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Post by mthrguth on May 19, 2020 9:00:10 GMT
"Far from being designed purely for the caracole, the pistol-armed cuirassier was the most powerful attack force on the Thirty Years' War battlefield. Big men on big horses, they formed up in dense blocks knee-to-knee, usually six to 12 deep. When they attacked they paused only for the front rank or two to fire their pistols, just enough to cause some disorder in the enemy ranks, and then the dense mass crashed its way clean through anything that stood in its way." Brzezinski and Hook, The Cavalry of Gustavus Adolphus.
So, a couple of authors supporting the super-duper theory. Strangely, Brzezinski does not comment on GA decreasing the number of ranks of charging cavalry from 6 to 3, which I have seen noted in some other secondary texts.
Guth
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Post by mthrguth on May 18, 2020 13:32:29 GMT
If it were me, I'd go with combined pike and shot blocks; detached shot (Italian Wars standard, and ECW where hedge fighting is quite common), gendarmes, pistols of several classes perhaps including a pistol with intrinsic supporting shot, sipahi, light horse, ? mounted harquebusiers.....
This will be unpopular due to rebasing of pike and shot units.
Alternative was to have 3 elements in a column, 3 pike, 2 pike with one shot and 1 shot with two pike. Then you need extra elements for the army. People have already expressed distaste for this.
Third alternative is to allow the pike to stand behind the shot as support. Thinking about it, you could have one pike support 3 shot, and adding a factor against mounted. Or, you could have 2 pike behind 2 or 3 shot adding extra factors against foot and horse (reflecting Imperial and Spanish tercios which had more supporting shot.) Note that even by 1544 it is attested that shot might be included in the front ranks of pike units (actually earlier, Bicocca (sp).
Is shot vs. shot combat handled in an appropriate and fun way at this time? Shot is a 4 a against foot in both melee and shooting. This becomes a 6-1 dice 'rollathon,' which as mentioned earlier the pike should stay away from. At the given factors pike can't even reliable beat shot in hand to hand combat. The DBR condensed scale factors were also not correct, and should, IMO, have provided a negative factor for troops fighting against pike, but probably a +1 factor for the pike as well. Now the excuse for such a high close combat factor against foot for shot might be that this reflects close shooting from the shot. Except that this is a British Napoleonic capability, not a capability of shot firing by rotation at intervals wide enough to prevent mutual self-immolation. {exception, GA's volley fire at Breitenfeld and maybe Montrose Scots. But this is a one shot gimmick-since your shot will have a lot of trouble reloading after this kind of volley}.
mike
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Post by mthrguth on May 17, 2020 16:27:57 GMT
And as promised, my typing lesson for the day, From Marcovan der Hoeven's book, Brill Publishers,
First, Regarding the Spanish army of The Dutch wars, about 1600. J.P. Puype, author.
The main infantry units of hte Spanish army were, of old, the tercios. These originiated in the first half o the sixteenth century. The term 'tercio' means one third, and seems to have been derived from one third of an army, which usually consisted of about 10000 men originally therefore the tercios consisted of about 3000 men, but by 1600 they were much reduced in size, counting between 100- and 1500 men. the average tercio was proportionally divided into 2/3 pikemen and 1/3 musketeers. The musketeers were evenly dispersed along the four sides of hte central block of pikemen. Beaufort-Spontin p. 96 quotes the Spanish military theoretician Francisco de Valdes stating that in battle this border of musketeers should not be deeper than 5 ranks, otherwise they could no longer be covered by the pikemen behind them. This system worked well unitl the advent of much smaller tactical formations with relatively more musketeers, in the ratio of 1/3 pike against 2/3 musketeers, with which Maurits operated. Tercios, with their broad fronts and sides proved vulnerable against the more maneuvrable smaller formations whose greater firepower could break the mass of pikemen. Moreover, the Spanish musketeers could not maintain a continuous fire with their maximum of 5 ranks, whereas prince Maurits would prove that his formations of at least 10 ranks could.
