Paper Pike And Shot

Having messed around with the rules in 'One Hour Wargames' and seen what other people have been doing with them, I am keen to give some of the sets I haven't played a try. I could certainly try the Dark Ages set using my DBA armies, and possibly take stab at some games with the Ancients set too. But neither of those excite me particularly at the moment. I have considered trying the WWII rules with my Epic 40K armies, but I shall save that for another day.

No, I have an urge to try the Pike and Shot rules. Or, at least, my own variant of them. They are an interesting mix of the melee-orientated sets of the first part of the book and the firepower-based sets of the latter part. They look fun. However I am let down by the small problem that I don't have any Pike and Shot armies.

Once again Junior General came to the rescue, providing a range of English Civil War and similar forces for me to download, rescale and print off. I mostly used Ben Harvey's Complete Renaissance Set, which isn't strictly the ECW look I was aiming for, but is close enough and comes in scenario-friendly Red and Blue factions. I added in some pistol-armed cavalry from one of the ECW sets.

Here they are, printed off and with the fronts and backs glued.

With hindsight I should have merged the pikemen and musketeers into one strip before printing, as this would save time and effort. But it's not worth doing it now.

The next stage is to trim them and base them. I am putting them on bases with a 60mm frontage and 30mm depth, although I may put the pike and shot units on 20mm deep bases if it looks better. I'm hoping to have them ready for play on Saturday.

In terms of the rules I am keeping three of the four basic troop types of the OHW Pike and Shot rules, although for aesthetic purposes Infantry will be renamed Pike and Shot, Reiters renamed Trotters and Cavalry renamed Gallopers. I have dropped Swordsmen for now, and replaced them with Shot, representing dismounted dragoons, commanded shot or maybe infantry with such a low proportion of pike that for practical purposes their sole defence lies in firepower. I may make some Swordsmen bases if I like the rules enough. There are plenty of figure options available on Junior General.