06 March 2015

Book Review: Featherstone's Pike and Shot

OOP 'classic' edition
This is the second John Curry reprint that I bought recently, to go with Wesencraft's excellent "Pike and Musket" volume (which I reviewed here).  As much as I have enjoyed many other Featherstone tomes over the years, in my opinion this one is inferior to Wesencraft's book on the topic.

Reprint available from Amazon here
To be fair, I wanted this book for its information in regard to the ECW and thats not what it is.  Its a book on the entire age of warfare in the 16th and 17th centuries.  It details 15 different battles in great detail (up to 8 pages each, including  full page map) but only 3 are from the ECWs - Rocroi, Cropredy Bridge, and Auldearn.

The book is rounded out with some typically Featherstonesque rules and some references and reading lists in the back.



If you are after information about the whole period this may be of interest to you.  If you are after ECW material in particular, stick with Wesencraft's "Pike and Musket' instead.


3 comments:

  1. Hi Paul - I agree with your assessment - I thought the book was interesting but the rules in the appendix didn't actually make sense - I'm not sure anyone proof read them - at least not anyone that didn't know what the writer had meant to say. Having said which, I always find books like this get the mental juices running, sparking other ideas which the author might not have intended!

    Wesencraft book is more coherent - my favourite Old School-type "introduction with rules" book for the period is still Bill Protz's one, I think. I also liked Terry Wise's Athena booklet, but the rules are too fiddly for me.

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  2. I'd have to agree with you on that too mate. I bought the Featherstone book more for completeness of my collection than anything else but it is still an interesting read and I've used some of the non-ECW battles as ideas for scenarios. I've never been able to get my hands on a copy of Bill Protz's material but I wish I had. I've only heard good things about it.

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    Replies
    1. Bill's rules are available to buy here Millsy:

      http://www.oldregimerules.com/catalog.html

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