Why the English Civil War?

This post concerns two interlinked questions:

• Why do I wargame the English Civil War? 
• Why do I refer to the 'English Civil War'?

I deliberately use the old school term here, and not the Wars of the Three Kingdoms or the British Civil War(s). I do wonder if the 'BCW' as a bit of a misnomer as there wasn't really a polity referred to as Britain at that time and the inclusion of Ireland stretches the point even further. I have nothing against the term the Wars of the Three Kingdoms - this is more accurate than BCW if we're considering the wider series of conflicts that occurred in these islands in the period 1639-1651. I'm not one of those people who says things like 'It's political correctness gone mad'. It's just that I have restricted myself to action in England (and Wales!). That's not to say I won't, in gaming terms, venture north of the border at some point, though it's less likely my gaming will take me across the Irish Sea.

Technically, I'm even more restricted to gaming the First English Civil War, and mostly pre-New Model Army. Despite the narrow temporal and geographical scope, there is still plenty of variety to go for. Pitched battles range from a couple of thousand aside, to monsters like Marston Moor. There are raids, ambuscades, leaguers and assaults. Sieges against re-inforced castles, and medieval city walls augmented by earthern work artillery fortifications. There is a lot of scope for focussing in on particular regions or even counties (supported by a wealth of literature). Campaigns could be at the national, regional or local level. Thanks to its geology, England has a wide variety of landscape in a relatively small area, so lots of scope for different topography on a campaign map if not on a single table.

There are several reasons for me personally to get into the English Civil War, after decades of interest in the Seven Years War. For a start the primary and secondary sources are almost exclusively in English! This is different from the SYW where a good level of literacy in French and German are necessary if we are to go beyond Duffy, Showalter and Szabo.

Secondly, it is easier to visit places of interest and battlefields. Within a ten minute drive of here is Surbiton where there was a skirmish in 1648. Within a 30 minute drive of here there are Syon House, Brentford and Turnham Green. In under 90 minutes I can get to Newbury, Oxford, Cheriton, Portsmouth, Basing House. Not much longer and I could be at Edgehill or Cropredy.

I've already mentioned the variety of scenarios open to the ECW wargamer, and the varied landscapes that games could be played out on. The ECW is also rich in 'uniform', if this term could be used at all pre-New Model Army.  Gone are regiment after regiment in Prussian Blue, or Imperial White, instead we have red, white, blue, grey, green, yellow and even purple. On both sides! If you really want variety you can have different hat types (broad brimmed, Monteros, Monmouth caps), helmets (Morions and lobster pots in all their divers types). With or without breastplates. And a lack of consistency within any unit if you wish.

At a more 'worthy' level, what happened in the 1640s still matters today. Whilst no one seriously still holds to the traditional Whig view, the principle that the war was fought over still holds. Parliament rules - even if it took a second ovethrow of the Stuarts to re-establish. The wars also opened up the possibility of tolerance of other (protestant) sects, democracy and a sort of socialism (though the war was not fought for these reasons). The wars also had the first large cross-border military collaboration. The alliance between Covenenters and Parliamentarians (indeed the Committee of the Two Kingdoms) reflected the common interests that led to the Act of Union 60 years later. It's also a cliche, but still one that holds some truth, that people can be characterised as Roundhead or Cavalier in their approach to life. Personally speaking, whilst having a somewhat cavalier attitude in some respects, I have a great deal of sympathy for the Levellers and their ilk (one of the great 'what ifs' of history).

Lastly, there's the aesthetics. Not just the colour, but the style of dress. The look of the thing. And the florid language used.

For once,  judging by the amount of ECW gaming in the blogosphere, I’m in tune with the wargaming zeitgeist.

Boxing and Basing, or ‘Ambassador, you are spoiling us’

Ever since I switched to the Polemos basing convention, I've been on the search for the Holy Grail. The perfect sized storage box. Whilst there is no set size for bases under Polemos rules (at least the Napoleonic sets of rules, 'Maréchal de l'Empire' and 'Général de Division'), the standard size adopted seems to be 60mm wide for cavalry and infantry and 30mm wide for artillery. Depths are usually 30mm (60mm for brigade sized horse and foot units in Maréchal de l'Empire). I have all my SYW and Napoleonics (both periods in 6mm) on bases 60x30mm for infantry and cavalry and 30x30mm for guns. Containers that were sized in multiples of 60 or 30mm were therefore what I was ideally looking for. Height was of secondary importance, though not to be ignored if I wanted to disguise how big my toy collection was!

