Hey guys, I finally get to do a thread about my Thirty Years War project on here. What kept me from posting it here is that, while Pendraken's are my favorite 10mm minis, it's not entirely Pendraken minis on those. So I'm not posting pictures directly but rather than that I thought I'd post a link to my TYW gallery:
http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/historicals-thirty-years-war/ (http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/historicals-thirty-years-war/)
Because I've been a sad solo wargamer in terms of historicals up until a month ago or so and because I seem to be the only person on the planet to play 10mm TYW and not FoG I started doing two armies right away. It's Imperial Austria / Leaguists versus Swedes and their Protestant allies and the whole lot is loosely based on things around the battle of Lützen in 1632. There are some bits an bobs which don't fit 100% but oh well.
The armies are meant to be used for the Pike&Shot rules mainly. I did get Father Tilly 3 and 4 as well but I have yet to read them. I hope that you like the lot so far. Comments, questions and so on are always highly welcome.
P.S: Please let me know if posting links to pictures of minis from other manufacturers is an absolute no-no.
Exceedingly tasty S.... 8)
Cheers - Phil.
Looks the part! :-bd
Thet look great...love the pike blocks :P
Excellent brush-work, Sigur. Really impressive. 8)
Thanks very much, guys. :)
Seriously impressive painting! Nice one! 8)
Very nice :o
Particularly like the grey with the dappled hind in vastgota-cav3.
How do you rate Pike and Shotte? I'm looking to do the Battle of Adwalton Moor (ECW) and have FOG-R but not too keen.
I'll have to get an Imperialist army some day!
OH my, they are very nice 8).
Thanks very much for the comments, guys. Really appreciated. :) I'm running out of places to show those guys around. Already I've been considering calling them "Warmaster Empire army without wizards" and go to town on all kinds of fantasy wargaming forums. :D
@Uzero: As fate would have it I wrote up a very tiny battle report and review a few months ago. You can find it here: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/lets-play-a-game-of-pikeshotte-battle-report-and-review/ (http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/lets-play-a-game-of-pikeshotte-battle-report-and-review/). In very short words - I was not disappointed. Very nice book, all full colour, beautiful pictures (albeit a few factual errors in the history when it comes to anything that isn't the ECW. ;) The focus of these rules clearly is on the ECW. The mechanics themselves are very quick and intuitive. You don't have full control of what your commanders are capable of, you basically say "Aus dem Winkel's light cavalry will move up to the small forest and engage any enemy they will find there.", then you roll for how well the order got over, if there wasn't a problem in communication or something which determines how many moves the unit can make (between one and three) to carry out the order. By the way, movement is as simple as it gets. As long as you're not getting too close to enemy units you can basically move any way you like. Some may not like that too much but I find that it greatly speeds up the game compared to other systems and it's bascially moving in loose formation.
I was warned beforehand that units in this game potentially move FAST. If I remember correctly, light cavalry moves up to 12" per move which amounts to a possible total of 36" per turn. (it's straight up I go you go by the way.) Overall, you will need a big table to play this game in 28mm. Warlord's plastics and all of that are really affordable and look great but I immediately thought that I'd rather want to play this at a smaller scale. 15mm seems to be pretty common with Pike&Shot era wargaming but I really wanted to go for something that looks like a battle painiting of that era and with 15mm you'd still need a ton of models and honestly, a 15mm mini often costs about the same as a 28mm version of that. 6mm wasn't pretty enough and I've had some experience with 10mm already and really enjoyed painting that scale so I ended up here. :) Overall, I really enjoy Pike&Shot. It's quick and simple BUT the people who did this do know stuff about the period and recreated it well (based on my limited knowledge).
Ah yes, I almost forgot about the very first question when it comes to Pike&Shot wargaming. "Did they get the combined approach to pike and musket right?". In my opinion they have. Pike and musket units are seperate entities, HOWEVER they can "hedgehog" (also possible as a charge reaction) which means that the muskets and their parenting pikes unit merge, the muskets can fire out (at reduced effectiveness), the big new unit effectively has no flanks or rear any more and gets a bonus on fighting cavalry. On the downside, the unit gets immobile and more vulnerable to cannon fire.
As far as houserules go, I've talked to someone using slightly different movement rules (the ones from Father Tilly. A ruleset I got meself but haven't tried yet) to slow down infantry a little. He seemed to be happy with it. In my second battle report I used 10mm minis with the regular movement ranges designed for 28mm, just to try it out. Led to some interesting zipping around of units so I guess I'll stick with using centimeters instead of inches for my 10mm armies. With that I should be okay on a 6' by 4' table. As I said, it's not exactly a supercommon scale for the period but I'm more than happy with it.
I also got a question - why are you not keen about using FoG-R? I never tried it myself but so far I never really heard much good about FoG. The general consensus seems to be that it's very long-winded and overly detailled?
If you're interested, I also did another solo battle in early October if I remember correctly, using the minis I had finished at the time (or not quite finished ;) ): http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/lets-play-another-game-of-pikeshotte/ (http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/lets-play-another-game-of-pikeshotte/)
Very nicely done Sigur - and thanks for the low-down on Pike & Shotte (it's been on my wishlist for a while now..might need to bump it up nearer the top now!) 8)
Thanks for that Sigur, I enjoyed reading the walk through. Placed my order for the book.
Regarding FOG-R, I don't particularly like competition gaming and the need to cover every possible outcome - I'm quite happy with a flip of a coin to decide if there's a problem. But the rules are well presented.
Regards
Martin
You're welcome!
@UZero: I think that competetive gaming and historical wargaming go even less well together than competetive gaming with fantasy/sci-fi. Anyhow, one more note about Pike&Shotte: While the rules are presented in a rather casual way (not quite as casual as Black Powder but still), I never came across a situation which the rules didn't cover quite clearly and I have heard similar reports from many others. So you could say that the ruleset is rather "easy-going" but not sloppy in any way. Really recommended.
Another :-bd on your work. I've got some of the same models coming, but I won't come close to what you have done. Kudos!