Delving into the English Civil War
Rules and Miniatures
Now that I’ve decided which aspect of the ECW I want the project to be based around I now have to decide scale and rules. I initially contemplated on 28 mm but once I started to investigate miniatures and costs I decided it would be too expensive. So I then considered 15 mm, its a scale I like but I didn’t find any miniatures in this scale I was happy with. So I went up to 20 mm or 1/72, now the problem with this scale was the lack of ECW miniature producers at this scale, but I did discover a company that made plastic 1/72 miniatures called A Call to Arms, they produce Parliamentary and Royalist infantry, artillery and command sets.
I’ve ordered a box of Parliamentary infantry to begin with, which contains 32 figures. I shouldn’t need any more than that, once I’ve painted these I’ll then purchase artillery, cavalry and command boxes. Price wise each box is around £8, so an army should cost around £32 give or take a pound or two.
Rules, is a big one as there’s plenty to choose from out there. Osprey Publishing produce a popular set called The Pikeman’s Lament, designed to cover all wars for this period of military history. Foundry Miniatures also produce a great set of rules called 1644, yet I decided on two set of rules which doesn’t include either of these.
The first set I went for was Field of Glory Renaissance rules, these I plan to use for large battles, and for more skirmish level games I plan to use The Kingdom is Ours by James Daniels published by Helion & Company. The FoG rules are no longer published by Osprey, so you’ll have to look around for a copy on sites like Ebay.
http://www.acalltoarms.co.uk/172_2.html
Interesting choice of scale and material – must admit, I’ve got a bit of a love/hate relationship with 1:72 plastics so be interesting to see how they turn out from a painting point of view. Tried to use 1:72 scale as an entry into Napoleonics in the past but I hated how paint kept flaking off the soft plastic to such an extent I’ve pretty much given up on them now and they’re left in a draw till I can regain the patience to have another crack at em.
I’ll be putting up a quick tutorial to get around this issue in the next few days.
One trick is after you’ve painted them is to give them a coat of PVA and then varnish. Because the PVA is elastic it will bend with the paint
Thinned down AP dip works well on them as well
I be wary of the call to arms figure as I think there out of production . From memory SHQ did a nice 20mm ECW range . Tumbling dice do nice figures though there 1/72 stuff is listed as 25mm
The rules you’ve picked for large battles are pretty good for the later renaissance period