To The Strongest - For King and Parliament ECW

For a long time FoG-R was the set of rules I played most often being very popular at the club and resulting in me collecting numerous armies for it.

Over the last couple of years though it has declined drastically in popularity making it hard to arrange games other than the occasional Oxford one day competitions.

Some people are now playing Simon's ADLG-R variant but the Renaissance period has been largely swamped by ADLG now and for me ADLG-R suffers from the same issues I find with ADLG.

A while ago one of my friends suggested that we try 'To the Strongest - For King and Parliament' rules. I got a PDF copy of the rules but, after reading them and discovering that to play you needed three packs of playing cards each plus a bucketful of markers (plus they only cover the ECW) never got around to playing a game.

With the current lock down (and the possibility of playing it online) I thought I'd revisit the rules and have a short solo try out of the mechanisms to see how it plays.

The rules are based on a grid system which is fine as I have a suitable cloth for 15 mm figures. To try the rules I thought I'd use two simple forces, four seasoned pike and shot units for the Royalists and three pike and shot plus some dragoons for the Roundheads on a fairly open table. I didn't bother with the brigade commanders either:

The rules use an activation system with cards (or D10 in my case) needing a certain score to carry out an action depending on it's complexity. It is possible to activate units more than once per turn. In their first move the Royalists move forward and the Red and Yellow regiments open fire. Each unit has three ammunition markers that allow you to fire at long range (two squares) or double fire at close range (one square), the red counters represent the ammo.

It isn't that easy to hit, needing an 8 or more on a D10 to hit with the defender saving on a 7 or more:

A close up of the red and yellow regiments. The first row of dice behind them show the activation's; the red unit needed 2+ for it's first activation (to move) and scored 5. To get a second move it needed 6+ (higher than the first die) which allowed it to shoot. They did score a hit but the Roundhead grey coats saved it:

In their turn the Roundhead's close to short range and hope to open fire. Only the dragoons get to fire though and they inflict a hit (disorder) on the Royalist green coats:

With the Roundhead's failing to get a second activation the Royalist foot can now open fire at close range using double fire (and using up the second of their three ammunition counters). The fire only results in one hit on the grey coats:

The Roundhead's return fire in their turn but to no effect other than using up ammunition!:

The Royalist red coats charge the Roundhead grey coats after firing a volley. In the charge the defender fires first, then the attacker and finally there is a round of melee. All this results in the grey coats taking a single hit and the red coats falling back:

A devastating round of fire from the Royalist white coats inflicts two hits on the Roundhead blue coats breaking them as they already had one hit. The blue coats flee but the adjacent brown coats stand firm:

The Roundhead line is looking shaky, the blue coats have fled and the grey and brown coats have taken disorder markers. The Royalist line is undamaged but they have used up all their excess ammunition and can now only fire at close range:

The Roundhead's fire back with little effect:

A couple of rounds of desultory fire ensue in which the Royalist green coats take a hit but little else happens:

The surviving Roundhead foot fall back to try to rally. As they have used up their spare ammo the Royalists cannot fire at them at long range:

The Roundhead's managed to rally some losses off before the Royalist's closed in again. The dragoons are close to breaking the Royalist green coats:

Despite being a unit down the Roundhead foot start to hit the Royalist foot:

Losses mount for the Royalist's:

The Royalist green coats fall back before they are broken:

Three out of the four Royalist foot are now in trouble, the firefight is going against the Royalists as the dragoons start to target the white coats:

A few more rounds of firing and the Roundhead brown coats are almost broken as are the Royalist red and yellow coats!:

 The Roundhead brown coats finally flee giving the day to the Royalist's:

So what did I think of my first run through of the rules?

Positives

• Despite being slightly daunting the rules are actually fairly easy to pick up and after a couple of turns I think I had the basic mechanism down.
• The limited ammunition is an interesting concept, once you'd fired off your 'spare' ammo it was a lot harder to hit.
• Being grid based there is none of the fiddly movement of many rule sets.

Negatives

• As mentioned above once you'd shot off your spare ammo it was hard to hit, especially once units became disordered (only hitting on a 9 or 10 on a single die with the target saving on a 7+ if hit in the open) thus after a while the game became a little bogged down in numerous failed shooting attempts. Melee does not seem that much more efficient but that might change if you had pike heavy P&S units or with the cavalry.
• The number of dice and markers! Since you can activate a unit, activate other units then go back and activate the first unit again you need to keep track of all the activation's each turn. In a bigger game this may be slow. The infantry need markers for ammo and disorder (took me a while to work out that a 'hit' and a 'disorder' were the same thing) while the cavalry need ammo, 'dash; counters and disorder.
• It's actually quite easy to break combat and rally the infantry once everyone is on limited ammo so it took a while to get a result even with a small number of units.

I'd be happy to give them another go and might try running through some cavalry combats next. There are some variations in the troops (quality and ratio of pike/shot plus Highlanders for the foot, 'Dutch' and 'Swedish' trained for the horse) so that might make a more interesting game.