Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Pikes, Muskets and Flouncy Shirts => Topic started by: since1968 on July 18, 2018, 12:22:12 AM
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Seeking feedback: I currently play Lion Rampant / Pikeman's Lament for the 1540s. I'd like to jump ahead one century and play the English Civil War with a bigger ruleset. 28mm preferred.
Is it worth seeking out "1644"? Or is "Pike & Shotte" a better pick? I notice they're both written by Rick Priestley. Or "For King and Parliament"?
Thanks for any guidance.
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To make your decision harder I threw in the set from Bicorne Miniatures "The kingdom is ours". It is, in difference to Pikement's lament, made for P&S-Era and ist fast.
The best idea is to test all of them and find out which works for you. I Think Pike&Shot is interesting, but real big battle. When you familiar to "to the strongest" then "for king and Parliament" is a good decision. At the end all sets have their advantages and disadvantages. For me 1644 has a brilliant campaign-system, but the rules are not so fast.
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1644 has a great campaign system, and the rules have some nice ideas (the way cavalry melee progressively pulls in more and more ranks), but the combat system is very deterministic; you know that you will cause 2 casualties with a 50% chance of causing 3; that sort of thing.
Pike & Shotte is Black Powder derived, so if you like that style of rules you will like it. I think it was a mistake to have pike & shot as separate units in the rules as that's not the way they operated.
For King & Parliament is excellent and lets you play even big battles very quickly.
Other sets I've used which may also appeal are
'Regiment of Foote' (Peter Pig 1st edition). Quite fun but too many dice!
'Field of Glory:Renaissance' Better than the ancients set, quite a nice set of rules, but not the fastest playing
'De Bellis Renationis' A good solid set; best played using the 'Condensed' scale as the rules work better and also allow you to fight larger battles.
'To Defy a King'. A nice orders system, but we found the melee rules overly fiddly and melees seem to go on for many turns.
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I played Pike and Shotte years back and enjoyed it immensely myself.
I can't say much for the rest as I've never heard of them.
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Thanks all for the advice.
When you familiar to "to the strongest" then "for king and Parliament" is a good decision.
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?
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To make your decision harder I threw in the set from Bicorne Miniatures "The kingdom is ours". It is, in difference to Pikement's lament, made for P&S-Era and ist fast.
Hadn't heard of this one but found it for about $15 on AbeBooks. Thank you.
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1644 has a great campaign system, and the rules have some nice ideas (the way cavalry melee progressively pulls in more and more ranks), but the combat system is very deterministic; you know that you will cause 2 casualties with a 50% chance of causing 3; that sort of thing.
Interesting. I might not mind deterministic combat after Lion Rampant/Pikeman's Lament, which is "swingy."
Any basing dead-ends I should be aware of? Can 1644, P&S, and FK&P all be played with the same frontages?
Thanks again.
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FK&P uses a grid system and works very well, like its parent TTS. Anything that fits inside your choice of grid size (I am using 20cm) will work.
There is also Baroque which is derived from Impetus, and uses 18cm unit frontages.
My ECWs are based so that I can use them for Baroque, FK&P and P&S, with an 18cm frontage for foot units, and a 15cm or 17.5cm frontage for cavalry (although technically I could go to 20cm for cavalry, add one more figure).
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Pike and shotte is a great set of rules and delivers fast play big battle games...it's our game of choice for this period. The supplement is also worth having
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I've tracked down inexpensive copies of all but Baroque and 1644. Will likely try games of Pike & Shotte and FK&P using Battle of Lessie's Moor scenario for both to compare.
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Pike and shotte is a great set of rules and delivers fast play big battle games...it's our game of choice for this period. The supplement is also worth having
The supplement is great (much better than Warlord's recent Dark Ages book) and also includes rules for combined regiments.
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1644 has a great campaign system, and the rules have some nice ideas (the way cavalry melee progressively pulls in more and more ranks), but the combat system is very deterministic; you know that you will cause 2 casualties with a 50% chance of causing 3; that sort of thing.
1644 arrived in the mail yesterday and after a quick read appears to be a winner. I picked up the first edition (1990) because it's so much cheaper. Do you know if there are substantial changes in the 2nd edition (2007)?
Amazon reviews swing from "no change since 1st edition, what a ripoff!" to "lots of great changes." :-)
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I must admit I've had fun using Pikeman's Lament for the ECW. But I must admit I quite like the Peter pig and/or Pike and shot for larger games. :)
There are lots of rules suggestions missing from the thread as well BTW - Forlorn Hope, Polemos etc.
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I'd recommend Impetus Braque.
http://www.dadiepiombo.it/english-baroque.html
Christopher
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We like Regiment of Foote (Peter Pig) but generally play 15mm, although it's easy enough to upscale it.
The pre-battle sequence from version 1 is perhaps better than version 2 - I know of some people who bought version 1 just to use the pre-battle system with other rules (and sometimes other periods).
The version 1 makes it quite possible to be the attacker with a much smaller force than the defender and no artillery.
(recognise the chuntering sound of someone who took a sound thrashing when attacking a larger army who sat on a hilltop and waited for the assault)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"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!
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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.
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"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
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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.
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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 ... :P 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).
(http://released.elkraken.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/anuncio-kingdoms-848x1024.jpg)
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 (https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/123150/brevis-edition-english)