DBA English Civil War

Hi Cromwell I've had a brief read of your rules and am Impressed.I've been a staunch supporter of ECW wargaming since the tender age of 11 when I sneaked a peak at a set up game in a spare room at my school that some of my teachers used to game on in their spare time.I asked one of the teachers about it and soon found myself invited with a bunch of other pupils who had also noticed the game too.
It was only a couple of Regiments a side with Supporting Cavalry and guns but it was a great game and I was hooked.
We played with the WRG rules which were cumbersome but we felt realistic and always looked for a quicker set but Tercio and others didnt come near.

Back to your rules I have no critism but maybe a few suggestions you may want to try.

Leadership of some Genral or Wing Commanders...as you know Rupert and Cromwell were better than average Cavalry Commanders so could possibly be given an additional modifier even if only in scenarios?
The presence of the King also influenced the Royalists if he was on the field ( not at Nasby perhaps.lol).

Also the clear difference in Quality of Royalist Cavalry up until Cromwell introduced his Ironsides.Maybe the Impetious rule from 3.0 could be considered here, or the cataphract versus Kn recoil be used in reverse to make Royalist Cav recoil on a draw with the Ironsides ?

Lastly,some units particularly Newcastles' foot and Ruperts foot Regiments displayed stuborness in defence which could be simulated by the no recoil rule displayed by Hd?

These are only suggestions and can be ignored and could be difficult to implement or upset play, you may have already considered some of them.
Anyway good luck with your rule development.

Regards
Eddie

P.S. Down with the King.lol

Some Commanders could perform differently from battle to battle, Rupert was a prime example since he seemed to behave better when the King was present so could be a better (or less rash) commander than as CinC.

Another idea could be based on the reluctance of Cavalry to rally after winning a combat but finding a way to simulate this could be difficult.I only suggest this as battles were won by Cavalry returning from persuit in the nick of time....or failing to do so.😊

I too gamed in 25mm/28mm and had a sizeable collection based on the Parliamentary Army of the North Commanded by Lord Fairfax which I had a few successes with until I sold most of my Wargames armies when I re-married as just didn't have the room for them.

The scenarios are for the computer game "Pike and Shot Campaigns". If you go to www.slitherine.com/ you should be able to find the game. My scenarios are listed under "Historical" Scenarios by other contributors includes Newark and Cropredy Bridge. there is also a campaign for ECW etc

I have not had time to really try out the rules – something I will rectify in the next few weeks – they do look interesting.

I noted the discussion on adding values to better regiments and commanders along with the idea of assigning point values to avoid players’ hand picking the best units. In my solo campaigns I address this situation by randomly assigning units increased/decreased values – working on the old saying that “he was a brave fellow that day”. Most of the time they will perform in an average fashion but occasionally they will do well or poorly.

Commanders are a bigger problem – since I use a campaign system I run up a character rating for the major leaders using Tony Bath’s old campaign rules. This takes care of the leaders. For the secondary (non-rated) commanders the random plus/minus rule is applied.

It seems to work for me.

Thinking about this I feel that the randomly assigning of units better or worse values would save a great deal of administration etc Thanks for the idea. Commanders are a bit of a thorn.   As  Haardrada said some commanders were known to be good such as Cromwell and Rupert with cavalry commands and others like the King had a moral influence. Problem is there was a lack of consistency with commanders, Goring, Hopton and Waller spring to mind. Each commander could be given a basic rating that can be altered in some way at the start of a battle, either better or worse. 

A couple of questions after a skim-read of the rules.

(i) How are commanders based? They seem to be attached to elements, but can exist apart from them. Is a commander a full element or just a nominal marker?

(ii) If an element shoots at an enemy element that has shooting capability, does the enemy shoot back? (Standard DBA/HOTT says yes, but I wasn't sure in this case, since the tactical factors for cover greatly favour a shooting unit in such cover during the exchange.)

Thanks

Quite a lot. In DBA/HOTT the target element gets +2, but in this set the firer gets between -1 and -3 (average -2). Whilst the chance of winning or losing is basically the same, the chances of the element not in cover being doubled are greatly increased. Was this a deliberate design decision? The original rules make the element in cover harder to kill. These make it more likely the element outside the cover will be killed.

Thanks.

Alan