Making the ECW Unit Cards

One of the comments to my previous post asked how I made the unit cards.

1. I wanted some cards which were reasonably robust and larger than the size of a business card. I decided on using those from a standard pack of playing cards (rather than buying special blank cards).
2. Next thing I did was to identify a standard inkjet sticky label size that would fit over the playing card. [Avery J8173 - 10 labels]
3. The playing cards then had blank sticky labels put on them; these were then trimmed off.

4. I set up a single page document with 5 columns; two blank cards to each column. Making sure when printed that each 'card' would come out on a label.
5. A picture of each unit is added to the card; the picture size is then adjusted till the card layout is correct again - this can be a bit fiddly. I do a batch of 10 cards in each print; each unit having one 'for Parliament' and one 'for ye Kinge' card. A batch of 10 cards is printed onto a page of sticky labels, labels are then placed onto the cards.
6. If I just want to do one card, I just print the page; cut out the 'card' and stick it onto a playing card covered with a sticky label.

Unit Cards

All ready for the next battle. The rules we use have a movement mechanism, where for each move the next unit to move is selected from a set of shuffled cards in turn.

All units have a 'For Ye Kinge' or 'For Parliament' card, this allows units to be on either side in different scenarios.

Storage

Having gathered up quite a collection of ECW troops, the tricky problem of how and where to store them now arises. I wanted to have the pikemen standing and enough room for the standards of the horse regiments.

I've indulged in a couple of 9 litre 'really useful boxes' (available from http://www.reallyusefulboxes.com/ and other suppliers), these are just right. Made of clear material you can see whats in them and I can get about 5 regiments of horse or foot into one box.


The boxes can be stored in the cupboards under my gaming table.

New Regiment of Foot - Bluecoats

Finished these a couple of days ago. This addition brings my ECW collection too:

6 Regiments of Foot
4 Regiments of Horse
4 Artillery pieces

Looks like it's time for another battle..

Additions to the Artillerie

Firstly the 54mm Call-to-Arms ECW cannon painted and shown with my 40mm crew; this looks really good and easily represents a culverin; may buy some more of these.

Next two more field guns from Irregular Miniatures; the crew are mostly Sash & Sabre with a couple of Irregular Miniatures with Sash & Sabre heads.

Pokesay Castle and it's garrison

Finally finished building the castle; I'm very pleased with the result.

The royalist commander Sir William de Willoughby arrives back home at Pokesay Castle with an escort of horse.

Meanwhile the garrison is carrying out some exercises from the drill book ...

Pokesay Castle 7 - the base

The base for Pokesay castle shown on my gaming table.

Its made up of a 3mm MDF base with a raised up centre section for the castle made of foam board and cardboard; with the edges covered in stone paper. The moat was done by painting it brown with green bits and then spraying it with a few coats of varnish.

The ramp to the bridge has yet to be finished. Some small pieces of foam board have been stuck on to keep the buildings in place.

Next job is to build the walls and assemble all the bits together.