Regiment of Foote Version 1 Rules

I recently obtained through E-Bay a copy the rules for English Civil War wargames "Regiment of Foote" Rules for the common man by Peter Pig. These are the first version of the rules, not the new V2 which uses a grid system.

Having read through the rules a couple of times I was eager to give them ago. Weather and work conspired to give me a window of oppourtunity so I gave them a try.

The rules are geared to 15mm scale and uses a basing system to track casualties so no figure removal. The suggested use of casualty markers reduces record keeping to virtually nil.

I use 28mm models for my English civil wargaming. The rules suggest doubling the measurements for this scale, but stuck with what was in the rules and it worked fine.

Armies can be built up from the lists provided.

Prior to battle there is a fantastic "campaign" system with players having to march there army to battle. Each march can lead to an event the result of which can be good for your forces or detrimental. During my march bad weather delayed the arrival of one regiment of foot, a saker cannon and a regiment of horse. So I started the battle three units down. They all eventually struggled onto the battle field as the game progressed.The campaign lasts 35 events. At the end of this the player having achieved the most marches is deemed to be the attacker. 

The actual play hinges on the three generals an army has attempting to motivate their units. A general loses his turn when he fails to motivate a unit. Once motivated a unit rolls a D6 this gives action points which are used to order the unit.

Shooting and melee (assaults in the rules) are deceided by dice rolling with modifiers and saving throws for the opposition. 

There is alot of dice to roll, but this in no way slows down the game.

The game lasts until a count down from 23 reaches zero or less. This is achieved by the defending player at the end of his turn rolling a D6. The score from this is then deducted from 23, all rolls being accumalative.

These rules gave a quick flowing game with a great feel and flavour of the English Civil Wars. I feel they may well become my mainstay rules for larger battles.

My only real critisim would be that cavalry using pistols are a little to effective. If after a few more games I still feels this is the case I will tweak them a little.

Regiement of Foote Version 2

I have just obtained the rules "Regiment of Foote" Version 2 from Peter Pig.

I really enjoy using the first version of these rules so I thought I would give the updated version a try.

Impressed by my first reading.

They uses a grid system for movement, shooting and melee. No measuring at all.

The actual mechanisms are very similar to RoF 1.

Like RoF1 a pre battle mini game is included to generate the scenario for the battle.

There is also a rules section devoted to siege games.

Both siege and normal game rules have there own playsheets.

The rule book includes army lists for early and late war Parliament and Royalist forces and for Scots.

Hope to play test in the next week or so and will give a full report then. 

Now played my first game of Regiment of Foote V2.

I had to adapt my grid from the recommended 6 x 8 8" squares as my table is 4'x4'. This gave me a 6 x 6 gridded table. However this fitted well with the number of units I could muster for each side. Somewhat below their recommended 160 points. so the reduced grid had little impact.

The game played well. The pre battle scenario builder was entertaining and gave each side good attributes for the coming conflict.

The game only lasts 8 turns, 4 per player although extra turns can be purchased through the expenditure of victory points. This was my first cock up, I forgot and thegame ended up 16 turns long!

The grid system worked well. No measuring and easy to see who was doing what. 

The game mechanisms for fighting and shooting took a little getting use to but once there the game flew along..

The battle ended in a victory for Parliament a large number of Royalist generals became casualties as did a large number of soldiers on each side.

I made mistakes playing this first game. But that did not detract at all form game enjoyment or the game itself.

I will fight again this weekend having cleared up my misunderstandings!