Out on shopping trips I'd be pouring over the 'storage solutions' section of hardware stores, pound shops, or in that well-known Swedish shop. Often cursing myself for not having brought a tape measure. Family members would ask why I needed a tape measure when the containers dimensions were on display. In case you are not already on the same page, I should point out that it's the internal dimensions that are the critical feature. Are the internal dimensions in multiples of 30mm? Very few of them are.

A decade ago in said Swedish interiors store, I came across the boxes below which were then retailing for a few quid each.

Overall measurements are 320x250x65mm, but more importantly the internal dimensions are a shade over 300x240x60mm. Enough for 40 bases. Because of the depth, I decided to store the figures double height (using bubble-wrap and newspaper bewteen layers). In 7 boxes I have an Anglo-Spanish Napoleonic army and Austrian and Prussian SYW armies. I knew at the time I should have bought more but thought 'don't be greedy, it's enough for now, you can always come back when you need more'. No prizes for guessing that when I did eventually go back the line had been discontinued.

In the succeeding years I found that boxes from Macbooks and i-Pads have reasonable dimensions, but the buggers keep changing the sizes and there's only so many devices of that price that a household of four can justify. And as with the Ikea boxes, these are on the deep side for 6mm or 10mm figures. For a few years this didn't matter as my collection didn't expand in size.

When I finally took the plunge and ordered some Pendraken ECW figures, the hunt for the ideal box was resurrected. It had never quite gone away - I was forever examining the range of boxes in Clas Ohlson (another outlet with Scandinavian origins!). Then that Christmas (2017) one of the wife's friends gave her a box of chocolates. It was a fairly simple looking, clear plastic box about 8 inches square and 1 1/2 inches high. Hmmmm! As soon as the chocolates had been finished, out came the tape measure. One of the best presents I got that Christmas! 210x210x35mm. Even allowing for cavalry standards and upright pikes they were perfect for my new toys!

On the third picture you can see the sticky-backed 'metallic paper' I line the boxes with. I stick magnetic paper underneath the MDF bases the figures are mounted on to stop them moving.

Incidentally, horse are based on 30x30mm bases, foot and dragoons on 40x30mm. Pike in the 'charge' position are on 40x60mm bases. The charging pike are mainly conversions from Pendraken musketeers firing, since no one really does figures in this pose (Irregular do pike in the receiving cavalry position).  Guns are mounted 1 per base, 30mm wide by 40mm deep, with about four gunners in attendance.

There are generally 3 ranks of four foot on each base of pike and shot (or should that be 'shotte'?) and 1 rank of 3 horse on each base. Horse bases are placed in 2 rows of bases to represent 'Dutch' style tactics and 1 deep for 'Swedish' tactics. Command figures are 3 to a base for horse (officer, trumpeter, standard-bearer) or 4 for foot (officer, drummer, 2 standrd bearers). As I mentioned in a previous entry, hose can be any number of bases to a regiment, with one base being a troop. Naturally, there is one pike base plus two of shot for each foot unit. Command stands are supernumeray but are used as markers to indicate what's going on in the unit. At 1mm to the yard, the figure scale is about 1:20.

Getting back to the boxes, UK readers of a certain age will remember this advert.

You are really spoiling us

Standing request now for me with my kids is, if in doubt about presents, get Dad a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates (but not the dinky little ones with two tiers, they're totally the wrong dimensions!). My storage solution of choice retails at around £6-7 and it comes with free chocolates!

The Last Battle

This is the first in an occasional series (i.e. when the mood takes me) of little musical interludes. Now and again there's a military history link. Often there'll be a Nordic* aspect. Sometimes both together, as in this song about the last battle in the Russo-Swedish War of 1808-09, when the final nail was hammered into the coffin of the Swedish empire. I've tinkered with the idea of wargaming this war, but haven't got beyond some vague ideas, let alone acquiring any suitable lead. I do have plenty of trees though!

The singer, Elina Järventaus Johansson, has a beautiful voice and the song has a haunting melody. I'm yet to find the lyrics and translation. Oh, and there's some atmospheric visuals to go with this. You can practically smell the black powder. Gå På!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y7jZSk8mus


* Carefully chosen word, as there will probably be a fair bit of Finnish content at some point, and, as every fellow pedant will tell you, Finland is not Scandinavian.

