For King and Parliament (FK&P) are an ECW derivative of To the Strongest. a grid-based system using playing cards in lieu of dice, effectively. They have some nice idiosyncrasies, including the fact that if you have a particularly good run of activation cards, one unit can go on a bit of a rampage. To me, there are some disadvantages too, but the real benefit is each side has a pile of coins representing their army morale, which is decreased as units are destroyed or leaders killed, and thus, you always get a definitive result - one side runs out of coins, and they have lost - simple!
Here are some images from the game, fought at Julian's place yesterday evening. Mark and I were the Parliamentarians, with Julian, Chris and John leading the forces of autocracy and repression.....ahen..I mean the Royalists! Unfortunately, as I arrived "late" according to mien host, my figures remained in their box files, and we used Marks for our side with Julain's collection representing the Kings forces.
A slightly dodgy view of the battlefield, Parliament on the bottom edge, Royalist to the top. The building in the mid left above was occupied by a Royalist forlorn hope unit. I commanded the infantry and guns with Mark taking all our cavalry. Chris was opposite me with Royalist cavalry and the forlorn hope, John in the centre with the infantry and Julian with cavalry on the other wing, opposite Mark
Chris's forlorn hope occupying a forward position - figures Warlord plastic by Julian
Marks cavalry - again, Warlord Plastics - I think perhaps all the figures on the table are from the same manufacturer
Royalist infantry (they are actually TYW Swedes but who is counting?!).
Marks infantry, commanded by yours truly
Commanders move first, John made a somewhat rash advance with his officer and then failed to activate his infantry - Mark saw an opportunity and charged with one of his cavalry units! The precipitate officer managed to extract himself from this sticky situation and scuttle back behind his own lines.
Chris advances on the Royalist right with his cavalry brigade as the forlorn hope emerges from the building they had been occupying - meanwhile, I am trying to redeploy my pike blocks behind the hedges
One of the downsides of these rules is there is a lot on unaesthetic collateral - cards for movement and firing, coins for extra shots, markers for cavalry "dash" etc . All necessary to keep track of what is going on but spoils the look of the game, to my mind!
Cavalry melee between Mark and Julian - both sides are disordered
That Royalist cavalry is getting closer and my units are still messing around, trying to get organised!
A major cavalry clash develops on Marks wing
I finally managed to get the two pike blocks where I wanted them - not that it really helped in the end!
A couple of close ups of the Parliamentarian infantry lining the hedges - again, Marks figures
I took this image to record the fact that, in combat with Mark, Julian not only lost a unit of cavalry, but also the attached commander - not a mean feat as anything apart from an Ace would have meant he was ok and could join an adjacent unit! Thats two coins for the unit and another two for the officer off the Royalist morale pile!
The victorious Parliamentarian cavalry head through a gap in the Royalist lines
The defence on our left wing - the pike blocks musketry was a great disappointment - they blazed away using up all their "double shot" coins (three per unit) and hit nothing at all!
Mark withdrew most of his battered cavalry to get them back into some kind of order
As Julian's one remaining unit set off to the rear to try and deal with the unit of Parliamentarian cavalry who had exploited the gap in the Royalist lines
A couple of over views of the action at the halfway stage
Marks cavalry managed to get into a position to do a rear attack on Julian's men, but it all came to naught
The guns had turned and managed to dispatch one cavalry unit that attacked across the hedge, but Chris had got another unit (the CinC with his cuirassiers...of course!) onto their flank
That did not end well and they rolled on and took the first pike block in the flank too - they were soon gone as well - bugger!
A combat or firing result between John and me - 8 9 or 10 required to hit, 9 or 10 required to save .....!
The Royalist and Parliamentarian infantry get to grips in the centre of the field
Chris and his CinC cavalry unit moves onto the flank of my pike blocks
Mark and Julian battle on with the cavalry on the other flank
The Royalist cavalry continue to roll up the Parliamentarian infantry with flank attacks
The lone survivor on our left flank managed to beat one of Chris's cavalry units and Chris turned over two ones in a row, losing the officer as well
But the inexorable advance across my infantry in the centre continued...
The final position - we actually "won" in theory, having one coin remaining when the Royalists lost their last one. At the previous point where my pike block killed the officer, we were at 6 to 1 - but the cavalry rolling up all our infantry in the centre reduced that to 1 to 1 - then Mark managed to pop Julian's last cavalry unit.
A good, fun game but I could not really claim it as a victory in good conscience. Mark calculated we had 6 units left on each side, but given the positions at the end, I would have to say, the Royalists probably deserve a winning draw as the result!
Keith, you squeezed out a narrow victory. Congratulations to you and Mark? FKaP and TtS! do require a lot of markers and cards but once you get into the hang of the game, the table can be policed of debris regularly so that the look of the game is not spoiled. Table and troops look grand.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jon, we generally always have a lot of fun with these rules, as proved the case last night! Chris has suggested we could use 10 sided dice instead, one to record the current activation score per unit, then a handful each for melees or firing - but I am not sure how much difference that would make
DeleteUsing dice changes the probabilities of the game since you are drawing your sample with replacement with dice but drawing without replacement with cards for each turn.
DeleteYes indeed Jon. The sane applies to using one lack per side as opposed to one over player, as noted in my comments to JBM below!
DeleteCouple of typos above ...should read one pack per side as opposed to one per player....
