When I got back to Brazil, however, the bug still hadn't went away. I REALLY wanted to try out Pike & Shotte, as I'd never played Renaissance before and it had always appealed to me.
But what to do now? I certainly couldn't justify spending 500 USD on a whim and there are, as of yet, no 3mm pike and shot armies. I guess I could try 2mm or 6mm... But what to do about the rules?
Then I found out two things:
1) Warlord Games is very sensibly selling a digital version of Pike & Shotte. Well, glory be! Mind you, I do think it is a bit expensive for what is essentially a PDF, but hey: it's cheaper than overseas mail, by a long shot! And i won't begrudge Warlord my hard earned reais they way I'd begrudge, oh, say, Games Workshop.
2) Billy Bones makes an excellent, funky set of paper ECW minatures.
Well, that settled it.
For USD, I bought my Billy Bones figs and for another 50 USD, I bought a beige bedsheet and printed up masses of figures on thick manilla paper. I printed them out at half-scale, making them around 15mm (they are originally about 28mm). You can see the inital results, below: