Tuesday 10 May 2016

The Kingdom is Ours

I've been lookingfor a quick play set of rules for the ECW for a while so when I saw these advertised I was interested especially with" the fight a 28mm gam on a 6x4 table in under 3 hours" bit  ,so I bought them .Here is a first impression review of the rules .

THE GOOD BITS
A glossy soft cover set  of rules ,80odd pages in length with lots of colour pics of figures which I presume are all Bicorne .The book consists of the following:

IntroductionBy author
Civil War introduction                      P7
Battles &Skirmishes of the ECW     P9
Troops&weapons of the ECW          P12
Suggested equipment                        P15
Unit Make Up                                   P17
Unit Tracking                                   P19
Fast Play Rules                                P21
Play sheet                                         P59
Examples                                         P64
Battle of Roundway Down              P72
Reading list                                      P77
Bicorne catalogue                            P78

As you can see the rules dont take up all the book theres lots of interesting stuff in there
it all seems at first look very easy to follow and well laid out .
Bicorne sell packs of dice for the rules although any dice will do and they inform me that unit trackers will be available from them soon .
Lots of advanced rules if you want them
A decent price for a rule set these days

THE NITTY GRITTY
The system uses D6's & D10's

orders are issued and turns taken by drawing dice from bag a different colour of die  for each Tercio the bag also contains the Purple dice of doom ,which when drawn ends the turn and may bring other events into action such as units running away

Each sides number of order dice are decided on by the number of units in play at the start of a turn and how many die the commanders gains the bigger the army the harder it is to give orders also the training of the army effects orders ,if aunit is lost the next turn the dice for that unit are no longer included

figures are based on multiple bases the basic unit is aTercio a Standard Tercio consists of
a mounted commander
2 horse regiments
3 foot regiments
1 saker
The above can be changed in the advanced rules or by scenario

a foot regiment consist of 32 figures the pike/shot ratio varies on year played etc

THE NOT SO GOOD BITS ( in my eyes at first glance )

not many gripes really , the play sheet is in the middle part of the book so is virtually impossible to photocopy without damaging your book ,how ever it states you can download from the Helion site however I could not find it I emailed Helion and did not recieve reply so contacted Bicorne who replied almost immediately saying it was not yet available but they were looking at it .
Only 1 scenario but it is a good one
A couple of bits may annoy other players such as having the bicorne catologue in the book and the use of a protracter for fire arcs but I am pretty happy with my first look  and will be making my armies up to suit .
8/10





2 comments:

  1. Interesting review, thanks. Sounds like a combination of a number of previous rule mechanics (Sharp Practice & Bolt Action etc.). I'll be looking out for more before I think of buying a copy

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  2. I will be doing amore in depth review soon hopefully

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