ECW: 1644 or Pike & Shotte + To Kill a King?

[SteveBurt]

Thanks all for the advice.

I skimmed the FKaP rules last night and found the grid-based movement off-putting. The grid seems to drive the players toward layouts that don't look great on the table. Is that your experience or is it more flexible than it seems?

No, it looks great on table. I normally have 3 bases wide (my figures are on 40mm squares), with 6 bases for foot Battalia (so 24 figures), 3 for Swedish horse and 6 for Dutch.

[since1968]

Vacation begins tomorrow and I've got a lot of reading to do! Thanks again to everyone for the suggestions. 1644 has emerged as an early favorite.

[fred]

Our group has really enjoyed For King and Parliament. The grid disappears when you are playing. It is very quick play, and very multiplayer friendly. The two ECW experts in our group really like the way it has the ECW feel, the rest of us like it as a game.

Basing wise, as long as the units fit in the boxes then its not essential. We are playing with 10mm with 2 or 3 40mm wide bases for a unit (depending on the strength of the unit).

Pike and Shot - if you like the command mechanism then you'll like the game. Our group (which played loads of Warmaster and then some Hail Caesar and Black Powder) grew to find the roll high do nothing, roll low charge across the table style of command roll just too irritating in the long run.

FKaP has the chance you will do nothing, but its low, and the chance of doing lots is low too. And the turns are quick so if your brigade stands for a turn its far less significant when you get through many turns in a game rather than 3 or 4.

[jazbo]

"Our group (which played loads of Warmaster and then some Hail Caesar and Black Powder) grew to find the roll high do nothing, roll low charge across the table style of command roll just too irritating in the long run."

How bizarre to ditch a great rule system because you roll low to do more.

Just swap it round if it upsets you all so deeply!

[Codsticker]

Vacation begins tomorrow and I've got a lot of reading to do! Thanks again to everyone for the suggestions. 1644 has emerged as an early favorite.

That is a great selection! I love the ECW scenario books put out by Caliver/Partizan; there are lots of different types of battles in them and they make use of the best knowledge we have mixed with some realistic speculation.

[fred]

"Our group (which played loads of Warmaster and then some Hail Caesar and Black Powder) grew to find the roll high do nothing, roll low charge across the table style of command roll just too irritating in the long run."

How bizarre to ditch a great rule system because you roll low to do more.

Just swap it round if it upsets you all so deeply!

It was nothing to do with the score on this the dice. It was the shear randomness.

Too many turns sat doing nothing. Then your opponent runs round you.

It was the extremes that happened too often. We like some Command friction in our games but WM/HC/BP was just too much

[Codsticker]

It sounds like your rolls were pretty extreme. I have played both P&S and BP and found that occasionally things didn't happen (or, at least, not what you were expecting) but generally units  behaved especially once you got close to the enemy.

[Aulė]

Vacation begins tomorrow and I've got a lot of reading to do! Thanks again to everyone for the suggestions. 1644 has emerged as an early favorite.

As I see that you have few readings for the summer ...  I propose another ... do you know Liber Militum Tercios? it is based on TYW, but in particular, the supplement Liber Militum Kingdoms, is based on the English Civil War (and other Eastern armies).



This photo is in spanish, but they have the rules also in english and also they have a "brevis editio" version to download for free. (I can not find the link on their website, but on boardgamesgeek you can download it. It's legal) https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/123150/brevis-edition-english