The Civil War

The American Civil War that is. PBS America (on 'Freeview' TV in the UK) are showing Ken Burns documentary series. The whole series in one day by the looks of it. Fabulous programme what I've seen so far (I missed the episodes covering 1861-63).

I have a fascination for, but only a relative passing aquaintance with, the ACW.  Something about it resonates with this Englishman. The fact there's so much material available in English helps (and what language they had in those days!), but it goes beyond that. Some of the photography is so sharp even after 150 years it seems so contemporary. It's real in a way that most previous wars do not seem real (the Crimean War being the obvious exception in the Anglo-centric sphere). Like our own civil war two and a bit centuries before, it was a struggle sparked by a constitutional clash and was infused with religious feeling, and had the highest proportionate death toll in any of the nation's wars. In fact the ACW death toll was absolutely higher than any other US war. Staggering.

I'm not sure I can take 9 one and a half hour episodes in one sitting though. So I searched for lighter relief. Scanning through the schedules I came across a programme entitled 'British Sporting Greats' on a channel called Together. Closer inspection revealed this list of 'British' sporting heroes:

Arsene Wenger (French), Manuel Neuer (German), Bastian Schweinsteiger (German), and Frank Lampard (English - yes a real Brit!).  Now I'm not doubting the sporting credentials of these gentlemen but Britain is not so short of sporting greats that it needs to co-opt them from other countries. Hmmmm! 🤔

The Current ‘Project’

Actually this is not really a project as it doesn’t have a specific end objective, or timeline, but it does have a budget. Of sorts. The budget constraints are: (i) guilt about taking food from the mouths of my children*, and; (ii) the discipline of maintaining a limited, unpainted lead pile, which I keep to pretty well (ignoring the AWI and WWII Finns and Soviets).

* I stopped doing that when I found that toy soldier suppliers do not accept cold fish fingers as payment, no matter how much ketchup I put on them.

During the past couple of years I have got more and more interested in the English Civil War, almost to the exclusion of any activity on other periods. In my teens, having read the War Game and the Airfix Guide to the ECW, I had a hankering to ‘do’ the ECW. For some reason, however, I bought a few (Lamming?) 15mm light cavalry for the French Wars of Religion, but I never got further than that.  Finally, after 40 years (I’d be a World Class prevaricator if I ever got round to it) I took the plunge and copied some numbers from a piece of plastic and quoted them to Mr Leon at Pendraken and in return he sent me two starter armies.  So why 10mm?

(after penning this I realised the next couple of paragraphs go a bit ‘Tristram Shandy’, but in for a penny…).

In the late 80s I got into 6mm for reasons of space, and for reasons of grandeur. I wanted to be Frederick the Great, not Generalmajor Hülsen (Who? Precisely). I’d previously had a Prussian SYW army of Minifigs 25mm (chunky period) in the late 70s and early 80s. These were sold off in my mid-20s (I think they’d been sitting in a cabinet at a friend’s house from the time I went off to uni) and spent the proceeds on H&R and Irregular SYW. It was an unfashionable scale and a relatively un-trendy period, but at that scale I could afford to do both armies if I struggled to find anyone else who was interested. Eventually I wrote some home-brewed rules, cobbled together from lots of different sources (i.e., I shamelessly nicked ideas) as no single set achieved what I was looking for.

Fast forward to this millennium and a friend bought some Baccus Napoleonic figures and Polemos MDE/GDD rules. He generously bought me a painted British starter army as a present, and then I bought Spaniards and Portuguese and we roped my son into it and I bought him some Prussians.  We could between us cover the Peninsular War and the Hundred Days Campaign. All of this influenced my SYW gaming, leading to a mass rebasing, some touching up of the paintwork, some more recruits from H&R, and several re-writes of my home-brewed rules.

For ECW I was looking for figures with a bit more variation of pose than Baccus. I already had bought some Pendraken AWI from the start of an abortive project. Plus Pendrakens are ace. They still meet my space constraints and as ECW armies were relatively small, I could have decent sized units and respectable armies.

