King is also good (the orders system is nice)
Victory without Quarter looks interesting but the rules are spread about a bit and not very well organised.
Maurice also works surprisingly well for ECW – it already has rules for Pikes.

We only started the ECW period this year and as has been said find an opponent first…both my regular opponent and myself set goals of creating 28mm Armies from scratch in five months.

In other words 500 plus Horse, Infantry and Guns

It was a long hard slog but just to field all the units for the first game made it worthwhile.

The journey all starts here…lots of info on costs, figures etc

link

We have been using Pike & Shotte and had great fun

The first battle report is here

link

Are you prepared to go smaller with figures. Use 10mm without altering base sizes. You can get 4 10mm in the footprint of a 28mm- this give real mass effect, and 4 figures work out 60-80 pence as opposed to £1.00 GBP per figure for plastics and god knows what for metal.

Plus a LOT easier to store – I'm having real trouble with some 25mm pikemen I've been gifted.

I'm having real trouble with some 25mm pikemen I've been gifted.

Yeah… I break a lot of pikes….

Old 25mm figures Minifigs, Greenwood and Ball and Warrior all came with cast in hand pikes.
I have refurbished my old ECW armys some of the stuff is 40 years old, I think you are going to have to grab the bull by the horns and cut them off drill them out and replace, with steel or brass.
As an electrician I can easily get my hands on copper wire I use that, easy to flatten an end and file it to a leaf point.
A tip on storage, store your pike stands separately from the musketeers stands they will pack in lower boxes.

Top box 4 litre RUB – Muskets, Middle – Pike – note the wooden spacers I put in, Bottom 9 litre for the few tall figures (2 base of pike and 2 cavalry standard bearers), with the rest of the armies in.