Regular visitors will know that I enjoy gaming the Ancients period with To The Strongest.

That rule set has a companion set covering the English Civil War (1642 - 1651) called For King & Parliament. A month or so ago, I invested in a copy and started thinking how I would create forces for both the Royalists and Parliamentarians.

To match my grid-ed gaming mat, I need units that are about 12cms wide, which means that a double-ranked unit would be about 24 foot strong, assuming 1cm frontage for each figure. This worked with the numbers given in the rulebook, so 24 men per regiment it was.

In FK&P, foot regiments are of different types: standard (2 musketeers for every 1 pikeman); pike-heavy; shot-heavy; all pike; all shot and smaller units for Forlorn Hopes, dismounted dragoons etc.

What I initially thought of doing was to have separately based blocks of musketeers and blocks of pikemen, a combination of which would allow me to build the different types of regiment that I needed for a game. After a lot of experimenting with paper and pen, however, I realised that this wouldn’t work: it would be fine for a standard, all pike or all shot units, but wouldn’t work for the -heavy units and their 3:1 ratios.

After a lot more thought, and more pen and paper, I realised that the easiest thing to do would be just to mount an entire regiment of up to 24 figures (plus 3 command, so 27) on a single big base. In effect, I was doing what many 6mm gamers do, but in 15mm.

A quick trip to the Warbases website to discover that they actually do a suitable base as a standard product. It’s called a Vehicle Base, and is 12cms wide by about 5cms deep. It’s the one marked as 110x40mm, which is the rectangular area in the centre of the base, surrounded by curvy bits that give it its 12cms width.

Okay, so it’s all feasible…but rather than cough up huge amounts of cash for a whole army that might not work, let’s try one unit first. Easiest place to buy figures so specifically is Peter Pig, so a quick trip to their website to discover a very nice and comprehensive ECW range. I bought four packets only: one pike, two muskets (one firing, one reloading) and a command pack.

The results you see in the pictures, above. I rather like them, and I really like the big base effect. I did have a little problem with warping, which surprised me given this was a 3mm deep “hard” base, but I could use the lip to flatten the base for a couple of hours and problem solved.

So that’s one unit done and more ordered!