Trial By Donnybrook

Donnybrook; Fighting With Myself

     I have had the Donnybrook rules by The League Of Augsburg for a couple of years now but have never played them as it is up against some tough competition in my gaming calendar such Bolt Action, Sharp Practice etc and gaming time is a finite thing. Beside that, I didn't have troops for the period the rules cover, Donnybrook being set in the late 17th to mid 18th century; a period I am finding myself more and more interested in and I would love to buy and paint more figures for the period, there being a wealth of fantastic 28mm figures available for that period from the likes of Front Rank, Foundry and Warfare Miniatures which Barry Hilton of the League of Augsburg produces (A wee aside; I have been to Augsburg... I say have been, I got dropped off there whilst I was visiting an ex-girlfriend...she wasn't my ex at the time, and got a lift to Dresden to visit some friends, and never realised the significance of Augsburg. Similarly with Muenster, Paderborn, Dresden, The Hague, Salzburg and many other European towns I have been in in my time in the army and later when I fancied myself as a mountaineer...boy do I kick myself now for my fecklessness; if only I had known...ah well, enough regrets, back to the blog post..where was I? Oh yes....Donnybrook)

     Fortunately, like a lot of rules games producers, the chaps who produced Donnybrook are contactable on social media, Facebook in this case, and I had asked them if the rules would cope with or need much changing to allow them to be played in the era of the Thirty Years and English Civil Wars and Clarence Harrison, the author, replied to my question in the affirmative; in fact he admitted to having used ECW era figures when creating the rules, I'm not sure why, I think that's what he was into at the time. Anyway, the reason I asked this was that I had an ECW New Model Army force languishing in a box in the man-cave, left over from my planned Deep Fried Lard project; Sharply Buffed, an ECW adaptation of Sharp Practice.  I had had to bandon this for personal reasons and had decided to sell the figures on. However, for some reason they, the New Model Army figures hadn't been as tempting a purchase on eBay as my Covenanter force had been and I was stuck with them, like an unloved red haired child.

     So I had decided to try and get some mileage out of them by playing Donnybrook with them. Looking at the unit sizes in Donnybrook it was quickly apparent, even to me, that I had plenty of troops....but they were all painted in similar uniform colours; red!

Doh!! I am such a..ahem..base fellow

     And, more crucially (and this is why they had been languishing in a box)!! I had rebased them all from pennies onto 20mm bases to make them more alluring to buyers on eBay. So now I had to remove them all from the 20mm bases and put them back onto pennies, something I wasn't looking forward to doing. I finally got around to doing that this at the weekend in an effort to avoid the elephant in the room in my man-cave, too whit my FIW British infantry (the force that I should really be focusing on now as my next Sharp Practice event is coming closer!!). In the end it was actually not that difficult to remove the figures from the 20mm bases, I didn't lose any digits nor indeed chop pieces of them which was remarkable. It did take me two whole evenings though....and much cursing, naturally, as these things go better if you swear a lot....

     Once they were firmly glued back onto pennies I then had to repaint some of them to differentiate the forces one from the other. As I was keen on setting my Donnybrook gaming in the Europe of the Thirty Years War period ( I had just recently listened once more to C.V. Wedgewoods fantastic The Thirty Years War on Audible for the second time and am re-listening to The Three Musketeers so I was well up for some Thirty Years War action, let me tell you!!) I tried my TYW Google-fu to get some ideas for unit uniforms but my results were mostly unhelpful.
     Even Warlord Games' Pike and Shotte rulebook and the TYW supplement, the Devils Playground, whilst chock full of eye candy photos of miniatures weren't particularly great for giving ideas on specific units. Truth was I didn't have much of an idea as to which faction I really liked. I just knew I wanted to set my games in the TYW. So I painted one lot in green jackets and left it at that for the moment. I figured once I get some games under my belt I will have a bit better of an idea of who my units and characters are.

...and in the red corner....figures rebased..allow me to let
slip a small yippee

     And so, with the day off from work and The Breakout From The Neerpelt Bridgehead Bolt Action game postponed for the time being I put together two 4-point forces, made up some cards for each force(Donnybrook is a card driven system) using a card deck and some white labels, created some characters for each side...well made up son=me continental sounding names, put together a nice looking 4'x4' table and played the Encounter scenario from the rule book as a means of getting the game system into my rather thick head.

For my own benefit, as I like narrative, here is the small
hamlet of  Coosfeld.... I'll need to work on these foreign
names won't I

Lorenzo's Pikemen. Already I imagining these guys to be hired
soldiers with commanders from various parts of Europe

Verdt's Dragoons. Verdt is the chap with the swiord

The Red Team. Nagel's musketeers, Kapitan Grunehaus, Otto's
musketeers and Schimpf's Pikemen

Alfredo's musketeers, Kapitan Kraus and behind him,
Hubble's dragoons

Battle begins in earnest

end of the line for Kapitan Krauss

     I really enjoyed that, the rules are really straight forward and playing through a game helped me understand them a lot better. Besides being a good rule set it's given my Pike and Shotte era chaps a new lease of life; result!!

     All I need to do now is play a few more games with different units; cavalry, mounted dragoons etc and build up some background for my chaps; who they are fighting for and which side then, who knows, I might even get a game locally against somebody else. 

     And, naturally enough, I will need to get more figures; civilian mobs for a start and some more non player characters; Colonel Bill's do some nice sets including an inn set, a recruiting party etc.

    So with my head full of 17th century Doonybrook gaming froth, I had best pop on my night shirt and night cap, light up a candle, make my way to bed and try and get some sleep, it's terribly late here,

pip pip,

GJ