Testing times

Testing times indeed. I got the rest of my Wofun boys edged and based yesterday so I thought I’d drag out Mr Callan’s rules and give them a quick run through before starting my follow on ECW campaign.

Since I’ve committed totally to hexon terrain these days I breezily decided to just convert the base width ranges and movement rates given in the rules to hexes, however, the way the foot units are depicted in them is in a long line which meant for me I’d have to spread a single regiment over two hexes.

Bunched up or spread out?

If I bunched them up like the bods on the left of the picture I could just play the rules as is, however if I deployed them over the two hexes, it would mean a few extra tweaks to make things work. I’m still undecided about which course to choose but I gamed the two hex version just to try it out and wasn’t unhappy with how things went. 

Fire combat was largely ineffective unless concentrated and at close range, while coming to push of pike seemed to be the way to force the issue to a speedy conclusion. The game is not counter heavy even with the “advanced rules”... I used a pistol counter to denote parliamentary horse ammo supply, (they get only 1 volley of pistol fire per game) and (since they are only allowed 2 charges per game) a “blown” marker to prevent horse from either side exceeding their allowance.

Being a solo player the “sort of” igougo turn sequence is not a problem...and by “sort of” I mean that sides dice to see who goes first in both fire and movement phases. 

The only real area of uncertainty and contention is in the movement / melee area, where (given the way the rules are written) if I moved into melee with an enemy unit as the first player in a turn to move, during his turn he could move out of melee and disengage before any fighting. My fix is to just pin units in place that have been attacked, but it would have been nice to have had that ironed out officially.

The number of units provided in this, the biggest Wofun offering, is sufficient overall, though I think a few more horse would be useful and I will undoubtedly use the Scottish and Irish regiments as proxy’s from time to time. 

For the forthcoming campaign I expect to have 7 units in a small army, 9 in a medium sized army and 11 in a large army.

Testing testing 123

Any thoughts on what looks best deployment wise (i.e. 1 hex or 2 for foot regiments) would be welcome!

With any luck I can start the campaign next week!

Tararr a bit, for now...(as we say in Brum) or Hwyl, as we say here in the PRoWW.