The Rules
The rules that I used were home
grown because none of the Commercial of The Shelf Sets gave the right feel to
the period and there were many specifics that weren’t even considered. They’re an amalgamation of ideas taken from
Shako, Principles of War, WRG 1685 – 1845, and some period specifics thrown in
by myself.
I’ve called them “She’s stopt
boys….” after a famous incident during the battle of New Ross when an Irish
rebel supposedly put his hat over a cannon that had been impeding the Irish
advance shouting “She’s stopt boys….”, upon which the gunner put lintstock to touch
hole and blew him away!
They work pretty well, give the right feel to the game and they flow well. Vinegar Hill took around 11 hours to play out and had 127 units (435 elements) and 2034 figures, so not bad for a game of that size.
Each unit is broken down into elements and apart from Artillery each element is the same width and depth, 1 ½”x ½” the ground scale being 1” to 20 yards. The depth is over scale but is necessary to accommodate the figures.
The number of figures on each element is purely aesthetic as these rules don’t work to a figure scale. Much like POW, casualties are recorded on a casualty sheet which in this case each box representing 25 men.
UI Pike elements represent 200 men in four close order ranks
UI guns men elements represent 50 men in skirmish order
Crown infantry elements represent 100 men in two close order ranks
Crown Cavalry elements represent a troop of 50 men in two close order ranks
Field Artillery which is 1” width x 3” depth, represent one 6lb cannon or one
5½” Howitzer, the accompanying limber, ammunition wagon and the 36 servers and crew. In the case of captured Artillery used by the UI the crew are untrained and a lot less in number.
Battalion guns are 1” x 1” and represent 1 gun with four trained infantry crew.
UI Curricle or improvised artillery such as the many swivel guns that appear to have been used are as above but with untrained crew.
