Town planning

Just a quickie this week to show off a little project progress, so get your specs on again (or a quantum tunnelling microscope if you have one to hand) cos it’s 2 mill time…

My ECW campaign kick off is drawing ever closer, and the push is now on to complete the last few units and finish off some items of terrain. 

Here for your general scorn and derision is the small town of « insert made up name here »  containing the famous Abbey of St Mungo’s in the Marsh.

And here is the village of Wyre Piddle (there actually is one in Worcestershire by the way).

Both sets of buildings are from Brigade and are based on standard Hexon hexes (10cm between the flat sides). I’ve even left enough room to put units in the hex this time around!

One of the criticisms of this scale is the suggestion that the units are more like counters than miniatures. Naturally I disagree but it doesn’t help (in my view) when small units are based on large bases (emphasising the counter like appearance) and there is a corresponding trail of actual counters showing status that follows the units around on the board. Like this the units do indeed begin to look just like one more counter amongst many.

My solution has been to make my bases small and plain, and the units bright (real life drab colours are not your friend in 2mm). All the status information has been taken off the board and put on a separate dry wipe dashboard like this one.

Here you can see my Royalist dash board for a trial game. King Charles is the overall commander and he has issued (pre game) orders to his three main subordinates, Rupert, Astley and Wilmot. They in turn command a number of regîments / battalia who must attempt to follow the issued orders. King Charles can change the current orders during the game but in his case he can only change three of them. 

I’ve found it useful to keep a reserve brigade behind the man line on a hold order and use this to effect any major changes of strategy - mid game. 

And finally…

This blog post has been brought to you by the makers of Captain Fawcett’s Moustache Wax. The finest moustache wax a man can own. Say goodbye forever to the embarrassment of droopy whiskers. Guaranteed to improve your generalship whatever the weather. 

Now available in « Expedition » strength and « I don’t like it Sergeant it’s quiet…too quiet » strength. 

Huzzah!

Toodleooh.

All the kings horses…

Greetings pop pickers. I hope you are all recovering well from your various winterfests. Apart from resolving to never eat another mince pie as long as I live - my other two (actually serious) resolutions for the coming year are to finally stop biting my nails and to grow a handlebar moustache. Yes really. That’s it. I think it’s important not to overreach, don’t you? Achievable goals and low expectations (the story of my life). Lol.

Anywhoo…as usual this post title is a little disingenuous, for the parade laid out below is definitely not ALL of the kings horses. Unless Robert La Poste takes a fancy to them mid delivery there’s a shit ton (a technical term we use in accountancy) more on the way.

So get yer specs on…cos it’s 2 mill time…

A regiment of horse facing away from the camera, in case you were wondering, lol. The dice is a 10mm one for size comparison.

Three battalia of foote showing how they can be positioned on the board to reflect line, column and braced to receive a charge by horse. 

Talking of which…I wanted a counter to make it more obvious that a unit had become immobile and was braced to receive a charge so I did a little furtling and created these on an mdf base. Note that in 2mm, subtle colours are not your friend.

And once I got the order counter making bug there was no stopping me.  Here are hold, attack, seize and a new one « flank ». Special thanks are due to KK for giving me cause to alter the wording of the seize order. Constructive criticism is never a bad thing. Again these are on MDF bases.

My 2mm hexed terrain homebrew ECW rules, entitled « Noe Quarter », give each player two single use burn cards each battle. Here’s a couple for your inspection. I factored commanded shot, light battalia guns and forlorn hopes into the deck because at 2mm the mini artillery is way too fiddly for a guy like me with clumsy hands of death.

Terrain choices and placement are informed by yet more laminated cards. 

Back to the models. A small part of the essential baggage train. There’s no excuse to avoid this kind of unit in 2mm. In the game they frequently get in the way and require constant annoying protection. Lol. These few are a mixture of covered / open wagons, limbers, and even a cart carrying boats for bridging. You’ll hopefully excuse the fact that I didn’t manage to paint the spokes on the cart wheels. Very remiss of me. 

Command groups. The General (left) with a couple of flunkies and a « troop of shew ». The round base contains two senior colonels and a couple of donkey wallopers. I term these colonels brigadiers since they are responsible for 2 - 6 battalia / regiments that have been brigaded together. 

The start of 2 mill ville (part two - see previous historic posts). There’s a load more in the painting queue, plus a lovely castle and some vauban style horn works etc coming up. These will be organised into villages and based on a single hexon hex topper. They’ll look pretty cool en masse I think.

The campaign rules have been sorted out and the main map simplified a tad. We should be good to go with that end of Jan or first week of Feb based on current progress I reckon. 

Toodleooh.