ECW Project start

[mmcv]

Sounds like a reasonable start. Four horse each gives you enough to cover both flanks and five regiments of foot will give you a solid two lines. Then the dragoons and commanded musket can cause some troubles.

Are you planning two equal sides or are you going to have a but of a mix for variety? E.g. some pike heavy and some shot heavy as well as standard regiments?

[fred.]

Your forces certainly sound like a good solid starting point.

But you can never have enough! A big advantage of ECW is that you can easily swap units between the sides if you need to re-arrange the numbers a little, and keeping a few units as more generic pike and shot helps with this.

I’ve found with ECW battles a lot of them involve a lot of cavalry, so certainly some more units of cavalry will be useful.

[paulr]

Only 4 regiments of horse will soon be destroyed or pursing off table

Definitely a good starting force but you will want more

[cudders]

Sounds like a reasonable start. Four horse each gives you enough to cover both flanks and five regiments of foot will give you a solid two lines. Then the dragoons and commanded musket can cause some troubles.

Are you planning two equal sides or are you going to have a but of a mix for variety? E.g. some pike heavy and some shot heavy as well as standard regiments?

Hi mate,

Just enough for both sides but I'll be mixing things up as I test the rules, I wont specifically make units Pike/Musket heavy but I do my own labels and will mark them accordingly for some variety.

Long term plan is a full campaign so I'll need more for sure 

Cudders

[cudders]

Your forces certainly sound like a good solid starting point.

But you can never have enough! A big advantage of ECW is that you can easily swap units between the sides if you need to re-arrange the numbers a little, and keeping a few units as more generic pike and shot helps with this.

I’ve found with ECW battles a lot of them involve a lot of cavalry, so certainly some more units of cavalry will be useful.

Hi fred,

Yeh I'll be needing more as I go but to get some action I'm building enough just to get some games in. 

And of course it doesn't help painting up three different periods either  :-

Cudders

[cudders]

Only 4 regiments of horse will soon be destroyed or pursing off table

Definitely a good starting force but you will want more

Haha I think you're right!  Just like the real battles   

Cudders

[fsn]

Back in the day when I first did ECW infantry regiments were 90+ strong and cavalry regiments were 27 or so strong. I used 15mm Minifigs.

I can't get hooked on ECW. Thought I have been cured of my pike-phobia, I could never satisfy myself about unit size. I can see 90+ being a good solution. 

[Redstef]

90+ figures   !!!
I bow to your superior megalomania overlord

[mmcv]

And of course it doesn't help painting up three different periods either  :-

Only three?! Slacker... 

I started similarly to you with a fairly small set of forces, 3 foot and a couple of horse. Currently rebasing/expanding to around five foot, similar horse, dragoons, commanded shot, artillery....it grows so easily!

[paulr]

They do grow. I've currently got 13 foot and 13 horse per side, plus cuirassiers, dragoons, forlorn hope, rabble, artillery and officers

[DecemDave]

 I have a question to this special interest group :  How are you representing a forlorn hope unit?  Same size and layout as commanded musket or not?  Different coat colours?   

PS
 I have 10 (36 ish fig) infantry per side, 7 (10-16 fig)  cavalry per side (last 5 Royalists currently being painted), 4 units of clubmen, and am about to embark on the "other" units. Its taken me 3 lockdowns to get this far. Would have been far more sensible to build up smaller complete armies first and try out rule sets.   

Is Leon's new landlord behind the 90 fig unit suggestion?

[mmcv]

I have a question to this special interest group :  How are you representing a forlorn hope unit?  Same size and layout as commanded musket or not?  Different coat colours?   

PS
 I have 10 (36 ish fig) infantry per side, 7 (10-16 fig)  cavalry per side (last 5 Royalists currently being painted), 4 units of clubmen, and am about to embark on the "other" units. Its taken me 3 lockdowns to get this far. Would have been far more sensible to build up smaller complete armies first and try out rule sets.   

Is Leon's new landlord behind the 90 fig unit suggestion?

90 figs is madness! I'm envious of those who have the time, space and patience to do such large units!

To my mind forlorn hope tended to be smaller than commanded musket, around half to two thirds the size. My commanded shot I'm thinking 3 ranks of 8 figures + command (same as my dragoons though they're in loose order while commanded shot will be in close order).

My pike and shot mixed units are in 3 ranks of 8-10 figures (depending on the ratio).

So forlorn hope I'm thinking 3 ranks of 5 or 6 figures each + command (probably just captain and drummer, no ensign).

This is for New Model Army so all redcoats. For Royalists/Early Parliament I'll probably do Forlorn Hope in a mix of coat colours as they tended to be drawn from multiple regiments.

[jimduncanuk]

90 figs is madness! I'm envious of those who have the time, space and patience to do such large units!

90+figure infantry units were the 'norm' back in the 70's at my club. I had several such units as well several 27 strong cavalry units (regiments we called them).

15mm Minifigs cavalry came 3 to a strip so buying 9 strips to get a unit was easy to do. 9 bases, each base square with 3 figures in close order in 3 ranks of 3 made manouvering nice and tidy.

Ithoriel of this ilk may well remember taking part although he was but a lad at the time

[mmcv]

Must have been an impressive sight!

[cudders]

Yeh i remember the large units when I started.

Bases with one, two four etc for removing casualties and huge lists of modifiers in the rules.

Gradually moved away from all that. Much prefer large units or a max of four stands and using casualty markers.

Cudders