Vintage Bag the Hun?

I noticed today that several of the original, pre-Chain of Command era Toofatlardies rules have now been shunted off into a sideline section of the webshop, aptly yet ominously titled Vintage Lard. I'm wondering how long it will be before Bag the Hun 2 gets pigeonholed as a set of rules that are long in the tooth, if not actually obsolete? As the Vintage Lard section includes classics such as Kiss Me Hardy and Through the Mud and Blood, I'm less than optimistic about Bag the Hun retaining its position on the centre stage. 

Lard Mag 2024

The Lard Mag is out and I'm very pleased to see my Bag the Hun Continuation War scenarios made the final cut. As always, there's plenty more to peruse in this year's edition, with a Jurguthine War campaign for Strength and Honour and scenarios for the Siege of Plymouth using Sharp Practise catching my eye, amongst the usual Chain of Command stuff. Well worth splashing out on as a stocking filler! 

Holiday Reading

A bit of light reading for the holidays, with the siege of Plymouth and Bristol being the focus. Although the different rules I'm using for the 2mm English Civil War project don't include siege warfare, I do have some nice Brigade Models terrain I can use for just this sort of thing. There is a Portable Pike and Shot siege warfare set of rules but it is more strategic than tactical, so I might have to work something out myself. 

Irregular Miniatures Rules in a Box

I needed to order some more pike and shot blocks for my Parliamentarian army the other day, so took the opportunity to bundle in a copy of the Irregular Miniatures Rules in a Box, which include two decent sized armies, my choice being Thirty Years War Dutch and French. 

The rules look rather interesting but I suspect are a bit 'old school' which isn't always a bad thing. They are specifically designed for the 2mm models produced by Irregular although my basing is different to the methods described in the introductory sheet. 

I like the use of cards to set out the main rules, reminding me of games I used to play as a kid using the Tank Battles in Miniature rules copied out by hand onto postcards. I'll see what I can do to adapt them for my units and basing, as they may well be another approach to take. 

Colonel William Ruthven's Regiment

In October 1642 a contingent of Scots mercenaries on the way from campaigning in Ireland to service on the continent, was diverted into Plymouth by stormy weather. The commander of the contingent, Colonel William Ruthven, was an experienced soldier and offered his services to the Parliamentarian defenders of the town, no doubt to make the most of the situation. He was made military governor of Plymouth but subsequently made a right pigs breakfast of it at Braddock Down in January 1643.

I've wanted to have a unit based on Ruthven's Scots for ages but was stuck on how to represent them as a regiment. In different accounts I've read the Scots mercenaries numbered between a measly 200 and an indeterminate 'regiment' in size, so clearly on the small size. I decided in the end to use some leftover pike and shot blocks with a 1:2 pike to musket ratio, which would reflect the better equipment and experience of the regiment, compared to the high pike to shot ratio of early civil war regiments. I'm not sure I like the end result but it will do for the moment. 

Portable Pike and Shot Bookkeeping

These are the rather splendid unit cards used in The Perfect Captain's Very Civile Actions ECW rules but I am going to do something very similar for the regiments in my 2mm Portable Pike and Shot armies. You need to track Strength Points in each game and, as my units will have different ratings for this, I think some individual record cards would be a great idea. I really like these ones and especially the use of contemporary language. I have some time over the holidays to see what I can come up with. 

Random Events in Portable Pike and Shot

In one of the two sets of Portable Pike and Shot rules I'm going to use, there is a system for generating random events when a double is rolled for initiative. I'm a big fan of random things but this system is a bit vanilla, compared to AK47, for example. 

So, I'm going to twiddle the system to give it a bit more period flavour, perhaps with a bit of tounge in cheek humour in an AK47 political flowchart style. I'm thinking here of Ralph Lord Hopton being almost blown up at the Battle of Stratton or the Cornish Trained Bands having a wobble, amongst other things.

The focus will be on things that might add a bonus or penalty to strength, movement or firing, but other things might well pop up that might be either a help or a hindrance to each side. I'm also thinking of changing the mechanism so that a roll of 1 for initiative results in the random roll, making it specific to the side concerned.

It's a bit sketchy at the moment but I have some time over the holidays to work it out. 

Brigade Models Fortifications

I ordered some of the excellent Brigade Models Small Scale Scenery resin fortifications the other day, to use with my 2mm English Civil War project. They match up perfectly with the Irregular Miniatures figure blocks, being roughly 1/1000th scale. My favourite is the model of Star Castle from St. Mary's on the Isles of Scilly, which is where I spent many family holidays back in the 1970's, staying in the police house as my uncle was the police sergeant there for several years. 

Unit Strength in Portable Pike and Shot

I'm the Portable Pike and Shot rules, units are given Strength Points which are lost through enemy fire and close combat. These vary according to the type of unit with Tercios having 6 SP, Battalia 4 SP and so on. These are standardised ratings but I'm thinking about using different SP ratings for different units, specifically the named regiments of the Cornish Royalist and Devonian Parliamentarian armies.  

The size of these regiments varied with the largest like Sir Bevil Grenville's regiment of foot being 1200 strong, while other regiments like Sir John Trevanion's were smaller, in his case only 700 strong. The approach I'm going to take is to divide the total number by 100 then divide the result by 2, rounding up, to give an SP of between 1 and 6. For example, Trevanion's regiment of foot would work out as 700 ÷ 100 = 7 / 7 ÷ 2 = 3.5 / rounded up = 4 SP.

I will keep the other ratings the same but I think this variation in SP ratings will make it more realistic, especially as the Cornish Royalist regiments were often out numbered by smaller Parliamentarian regiments, at least before the end of the 1643 campaigns when casualties and desertion took a toll. It will be very interesting to see if it works and doesn't unbalance the system. 

Carry on Sweetheart

I have no idea if my Bag The Hun article will make it into this year's Lard Mag but I'm still going to crack on with my 1/600th scale Finnish aircraft for the Continuation War. I had another look at these today, in a break from my domestic duties (my day off is never really a day off!) and have decided to add some more aircraft to the line up, which is based on the scenarios that I've written for the Lard Mag. I can also use them for Lacquered Coffins, which will kill two birds with one stone. Fingers crossed!