I have been/am still reading Richard Barbrook’s book, “Class Wargames”. Among its many fascinating themes is his study of the collapse of democratic military forces into dictatorship.He name checks Napoleon, Toussaint Louverture & the Russian Revolution. I wonder why he didn’t start earlier with the English Civil War, it would seem to me to be another failure of a democratic military. To him, Guy Debord’s “Game of War” is critically important, partly because of the way it abstracts large elements of military conflict, but they adopted different rules, using miniatures for both the Haitian and Russian Civil War scenarios. How easy would it be to find or adapt some ECW rules? Here are my notes …
Some ECW Rules References
- ‘For King & Parliament’ English Civil War rules released, these are not free.
- Subject: ECW = WTF? Help this Ugly American decipher the English Civil War, a board game geeks thread
- Pike & Shot, a .pdf, ready to play, 11 pages
- Stephen Wylde’s ECW Blog, more about models rather than rules
- Richard pointed me at “Unhappy King Charles“.
I finally finished my review of the book, which led me to revisit how one might play an ECW battle or campaign using the “Total War” games engine. It seems there is a mod for it, advertised in this video.
Total War have a site & forum to discuss the ECW.
There is, it seem,s a battle between the Levellers and the New Model Army, the Battle of Banbury/Burford also known as the Banbury Mutiny. Wikipedia also has a page on the Corkbush Field Mutiny, which on a personal note menntions “Ruislip Heath.With respect to gaming the Battle of Burford, the Reds vs. Reds rules might be appropriate, with a small adjustment. For instance the levellers get to stop a rout by the reading of their manifesto for instance, rather than shooting one of them which is the Bolshevik tactic in the original game. Miniatures are available from bicorne.net.
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I added the comments and video about Medieval Total War and the ECW
More thoughts about using Red Vs Red rules. They might not need much changing, They are high luck fighting rules and so not much needs to be done about the fighting rules, perhaps make shooting less deadly.
No machine guns obviously, so possibly less fighters on each side.
Obviously the Levellers get to stop routs by re-reading the declaration. The Levellers loose if they all their leaders are killed. The Roundheads loose if they are driven off the Board or Cromwell is killed.
It’s a draw if the Levellers leave the field (are forced off) with at least one of their leaders still alive.
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