possible ECW project using Baroque

[paulr]

I'm thinking about a possible ECW project using Baroque. We need to test the rules with our regular group to confirm that they are a suitable rule set for all.

In the mean time I have been looking at the Baroque lists and Pendraken figures, as you do

I really like Zippee's basing http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,16003.msg232924.html#msg232924

The full Baroque lists need 20 stands of Horse and 34 stands of Foot. Almost 1,000 figures including Dragoons, artillery and officers

I can probably justify about half that for this project. My thoughts are to go with about 12 stands of Horse and 18 stands of Foot plus Dragoons, artillery and officers

My aim is to have enough flexibility to use some of the units for either side (probably using coloured VBU dice to identify sides/commands).
I'm interested in the forums thoughts on the practicality of this approach.

I like to base my forces on historic armies so am interested in suggestions for armies to base my forces on, a stand of Foot corresponds to a battalia.
Pierre the Shy is looking at possibly doing some forces from 'north of the border' so armies that operated up that way would be a bonus.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Yoiks! That's a big project chaps.

[Womble67]

I shall follow this with interest.

Take care

Andy

[mollinary]

I look forward to this.  Having opponents for your mate's Scots is no real problem, they did get about a bit!

Assuming you want an English army, rather than Montrose's, then a couple of simple tricks should make them usable for either side. First, keep away from certain uniform colours which seem to have been used by only one side, or sometimes, a single regiment. So, no purple or orange coats. Second, some regiments, such as Prince Rupert's , and the King's,  Queen's and Prince of Wales'  regiments, had unique flags which make them instantly recognisable. If you go for basic flags, Colonel's (usually a plain single colour, with no emblems), Lt Colonel (similar, but with a cross of St George in the canton), and Major (same a similar Lt Col but often with a wavy flame coming from the corner of the canton), then the regiments should be easily swappable from one side to the other. Avoid giving officers orange sashes, they seem to be uniquely Parliamentarian. Otherwise, blue, green, yellow, and even red, seem to have been used by either side.

Anyway, good luck.

Mollinary

[toxicpixie]

If flags are to be the identifer, can you make them replaceable so you can slide them off and on the poles as needed?

[pierre the shy]

Well I've (almost) finished all the WW1 stuff I have to base so onto new projects.....

We've played one "serious" test game of Baroque using Inverlochy as a basis and Paul has been running some "tests" with English ECW units in between invading the Solomons.      

Uniform colours for the Covenanters aren't a problem - any colour you like so long as its grey with a blue bonnet

And Scots highlander, cavalry and artillery units are likewise fairly generic so could be used in either Covenant or Montrose's army which means we can "get away" with less units but still have plenty of verity in opposing armies.

Had a thought about uses for some of the new Eastern European TB ranges that PM have just acquired, but thats probably a project for 2018  

Cheers
Peter

[d_Guy]

I will also enjoy watching this project unfold as I admire the work you guys have done and are doing.

I use different colored VBU die to indicate which side is which. Even with flags they let you see at a glance who is who. I am currently considering having a different color for each command (so as many  as eight).

I also greatly admire Zippee's work and he has already discribed the rationale he uses in building his units (stands). He uses many highly recognizable flags and standardizes on a base uniform color for each "regular" unit which is very pleasing to the eye. He may want to comment further but since he carefully organizes along the Royalist/Parlimentarian lines (rather than regional armies at different times) I suspect he can do what ever battle he wants plus use the Baroque point system (which his stands seem particularly geared to) to do generic battles. It is a great way to go. Of course I could be wrong in all of this (I frequently am!)

In simply studying countless pictures of how many folks have done their ECW armies, most seem to follow the approach of recreating all the well known and best documented units (I certainly did when I did the ECW in 25/28mm) and then not worring about if that unit was at a specific battle.

With the exception of some of Montrose's units I took the course suggested by Mollinary when I did my new armies in 10mm. Blues, reds and greys predominate and many generic regimental flags. The command elements can be switched out or, as Pixie suggested, I also use some command elements that can have different flags shifted off and on. I also go totally anachronistic and add a "faction" flag to each command element.

The non-generic approach is to select a specific battle from the First Civil War and use the order of battle to determine your army list.
Edgehill is a very attractive early war battle which gives you a partularly great assortment of units to pick from. Since Pierre wants a Scots Army, Marston Moor would be a great choice with Royalist, Parliamentarian and Covenanter armies.

You are probably already aware of Project BCW but just in case here is a link to the Regimental Wiki:
http://wiki.bcw-project.org
This has summary of most known units for every army with basic information including flags and coat color(if known). It is continually being updated.

A couple of questions:
You gave a very specific number for the number of stands you would need for Baroque, ideal and reasonable. How did you arrive at those numbers?
"Battalia" gets used in different ways (I here groans in the background  ). Usually something like a brigade but also often something like a regiment (and other usages are possible). I am assuming you are thinking the regimental level?

Don't know if any of this helps since my approach to wargaming the period may at best be called eccentric! 

[Zippee]

I also greatly admire Zippee's work and he has already discribed the rationale he uses in building his units (stands). He uses many highly recognizable flags and standardizes on a base uniform color for each "regular" unit which is very pleasing to the eye. He may want to comment further but since he carefully organizes along the Royalist/Parlimentarian lines (rather than regional armies at different times) I suspect he can do what ever battle he wants plus use the Baroque point system (which his stands seem particularly geared to) to do generic battles. It is a great way to go. Of course I could be wrong in all of this (I frequently am!)

Glad to be an inspiration

d_Guy has it mostly right. The choice of flags was determined by the flags available, they were issued and units/stands labelled accordingly. I made no real effort to match uniform colour to that or with the historical record. The record being so patchy I'm not convinced that just because we know such-a-such unit was issued or called 'green' doesn't mean it always wore green.