The additional benefit is that you don’t have to be a good painter. Painting has never been my strong point. I get a sense of achievement from it, especially on those occasions when I have done a good job, but it is still a secondary activity. I’d found with 6mils that I could do decent looking armies quite quickly (the Baccus painting guide was very helpful!). And 10mils are not that much bigger. At arms length on the tabletop they look fine.

I like my armies a bit ragged looking - influenced no doubt by a slew of articles and pics in MW and WI back in the 80s and 90s. This fits in well with the ECW’s lack of uniformity and the absence of clear cut differences for each side so I could mix and match. My original plan was to do two different command bases for each unit, one Royalist, and one Parliamentarian but I haven’t got beyond one for each unit and I have a somewhat cavalier attitude** to the flags they’re carrying so they do service willy nilly. Also, I’m too lazy/uncommitted to have attempted to do specific regiments. I admire those that do the research, but I decided ‘not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good (enough)’.

** Dad joke intended. This dates back forty years, when the head of sixth form wrote in my school report that I have ‘a cavalier attitude to punctuality and dress’. So I am nothing if not consistent. What a perceptive chap Mr S was!

Another advantage of 10mils is that I can use some of the same terrain as I use for 6mm (and as I’d planned to do WWII Finnish campaigns and AWI - I’d made lots of trees. Lots and lots of trees!) There’s a rather good guide to making conifers out of pipe cleaners in the second part of the article here . The buildings for 17th century England are different of course from 20th century Karelia or 18th century central Europe, but some items I can get away with. And I decided to adopt the ‘One Scale Down Principle’ of M. le Comte de Foy of Prometheus in Aspic fame.

I plumped for foot units of 30-36 split between two shot and one pike bases each, plus a command stand in addition, so something like 1:20 troop scale. Currently I have got around 15 infantry units, plus some commanded shot and dismounted dragoons. I decided to base horse in threes, each representing a troop***, with a separate command stand for each regiment - regiments can be of variable numbers of troops but recent batches have tended to be 4 troops plus a command stand each. Foot bases (including dragoons, mounted or dismounted) are 40 x 30mm and horse bases are 30 x 30mm. This makes 1mm about a yard, so my extendable dining table can go up to 2400 yards by 900. Which means I can do Edgehill in 1/2 my normal scale.

*** I did this without a great deal of thought on game mechanics, but I like it.

As well as Pendraken, I have bought some Irregular Miniatures (mainly for greater variation in poses) and have a few Lancer Miniatures figures which a pal got as samples years ago. I can just about get away with the differences in size at this scale - but the Irregular horse look a bit emaciated next to Pendrakens and positively skeletal next to the Laughing Cavaliers of Lancer’s range. I’ll stick mostly with Pendraken in future. A while ago I calculated that I ‘needed’ a big boost in cavalry and I more than doubled the quantity I had. My order included cavalry from P’s League of Augsburg range - superb figures, but definitely bigger than the ECW range. A purist would probably say that the kit and accoutrements are a bit anachronistic, but they’re close enough for me. And the guys in hats look like proper ‘Cavaliers’ from Look and Learn magazines. There are some superb pistol wielding figures!  LoA period is also on my unfulfilled wishlist - I could easily dabble in the Monmouth Rebellion (a nice limited objective!).

Later on, I plan to say a bit more about the homemade rules and the thoughts behind them. If I can find any photos that do the models justice, I’ll upload them.


Until then, fare thee well and adieu!

Forlorn Hope

So another blog by a middle-aged wargamer.  What’s this one about? Well my current, main interests are the Seven Years War and the English Civil War, but my wargaming interests cover the black powder era more broadly and have extended to Ancients and WWII. These days I’m mostly a solo-gamer despite living in the biggest city in Western Europe.

I hope to share some of my thoughts and ideas on rules and the like. I may stray into non-wargaming topics from time-to-time.

Most of the ground I cover are table-top battles, but I've long had a hankering after siege games and campaigns.

I’ve never blogged before, and don’t do social media like FB and the Twitter, so I’ve no idea how this will go, whether it’ll be of interest to anyone but me, and whether I’ll quickly run out of steam. But I’ll give it a go. I’ve pondered and prevaricated for long enough.

Along the way if I can entertain, inform, and stimulate feedback, half as much the other wargaming blogs I enjoy, then I’ll be well chuffed.

So here goes. Time to saddle the horses, and light matches.