QuoteLast Royalist foot regiment for the moment, the Lifeguard of Queen Henrietta Maria, led by Lt Col Rhys Thomas.

These are wonderful, love them.

Same here !
Cracking job, Matthew ! 

Really great painting!

That latest ECW unit is good - you are turning these out at a good rate. 

Back to WWI 

Paul - I thought I recognised the trench works - and I agree with just modelling the front side. Otherwise to get based figures in you end up with some very wide trenches. It is a judgement between something that gives the models cover, or as one of my gaming mates has done you go with basically flat terrain pieces, that show a birds eye view of the trenches, which is in the correct ground scale, but isn't in the figure scale. 

ITLSU gives a great game, so well worth trying that. It's perhaps not the clearest written set of rules - but enough of us on here play it, so you should get assistance with any bits that aren't clear.  I've tried GWSH a couple of times but struggled with it - perhaps its too detailed, and not having played spearhead I didn't get the basic concepts of the rules that well. But the same figures work well for both games - though for GWSH you are likely to need far more artillery!

Thanks for the kind words all. Been working on the last two royalist horse while the primer dries on my WW1 test models.

QuoteITLSU gives a great game, so well worth trying that. It's perhaps not the clearest written set of rules - but enough of us on here play it, so you should get assistance with any bits that aren't clear.  I've tried GWSH a couple of times but struggled with it - perhaps its too detailed, and not having played spearhead I didn't get the basic concepts of the rules that well. But the same figures work well for both games - though for GWSH you are likely to need far more artillery!

Yeah I own both rule sets. For the skirmish level stuff I plan to use the Lardies' rules too, so ITLSU should fit in nicely. There's a few small scenario games available for GWSH that I plan to try out and see how I like them, but I agree to play most scenarios it requires a lot of bases and a lot of table space!

One approach I've seen with the bigger GWSH scenarios is to use the casualties from the first wave of the attack to make up the units for third wave...

We play a lot of Spearhead and Modern Spearhead but just couldn't get into GWSH. We much prefer ITLSU and also the more mobile parts of WWI. I'll be interested to hear how you find both. And as Fred has said happy to answer questions

Timecast make great trenches that follow the same format of the 2D ones mentioned above. Bases sit on top of the Trench rather than in them, but they are lovely pieces that look just like the aerial photos of tench systems from the war.

As for GWSH, obviously it's horses for courses. There's a big following for the rules and lots of supplements with at least 2 more on the way prior to a 2nd edition of the rules.

For me they recreate the elements of FWW combat that I enjoy. They are grand Tactical for a start so players are manouvering Corps on the table. The order system means that once an attack is launched its difficult to change path. The artillery was king during the FWW, and this is reflected in the rules. Scenarios such as the Thiepval 1st July one in the rulebook are tough for the British, but worthy of playing to try and do better than they did historically.

If you want a game at a more Tactical level where youre in charge of a brigade, or division at most, there are other rules more suited to the work.

A good summary of GWSH's strengths Sean

QuoteFor me they recreate the elements of FWW combat that I enjoy. They are grand Tactical for a start so players are manouvering Corps on the table. The order system means that once an attack is launched its difficult to change path. The artillery was king during the FWW, and this is reflected in the rules. Scenarios such as the Thiepval 1st July one in the rulebook are tough for the British, but worthy of playing to try and do better than they did historically.

If you want a game at a more Tactical level where youre in charge of a brigade, or division at most, there are other rules more suited to the work.

Yeah that's the impression I get. I like the idea of the attack plans and timed orders. My only thinking is how well that works out solo but have some ideas on how to make it work, such as making a couple of plans and picking one at random, or getting someone with a passing interest to propose a general plan then I act it out.  I've still a lot of working out to do with both sets of rules, I usually like to watch a few videos on the games online but neither rule set is well resourced being a bit older (I found a few intro videos by the author for GWSH but not on gameplay and nothing on ITLSU). I plan to use Through the Mud and the Blood (or the Chain of Command varient of it) for skirmish in the period so I'm not sure if that'll work for or against another Lardies' set for the bigger battles. Time will tell. The first small intro scenario for GWSH has a couple of batallions on each side with supports attacking/defending a bridge crossing. That should be achievable pretty easily to put together and would probably work out for a small scenario for ITLSU too as a comparison.

On the timecast trenches, they do look good on an overhead view and fit nicely with 2-6mm troops but thought they might look a little off with 10mm compared to ones they can actually use, but might prove problematic for bigger battles.

If you are playing solo, then you can probably have the defender fairly pre-programmed.  With perhaps some triggers where you roll for reinforcements to be released. 

The Lardy games with their card decks also allow for triggers for this kind of thing. Either through the use of the blank card coming out a number of times. Or by adding defender activation cards to the deck at certain points. 

Yeah solo play with dynamic systems is grand, was more the preplanned GWSH style but as you say defensive plans are generally fairly limited.

Last two Royalist horse cleared off the painting sticks, the King's Lifeguard and Prince Maurice's




Also had to redo a bit of the king's flag on the command base as the Scottish lion had mysteriously faded away 


Got a bunch of test figures for the Great War British done, just playing with some basing and labelling options. Also need to work out what I want on the labels. Regiment names are great for the battle narrative and paying tribute to the real life soldiers who fought there, but means I'll have to change the labels for different battles. More generic ones are reusable but will need to come up with a reasonable spread of colour codes to differentiate them on the OOBs. 

   

QuoteGot a bunch of test figures for the Great War British done, just playing with some basing and labelling options. Also need to work out what I want on the labels. Regiment names are great for the battle narrative and paying tribute to the real life soldiers who fought there, but means I'll have to change the labels for different battles. More generic ones are reusable but will need to come up with a reasonable spread of colour codes to differentiate them on the OOBs.

I use regiment names for ECW & AWI where we have a moderate number (10-20) of large bases per side in most games. This allows room for the names to be in a reasonable size font. Also if you do need to change them for a battle its not too many to do.

For WWI & WWII (ITLSU & SH) I use colour coding as the bases too small (25-32mm) for names. Also a single battalion can have 10-20 bases.

The colour coding I use is three small squares the first square is the brigade/regiment, second the battalion & third the company. We use the colours red, yellow, blue and green.

So the first brigade, third battalion, second company will have red, blue, yellow. We have a roster which then identifies the units. For most of our ITLSU games I create custom cards for the units with names and colour codes. This encourages player to use the unit names.

For example the Wellington Mounted Rifle Regiment was the second battalion in the second brigade of the Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division so its three squadrons would be: yellow, yellow, red; yellow, yellow, yellow; yellow, yellow, blue.

Nice cavalry!

Wot Will sed. 

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