I built my armies based on the published lists - that gives me sufficient units that anything but the very largest battles are accessible to me and recognises that the bulk of games will be generic / fictional and often points based because that's quick and easy.

I am also very assuredly going to use the bulk of those units as generic EPM, GA, TR or whatever units in any other western army of the period - to this ECW core will be added the necessary extras in terms of unit types to generate TYW and other sub-periods. That is the way I build periods I don't repeat bulk work of generic troop types but add additions to the core. I see 3 broad periods in Baroque: 1550-1610; 1610-1660 and 1660-1700, my ECW forces are the vast bulk of the troops I need for the middle period. So they are ECW in name only really 

[d_Guy]

Agree. Unless you are doing a very specific battle where a contemporary account actually mentions that such and such a regiment wore a particular color (coat and breeches usually) it is difficult to impossible to assign a color. I often match coat to standard but that was more often not the case.

Uniform colours for the Covenanters aren't a problem - any colour you like so long as its grey with a blue bonnet

This is about as close to uniformity as you can get since the the Covenanting central government provided coats, breeches, hose,etc. and the ubiquitous blue bonnets. But as others have said before think fifty shades of grey! Hodden was a mix of natural black, brown and yellow-white wool in no fixed proportion (that I know of) which lets you use a mixture of shades from light brown to blue grey. The Hodden that was worn in more modern times is a red grey.

If you are to doing the Scots army that arrived in early 1642 in Ulster, in part under the auspices of the English Parliament, they were provided with RED cloth for coats. When some were withdrawn to help deal with Montrose in 1644 some or all may still have been wearing red. To add to the confusion the Scots referred to them as "Irish" foot.

Sorry - started doing a core dump!

[paulr]

Thanks all, some very useful thoughts
This is still very much a possible project, we need our regular group to be happy with the rules

The non-generic approach is to select a specific battle from the First Civil War and use the order of battle to determine your army list.
Edgehill is a very attractive early war battle which gives you a partularly great assortment of units to pick from. Since Pierre wants a Scots Army, Marston Moor would be a great choice with Royalist, Parliamentarian and Covenanter armies.

A couple of questions:
You gave a very specific number for the number of stands you would need for Baroque, ideal and reasonable. How did you arrive at those numbers?
"Battalia" gets used in different ways (I here groans in the background  ). Usually something like a brigade but also often something like a regiment (and other usages are possible). I am assuming you are thinking the regimental level?

Don't know if any of this helps since my approach to wargaming the period may at best be called eccentric! 

I'm looking at using the non-generic approach to guide the organisation and painting of the armies then will use the troops more generically. Using Project BCW and similar resources will give me a better looking mix of units than trying to make them up.

I'll do a bit of reading on Edgehill & Maston Moor. Any other suggestions 

The specific numbers come from examining the Baroque ECW army lists, they are the numbers required to have all the maximums.

My question for the reasonable numbers; 12 Horse and 18 Foot, is will this give me enough stands for two armies to give a reasonable game using Baroque?
Will it allow enough scope for variation between the armies?

I am using battalia to mean a tactical unit that fights together akin to a regiment. From the little I have read large regiments sometimes fought as more than one 'battalia' and several small regiments were sometimes 'brigaded' to form a single battalia

Very helpful, thanks

[d_Guy]

Thanks, I had not done the math but thought that was your approach, using the two ECW tables in the rule book plus (I think) the Covenanter table at the D&P website? (they also have Montrose).

To me (and realizing I mainly play small battles and those solo) 18 foot (M&P) and 12 horse seems more* than sufficient for many varied and interesting games (particularly if several of the units can be assigned to either side). In a pinch the musketeers (commanded shot) and dragoons can play either role, so two or three of each should be enough. Field Guns are next to useless but a few for looks. 

* I think you could easily have fun battles with 12 foot and 8 (or 6!) horse

A great book to look at to get an idea of the main battles and a military overview of the First Civil War is the classic:
"The Great Civil War a military history of the first civil war 1642 - 1646" Burne and Young (1959). A very quick read by two accomplished wargamers, historians and combat soldiers.

In my head I call them Brigades, Regiments, and Battalions with the same understanding you have, just checking 

I think we had communicated before that Inverlochy was almost a one of a kind battle, atypical even for Montrose's campaign and probably not the best showcase for Baroque. That it seemed to work well is a tribute to the rules. I think you or Peter had mentioned some dislike of the Cohesion Test since a bad 1d6 can seriously mess up your plans. Even then several bad things have to happen to get you to that point.  It is an aquired taste but I love it.

I flowcharted the major Baroque game flow (as I do it) to help me sort it out and have as a quick reference:

https://inredcoatragsattired.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/baroque-unit-action-flowchart1.pdf

Feel free to use and/or debug!

Hope this project will go forward - best of luck!

[paulr]

Thanks dGuy

The next step is to have a test game using some cardboard markers I made up from some pictures on Junior General, if the rules work for all then I will look at some more detailed plans

This test game will have to fit in around the defence of Guadalcanal, a WW I battle, and a 1987 Cold War goes hot game. And that's just the next two weekends

[pierre the shy]

Just as well we both have plenty of brownie points 

[sunjester]

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing this develop.

You might find it creeps up to the 1000 figures in no time, if you are not careful. I started off with a Pendraken French Army pack for the WSS, with the intention to add "a few more units". It's well over 1000 painted figures now and will be over 1200 after the current round of units are finished!

[Redstef]

We use Baroque at our club and can confirm they are a fun set of rules and fairly quick to learn once you get over the Italian/English translation nuances. The lists for ECW though have fallen into the usual misconceptions and generalisations but I understand it's probably necessary for a list provided with the main set of rules. There are a couple of better lists on the forums and I am working on some more regional lists.