Two games this week with the FOGH exploring two alternative rules sets, one for the War of the Three Kingdoms (ECW), and one for the American Civil War (ACW).
28mm Battle of Justice Mills (Aberdeen) 1645 – For King & Parliament, with the Montrose plus Celtic Fringe supplements
We investigated For King & Parliament (FK&P) a few times, some years ago, and we were impressed with the speed of the game and the period feel. The latest supplements looked very interesting and so we decided to give FK&P another go. The Montrose (‘To win or lose it all’) supplement gives scenarios for the 8 battles of Montrose’s years of miracles (1644-5), an additional ‘what-if’ scenario, historical background, and some alternative simple linked campaign systems to play the scenarios. The FK&P Celtic Fringe supplement gives some special rule ideas to add extra flavour for games set in Scotland and Ireland during the wars.
FK&P is a grid based game and so some new cloths were ordered and marked up with a subtle grid pattern. The game was created to use playing cards but provides the attentive to use D10s which is what we did.
We played the second of Montrose’s battle, Justice Mills, which pits a smaller, more experienced Royalist force against a larger, inexperienced Covenanter force is a strong defensive position. We were very rusty with the rules but despite this completed the game in less than 3 hours and the Royalists just scraped a win when McDonnell’s Irish troops finally broken through the Covenanter line. It had been a really exciting game, and the players on both sides (all experienced ECW gamers) throughly enjoyed themselves. The game could have gone either way, and the rules were brilliant. We loved the activation system, the ways that differing troop quality is reflected, and the great period feel the rules encourage.
We left enthused, and with plans to run through the whole 8 historical battles as a linked campaign, starting with Tippermuir. (Not many nice pictures this time as the photographer was too distracted trying to remember / understand new rules!)
28mm American Civil War – Guns at Gettysburg by David Brown
The club has been playing a lot of ACW over the last 12 months with a number of Friends having new and/or refreshed 28mm forces. Always being willing to experiment with different rule systems, the boys in blue and grey decided to try Guns at Gettysburg. This is perhaps from an older school of rules and embraces tables and individual figure casualties (hooray for curtain rings!). Despite being a ‘first game’ the Fed and Rebs were soon a-whooping and a-hollering themselves through a fun game.
The Friends of General Haig 