Time for another go at the English Civil War! (Part 1)

 I'm still painting additional units of Bavarian Napoleonics but for some time recently my old head has been stuffed full of ideas about making an ECW board game style project to be used with Tony's ( 'Foy') excellent - to my mind - ECW/C&C variant. I was thinking about how I could create an aesthetically pleasing overall look that captures the period feel and gave a rewarding game, probably solo but could also be played remotely due to it's compact size. My starting points were:

• Units, affordable and quick to make playing pieces using actual model figures if possible
• A solid one piece board of 75mm hexes, not a printed mat this time but something more hand made, painted and varnished not textured as it's way too messy!
• Nice terrain pieces, I really like the range of 10mm resin half timbered buildings made by Steve Clay. 

So first we must tackle the units to be used. After a lot of thought and planning (I love this stage) I had an idea, could it be possible to cut down the Epic 13.5mm 'Pike and Shotte' strips to make up individual bases of foot? I'm used to trimming, cutting and filling these plastic strips it might seem brutal but it's quite easy to do once you get the hang of it! On a 60mm frontage by 25mm deep MDF base I could fit 18 figures together, 6 pike and 12 shot, all cut down to 3's. I gave them a paint job, (fairly quick job but I wanted them to have a bit of 'Pop') then set them together on the base ensuring the trimmed areas were not on the outside edges even though very little damage could be seen once painted. Because there is only a single command strip per sprue I decided to just use the central pikeman cut down as a standard bearer which is fine, the command strip will be cut up and used elsewhere of course, very little wastage. Vallejo Earth texture and some Javis fine turf to dress the base and the result is what you see here below. I'm very pleased on the whole, I must say. 

So, that's 2 units/bases of Foot from a single £8 sprue with some leftover bits which is pretty good value. I started with two Red coated units, possibly from the Kings Oxford Army and this week I'll be doing a couple of Blue coat units so more to follow as this project develops.