DeleteGreat report Keith. Turned out to be a close run thing in the end. Lee of Big Lee's Miniature Adventures uses dice instead of cards. We found that it worked well and was less obvious on the tabletop.
ReplyDeleteThanks Richard - dice eh...hmmmm. must think a bit more about that!
DeleteDon't do it! See my comment above.
DeleteLol....don't panic Jon, I am sure Julian would not let us, even if we suggested it!
DeleteChits can be used, which has a smaller footprint and retains the same probabilities. Simons sells sets of them cheap!
DeleteI personally don't mind the cards; we just clear them off after each side gas acted, except when they help to tell the story of the game.
Fantastic looking game sir!
ReplyDeleteBest regards
Thank you, Michal - it was all good fun!
DeleteLovely table and size of game. I do like the aesthetic of the table, especially when it comes to getting a nice photo and I notice that in most TtS and FKaP AAR’s shots are normally taken between turns, when the table is clear of card distraction …… however, from a play point of view, I often feel that players are drawn into the game to such a degree, that most distractions disappear. I have always found this to be the case with hexes - their visual distraction disappears in play.
ReplyDeleteThanks Norm - usually, I try to remove extraneous material such as dice, tape measures or copies of the rules before taking a shot, but in FK&P and TtS, the cards etc are so integral to the game, I just leave them. In some cases, the cards are actually what I want a picture of!
DeleteSuperb battle report. Still to try these rules, seem similar format to TTS which are a fun set
ReplyDeleteCheers Scotty - similar, but with many differences. If you have played TtS though, you will get the hang of FK&P pretty easily - it just has a lot more to it than the earlier period.
DeleteGreat report, congrats on the draw. The 'coins' for keeping track remind me of ' morale chips ' in Piquet's rules. Hard to argue with a zero.
ReplyDeleteThats very tru Joe, although when you both started with 16 or so coins, winning by 1 - 0 isn't a very convincing result!
DeleteNice looking game mate, I too tried FK&P and didn’t like the cards on the table. I eventually bought the card replacing chits but found there was just too much info to record for each unit in general and gave up on it. Probably not so bad when there’s a few of you playing but for a solo player it was a lot of faff.
ReplyDeleteCheers JBM...we do have half sized cards available but not enough packs for five...Julian is often happy to share one pack between two if it's a four player game but this could skew the averages in the cards, as, unlikely as it might be, theoretically one of the two players sharing a pack might have all the Aces to fives, and the other all the rest....for solo, I could see it having some advantages actually, as the randomness of activations would mean no possibility of bias towards one side or the other?
DeleteGreat looking game! And winning is winning 😊 I take them when I can get them - a rare event!
ReplyDeleteThe cards don't bother me too much. You can get smaller ones. I have purchased half sized ones and 1/12 sized (about 10mm x 15mm) for Galactic Heroes. They are less obtrusive but for the smaller ones you can't deal them out, you need to pull them out of a cup.
Thanks Ben, glad you enjoyed the report! It was a damn close run thing, that's for sure!
DeleteI read Mark's review and would be interested to get his perspective on FK&P as well, especially as it was his first run through. I have the rules and everything needed to put on a game, but can't convince my group to give anything except DBR and DBMM a try.
ReplyDeleteFunny Lawrence, I have never played either of those rulesets, yet our "group", particularly on Friday nights at Julian's, must have played twenty or thirty different sets over the years! I don't mind TtS and FK&P but anything with squares or hexes is a bit less appealing to me...they have a lot of advantages but one thing I don't like is you can never have a secure flank, unless you have an unbroken line from one side of the table to the other.
DeleteBecause of the card and activation mechanisms, these rules (and TTS!) work great for solo play. Try a small game that way! :-)
DeleteIt’s double barrel time as I just saw the pics on that *other* blog (Marks). Nice looking game and seemed like fun. I have these rules but have not played them due to the grid. I’m not against grids I just don’t have one. 😀
ReplyDeleteThanks Stew - the rules give a fun game, but its more of a "game" than some other rules - a bit like Command and Colors. Get yourself a marker pen and a set square, mark uip a grid on one of your cloths and give the rules a go!
DeleteGreat looking battle Keith a period I would love to collect at some point ?
ReplyDeleteCheers Matt.....no time like the present! The good thing about ECW is, you can start with quite small forces and build up - as many of the earlier actions were quite small-scale affairs
DeleteThat is a lovely looking game and well done on the win. I tried FK&P and TtS too, but although they are great rules, they never really grabbed me. I think these days too many different sets of rules are not what I want, so have cut down to a few core sets that use similar mechanics, which makes things easier for me.
ReplyDeleteThanks Steve...if someone told me I had to pick three or four sets of rules and stick to them, TtS and FK&P would not be amongst them, but I don't mind them and Julian likes them as they are nice and simple for a Friday night at the end of the working week, although in saying that, the ECW version has added quite a bit in the way if extra rules that I am not cinvinced makes it a better game!
DeleteYour philosophy sounds eminently sensible, but I fear we are destined to continue being exposed to a new ruleset every four to six months, as Julian continues his quest for gaming Nirvana....😀
A lovely sounding game Keith…
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that having cards on the table isn’t my thing… but everyone I know who has had a game seems to enjoy it.
All the best. Aly
Thanks Aly, I am a bit of a minimalist myself when it comes to markers, cards etc....but you really do need them for this game to work, and they are quite a lot of fun!
Delete