"Modifications for Forlorn Hope." Topic

Looking to start playing ECW again. I used to play these rules and although they are dated, I haven't found any I like better. Does anyone have modifications to streamline the morale or combat you would be willing to share? PM me or email to miros AT sc DOT rr DOT com.

How recently did you look? There have been a number of new rule sets published in the last year or so.

Morale, we pretty much got to the point that we'd only run through the modifiers if a 1 was rolled or the situation was particularly dire.

Don't bother with the morale to test if a unit will charge. Only test raw units to see if they will stand.

Firing and combat. I roll multiple coloured D10. So if you had a unit of 28 figures you'd roll four D10. Read them in order of red, blue, yellow and green for 10 figures, 10 figures, 5 figures and 3 figures.

Then I have some more complex changes to the combat factors as there are severe problems with them as they are written.

I've added card activation and dice to give random move distances.

I've still got more changes in the pipeline until I'll be happy with it, mainly to how the cavalry behave and brigade morale needs adding.

Thanks Timmo UK. That gives me a starting point. I'm interested to see your combat changes if you ‘re willing to share them. Do you use random card activation by brigade?

Yes, activation is by brigade with the odd independent unit such as dragoons. Not all units will necessarily get activated in a turn but all units except medium and heavy guns may fire. I've yet to try an idea where a unit can fire more than once in a move using half its figures in each instance. This is to try to address the constant drip, drip, drip method of firing typically used by moving a body forwards or backwards. It may prove to be unnecessary, not sure yet.

The combat factors is work in progress but basically the rules have a flaw that favour small pike heavy units over larger units with a ratio in favour of musketeers. This flies in the face of the historical development of tactics towards fire power so it's a case of tweaking the combat factors to reflect this and to ensure that small pike units aren't sledgehammers. The problem in the rules is that the combat factors are too powerful a mechanic in relation to other factors – more powerful than the numbers of figures/men actually fighting. Units with high HC combat factors ie. those with high pike to musket ratios are much more effective, even when really badly outnumbered.

I've simplified the unit types and thus the combat factors to: all musket, musket heavy, pike heavy and improvised weapons.

I'm still working on the cavalry but basically the idea is to expand beyond trotters and gallopers as the Royalist horse tend to win most of the time, which again doesn't reflect what actually happened. They can be counted all the same type but thats not so interesting – I'm fiddling around with a concept that brings into play how aggressive they will act against how well they can be controlled. So aggressive horse bring as many troops into contact whereas disciplined troops have an ability to draw on reserve troops in a more controlled way. I think I have a way to make it work but again I need to try it.

Finally I'm fiddling with the commander types the impact of the rules Leader Values (LV) so that they have more of a bearing on what they can do and how aggressive they will be.

Currently I already think I have a better game but it is WIP.

What I haven't change is the core principle that morale is the key battle winner and whilst inflicting looses on the enemy will help with this it's not the final arbiter.

With an ECW game I think you want to keep the combat and firing mechanics really simple and fast as they are only a small part of the overall picture and very often no casualties are caused. It seems a waste of time to have an overly complex set of mechanics for it to only keeping giving no result!

I think that's true of most game mechanics though – if the result keeps being nothing then it's a pointless concept – it's why I gave up on rolling to charge or stand unless raw troops are being charged – waste of gaming time.

Ideally you want to cut down to a set of rules that players can keep most of it in their heads.

Many thanks, Timmo, I too, am grateful for this.

I'll find my notes on FH to get numbers I'd been using but the way I was going with the combat factors is to give troops who are fighting against units with pikes a minus modifier and especially the cavalry. My reasoning is that by this time the armies only really keep pike as a defence mainly against cavalry rather than seeing the pike as a particularly good weapon in an attacking situation. So I didn't give units with a high ratio of pike to musket bonuses for attacking as per the original rules.

I'm not really convinced that troops armed with pikes are going to be that much more efficient at killing in melee than musketeers firing a last shot at very close range then using the musket as a club.

If you try these ideas out in your own games I'd be very interested to read how you get on because I've been doing this in isolation. If we pool our thoughts we might get a more interesting result.

A concept that brings into play how aggressive they will act against how well they can be controlled. So aggressive horse bring as many troops into contact whereas disciplined troops have an ability to draw on reserve troops in a more controlled way.

I've been toying with treating six-rank deep horse as three waves of two-rank deep horse. The bosses, and those with armour and good pistols in the front wave, spear-holders in the second, followed up by the third wave of retainers and other reliables.

Aggressive commanders would commit the first two waves all-in with rear supporting. The cautious would only commit the leading wave, etc. etc.

The royalists would omit the second wave by extending the first and put the reliable wave as a completely separate second line.

You'd possibly then have a 'line' versus 'column' arrangement. The initial melee would only be between contacting elements, wrap-arounds, etc would take place in subsequent rounds.

That's pretty much what I'm thinking, not sure what you mean by spear holders though.

I thought if aggressive horse or horse lead by an aggressive leader had to get into melee in the first round, which is a sort of 15 minutes of time that reflects them committing reserve troops quickly. However, if they do so then there is a degree of disorder so they only count half the supports. However, controlled/disciplined horse can feed in troops in the second round and count all of them, that is if they survive the hit of the aggressive horse in the first round.

An alternative would be to allow any six rank horse the ability to absorb some push back. It may be that aggressive horse have to rally back if they don't break or push back disciplined/controlled horse in the first round.

Sorry – spear holders – troops of less worth than those in the front rank-pair and rear rank-pair.

Move forward a hundred years or so and you have Napoleonic cavalry brigades with two-rank squadrons in three lines operating in a not disimilar fashion, albeit not using firepower.

Another idea I've been exploring is that of troops fighting 'outside' a formation rather than 'from-within'.

Eg: files led out in front of a platoon to give fire (so ten-rank yields ten firers)

Eg: best-armed pikemen issuing out in front of the block to do some duelling

Eg: best-armed horse issuing out in front of troop/squadron to give fire (before the general melee)

At some time – maybe mass adoption of firelocks – it was found better to fight 'from-within' a formation.

Not sure about individuals duelling with pikes, it would seem to be entirely the wrong weapon for such purposes, neither am I convinced it actually happened.

You can represent firing by the files being drawn out by allowing a body to creep forwards or back as it fires. ECW were deployed six ranks deep. I think they left a file space every four four or six files to allow passage of troops. Green Foard details this in his excellent Naseby book.

I think this is where we differ – I'm more interested in how bodies of troops fight in large engagements than the exact placement of real men at any one point in time. Given the ground scale and the model figures to real men ratio lots of the 'fiddly micro tactics bits' can be assumed.

I'm more interested in how bodies of troops fight in large engagements

So am I. But I want to know more about the little stuff as it will feed into the big stuff.

Perhaps the fighting out of the formation happened earlier – Spanish Tercias, Swedish Brigades, etc.

I think William Bariffe wrote in his drill manual that you would only order your foot to form up in close order when facing horse; at other times they would be in a less dense formation which included "skirmish", a spacing of 12 paces, IIRC.