English Civil War, Very Civile Actions, 28mm

We suddenly realised that we hadn’t played an English Civil War game for over a year. Therefore the forces were rallied, the toys came out and we had a small game. This set-up involved a small Royalist garrison comprising Dave O’Brien’s “munchkins” (they’re mostly 1970’s Minifigs) defending against an assault by the Scottish Covenanters – the troops of Jack Glanville. Halfway through the game a Royalist flying column arrived – two regiments of Northern Horse and some commanded foot – the figures of Dougie trail. My own massed force of Parliamentarians stayed in their box.Dave’s garrison – a regiment of foot supported by a detachment of dragoons and a small gun were set on from three sides, and were suffering the worst of it when the cavalry arrived to save them. The Scots attacked them with two small foot regiments- one from each side of the village – while a unit of highlanders assaulted from the hill behind the settlement. True to form the highlanders proved something of a “damp squib”, failing to charge on every occasion throughout the game – something of a minor achievement!Then Dougie’s horse arrived, and the situation turned around pretty quickly. One cavalry charge ended in failure as it became blocked by houses and hedges, but the others routed most of one Covenanter regiment, and threatened the rest of the Scottish force with destruction. What saved the day – and won the Scots a begrudging win – was the latent force of Highlanders, and the pikes of the other regiment, which dominated the centre of the village at close of play.By the way, in the picture above right, a yellow chicken behind your pike block is not a good thing! Despite it being so long, everyone picked up on the rules again with remarkable alacrity. the game was punctuated by comments from all four players which tended to begin “what I like about these rules” or “the good thing about these rules…”We were using Very Civile Actions, the English Civil War variant of the Spanish Fury: Actions! rules available as a freebie download  from The Perfect Captain. Our only real modification was to increase the size of ranges and movement by an extra 50%, as the original set were designed with piffly 15mm figures in mind.

Tags: Very Civile Actions