Elizabethan Small Wars: Part 6: Irregular Wars – Update

I've finally played my first actual game of Irregular Wars against another player. This was not only my first proper experience of IW, but a play-test of the draft IW2. The game was of mammoth length because we were learning and discussing the rules and making notes, but I'm told the game should run in an hour once we are up to speed.

We both enjoyed the game and were impressed by its mechanics and the clarity with which the rules are written, and look forward to playing many future games with different armies.

This introductory game was played with counters, but here are some links to other blogs showing games and armies and these provide much better eye candy:

Irregular Wars (the author's blog)
Le Coq Fou
Dux Homunculorum
Knight Recoil

Corvus Belli kerns from Vexillia. The shields are separate
and need not be used.

I'm still collecting figures for the Mere Irish and have recently added Corvus Belli and QRF kerns and some Sergeant Major redshanks. I now have enough Mere Irish for two Battles as well as some extras for use in English and Spanish Battles.

Essex musketeer

While eagerly awaiting the release of Khurasan's English and Spanish, I bought some Essex figures to feed into my Royal English, English rebel and Spanish armies. These are the ones labelled "1559-1605AD", but I passed on the pikemen as I couldn't be bothered to cut away the cast-on pikes.

Counters for English Borderers

I've now made some counters for play-testing armies with a larger proportion of cavalry. These are English Borderers and Lowland Scots which you can download here. I've also revamped the Royal English and Mere Irish counters available here.