The Spanish are coming!

On June 30th, the figures needed to complete four 'Spanish' style early Tercios were finished and the units were based up ready for action.  Three units had been partly completed last year, each of which needed an extra wing of arquebus men, a block of pikes and a command strip to bring the unit up to full size.  The final unit was begun from scratch.  Most of the figures are Pendraken but a handful of Irregular miniatures were used for variety, along with rather more Old Glory figures.  With the latter I cut out the pikes provided, which are over-long compared with my other figures, and replaced them with pikes made from wire.  The flags are all from Maverick Models.

Deployed as early tercios these units have a substantial heft to them that helps distinguish them easily from standard tercios.  They are significantly deeper and the extra sleeve of arquebuses either side of the pike block gives them greater bulk.  This is both visually appealing and gives satisfying explanation of why these units get better morale factors but are more difficult to manoeuvre under the Twilight of Divine Right rules.

Standard Tercio in foreground compared with early Tercio behind, showing the extra depth of the whole early Tercio and the bulk of the central block.

The blocks of figures for one of these units can be rearranged to provide either a standard tercio plus a regiment, or into three regimental formations.

Early Tercio divided up into a standard Tercio in front and a regiment behind

Divided into three regiments

The four early Tercios deployed together.  Three have blocks of Rodoleros attached to the sleeves for a bit of extra flavour but these may only be useful for early stages of the 80 Years War.

The sabot design has changed from being a simple magnetic sheet on which the figure blocks are configured to having a couple of fixed strips at the back.  This increases the depth a little but has the advantage of providing a firm point to pick the sabots up or push them around without the risk of pushing some of the figure blocks off the sabot.  Between the two fixed strips is space for the morale point marker - now a simple square that can be turned to show morale state - and room for an identification marker and an attribute marker.

Close up view of the new markers at the rear of a couple of cavalry units. The markers sit between the two fixed grass flocked strips (sadly not matching the flock used on the unit). To the left is the identification marker showing which state the unit belongs to and what its record number is.  The next shows the unit type, with the letter 'S' on one indicating a small unit.  On the right is the morale marker.  The direction of the white bar indicates morale points remaining.

I am happy with the way the early Tercios look and how the new sabots behave.  The morale marker also works well but the other two need some more thought as to how to display information clearly and avoid having to swap out markers if status changes during the course of play.  All will be put to the test in battle this week.