"The" ECW Campaign

THE IDEA:

After a good deal of searching and thinking about how to handle a solo ECW campaign, I'm thinking that a hybrid version of the campaign rules found in the Warhammer Historicals English Civil War Rules adapted to the limits of my 40mm collection might just make a reasonable campaign. I'm also ambitiously thinking that the campaign could play out in "real time" in that I could track the ECW games that occur each month on my game table and award points to each side on a "wins per month" basis. Thus control of hexes on the campaign map would be determined as per the Warhammer rules...i.e. a given number of map pins awarded for game wins. Battle dates would be recorded using the real date and just changing the year to 1642. That way the battles that I decide to play will have some sense of occuring in time. Even the historic refights such as the recent small Powick Bridge battle I played would be counted as part of the monthly campaign results (for May 1642). I was also thinking that it would be fun to use battle results from the other blog sites dedicated to ECW (For Ye King, Pudel and Peper, Project Aldearn 1645, etc) and use the results for my campaign whenever the other blog owners post a battle report. That way I can include a sense that there are other generals operating and battles happening in far away parts of England of which I only have partial news. And perhaps that might also provide everyone some measure of enjoyment knowing that their individual gaming might be having an effect on another campaign.

I'm also working out how to handle such niceties such as sieges even though I don't have much in the way of terrain for siege games in 40mm yet. I'm thinking that this campaign might carry over several years in "real time" just like the historical war. I think it might be interesting to include actual weather and such for the days that battles are fought. I would use "Victory Without Quarter" Rules to fight individual battles with some additional mods based on the Warhammer rules....particularly in regards to limited ammunition and events

NOTE the map has many errors!!...being corrected

THE MAP:

The map shown here was based on information that I gleaned from various sources on the internet. The numerical values reflect a good guess as to the level of strategic value of each county in England and show the initial areas of control for the Royalists and Parliamentarians ( I can't recall the person who published this information but he has my thanks!). I still am adding fortified manors and towns to the map, and many of the towns had sympathies opposed to the surrounding county so I'm still working out the map...definitely still a work in progress. But I would be most happy for any input from you guys out there as my knowledge of England's geography is only gleaned from my reading.

The map translates counties to hexes and the hexes are used just to make it easy to visualize spatial relationships. Some of the hexes are double sized to preserve the historic "adjacencies". The Warhammer ECW campaign rules only track who owns what at the end of each "season" so no tracking of movement on the map except for adjacency. It's not an attractive map yet, and lacks period flavor, but I'm working on a MkII version..that will also include Scotland and Ireland.

I'm starting the campaign in May 1642 so all ECW battles that occur this month (my own and others that I hear news of), will be included in the first months results...and so on...so guys get cracking for God and Kinge ...(and I'll be happily and gentlemanly engaged in "poaching" your battle results for this campaign)!