Rhys' Pike & Shotte Epic Battles Journey

Rhys Pogson Hughes Emanuel is a prolific and extremely active member of the Black Powder Epic Battles community. Some of you may recognise him from the lively Epic Battles Facebook movement where he has been supporting the game across the Epic Warlords, Warlords Epic Battles ACW, Epic Battles Warlord Games, Warlord Games Epic Battles and Warlord Games Epic Battles groups. Be sure to check out these groups and join the Epic Battles conversation.

Rhys has previously penned articles on his other Epic Battles collections, which you can find at the links below:

Rhys: Hello again Warlord Games Community, in March of this year having just about completed my Epic Battles: American Civil War projects I thought I was safe to continue on my Waterloo journey, with the thought that Warlord’s next Epic release probably not being something that could wrest my attention away. Alas, an English Civil Wars collection was one of the few things that I had always considered and never gotten around to, and after Warlrod were kind enough to send me a test sprue ahead of the new range’s release (on which I wrote this article), I was of course well and truly on board…with my Waterloo project side-lined until 2024.

Since March I have been working on Pike & Shotte Epic Battles, with growing Royalist and Parliamentarian forces, and as of last week with the latest release, a Covenanters regiment to go with them.

The uniforms and army structure (or the lack thereof) of the period has already been covered in quite some depth (see this Building an English Civil Wars Army article, for example). I see this as quite freeing – I can make my units look how I feel they should look, which lends me more motivation to game with them, whilst not straying too far from historical accuracy.

Warlord has a very good article from their archive focussed on their 28mm range, which serves as an equally good starting point for the Epic Battles scale too. There’s also a good range of Osprey titles covering the period, or you can find a growing number of examples of inspiration across Facebook’s Epic Battles community groups. Another good source is the Keep Your Powder Dry blog.

For the Royalist units, I have used red sashes as a unifying theme throughout, and orange for the Parliamentarians. Though not thoroughly universal, this simple technique makes the differing units quickly identifiable on the table. Beyond these primary colours, I have tried to match the various reference materials as closely as possible for the units I was including in my roster; noting that certain details from socks to sleaves are anyone’s guess really.

Much like the American Civil War and Waterloo ranges that came before them, the Pike & Shotte sculpts are quite versatile. An alternative paint scheme was often enough to make units feel quite different from one another. This did not, however, stop me from swapping a few heads around to create even greater variety between units, at the cost of a bit of glue and some simple snips with my handy pair of snippers!

As for the newer Scottish sprue, it doesn’t necessarily need any such modification – but that didn’t stop me! I wanted to replicate the pikes forward front rank of the original Pike & Shotte infantry sprues. Easy enough, with a few bonnet heads swapped in, the deed was done. When it came to painting, there was no tartan (thankfully!) but there was some plaid knocking about – I cheated a bit here, using a 0.05mm pen to draw lines over the top of a solid base colour.

I have also experimented by having a stand that has both ranks with pikes forward (which turned out rather well!), and to really stretch myself, I converted a whole unit to be wielding halberds rather than pikes – a King’s Lifeguard unit. I cut the pikes down, split them at the end to create a notch and inserted thin strips of metal I had shaped (taken from tomato and garlic paste tubes – thoroughly cleaned of course), then glued them in place and sealed them with green stuff – which doubled up as fancy tassels.

Another simple way of shaking things up is to change the placement of the command strip within a unit.

I have also made a start on my commanders. These sculpts have bags of character and were a joy to paint. With the addition of a few friends to their bases, the commanders very quickly take on a dioramic feel. I look forward to tackling more of these as I continue.

That’s all I have for now. Just about enough to get to grips with the rules, but plenty enough to keep me inspired and pumped to do more. I feel like I’ll have two full sides ready to campaign within next to no time. The Scots are a nice addition that has bolted on nicely without tipping the scales of my initial plans for the collection. They look great on the table, and I can’t wait to get to grips with the Highland Clansmen (found in the Montrose’ Scottish Royalists Starter Army –ed.) in the near future.

Rhys Pogson Hughes Emanuel

Get Started with Pike & Shotte Epic Battles – the English Civil Wars

Push Of Pike Battle-set

Pike & Shotte Epic Battles: Push of Pike provides you with all the information you need to refight the wars that raged across Europe in the seventeenth century on an epic scale, with period-specific additions that capture the tactics, conditions, and prominent personalities of both these cataclysmic conflicts.

Pike & Shotte Epic Battles – Push of Pike battle set contains:

Tan and grey hard plastic figures: 6 mounted battalia commanders, 6 ensigns, 6 mounted cornets, 14 combined pike & shot regiments (80 soldiers each), 36 commanded shotte, 60 cavalry, 12 cuirassiers, 18 mounted dragoons, 30 dismounted dragoons, 6 Saker cannon and 6 Falconet light guns
Green plastic bases for all figures
A5 260-page Pike & Shotte Epic Battles rulebook
Quick Play reference card
Assembly & painting guide leaflet
Flag sheets for both the English Civil Wars and the Thirty Years’ War
Laser-cut MDF fortified manor house complex
Six D6 dice

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