Comment: James Turner and Gustavus Adolphus 'proved' that 5-6 ranks of musketeers were adequate for maintaining a continuous fire; as I quoted before. So, in fact the Tercio; not a 'huge formation' had a more 'modern' number of ranks of shot (again, in FRONT of the pike-a rule change to be considered for DBA RRR) than the 'reformed' Dutch formation of Maurits. Of course, this description of the tercio may be incorrect, as described by Guthrie below
Guthrie, Battles of the TYW pg 10 describes the tercio of 1601 as 13 files of shot 16 deep, 32 files of shot in front of the pike 3 deep, and another 13 files of shot 16 deep pike were formed 32 files behind the central 32 files of shot; and 16 deep. Guthrie has limits as an academic source, I wargamed with the man, a great gentleman. His lack of footnotes is disturbing.
An unsupported assertion by Guthrie is that arquebusiers in the Tercios fired at will, and not by march or countermarch, which seems absurd, at least for the troops in the 'wings'.
Returning to Puype, p 80. Dutch Tactical Infantry Formations in the Field: The tactical concepts and drill of hte Dutch reforms inevitably led to the smaller formations on the battlefield.: the largestformation in the States Army was the regiment, often subdivided into two half regiments. On the battlefield these were formed with narrow intervals. The dept of these formations was 10 ranks [note, this is deeper than Imperial formations by Lutzen-not so modern} Of course this resulted in narrow flanks susceptible to attack by enemy cavalry. To counter this danger, two comapnies of cavalrymen, roerschutters, protected the flanks. Circa 250 pikement were stationed in the center of each half regiment flanked on either side by 80 musketeers each {so 8 files of shot 10 deep, 8 of pike in 10 ranks, 8 files of shot}.
An additional means of defence for the flanks was the placement of a second echelon, again consisting of two half regiments in the above manner, but placed such that the central formation of pikemen would stand behind one of the flanks of the first echelon. {In other words, you now have 8 files of musketeers 10 deep from one regiment IN FRONT OF 8 files of pike 10 deep from the second regiment-which is beginning to look about as deep as the Spanish tercio.} A similar third echelon would in turn be placed behind the position of hte first echelon, whne seen in plan. In this manner all three echelons were positioned chequerboard-wise. The Distances betwen the separate sections of each half regiment were just wide enough for the musketeers to make a conversion in which 8 men of hte front rank would countermarch to the rear, four on each side of hte block, shoulder to shoulder, reloading their muskets {my note: DO NOT try to reload matchlock weapons while shoulder to shoulder-this had led to at least one horrible accident during a reenactment, so Puype is probably WRONG}. If necessary all secons and echelons could close up to create tighter and larger units against the hostile force. It was precisey these formation tactics that Maurits used in the battle of Nieuwpoort.
And again, from the same book p. 20 J.A. de Moor author of the chapter.
'Other historians make light of the importance of the new approach. They point out hat the battle (of Breitenfeld) was nowhere near decisive. Moreover, there was absolutely no question of any definitive breakthrough in new tactics, as ultimately the victory, as was the custom, was won in a general melee. Eighty precent (sic) of the soldiers were stil mercenaries. The fact that Tilly tasted defeat was still no evidence that hte traditional approach had taken its last bow. The battles fought after 1631 would clearly deomnstrate that the traditional methods offered just as much chance of success {?-because the Imperialist units began to look more and more like the Swedish?} Despite all this, it is not possible to argue away the effects of hte military innovations which Gustavus Adolphus implemented. In the flexibility and mobility of hte line and in the concentration of fire power 'Breitnefled" introduced something new, something that in this form ond on this scale had never been used before. It is precisely this combination of traditional and new elements which makes this battle so interesting. Experience and experiment challenged each other fro the crown.
Note that earlier in his chapter, J.A. de Moor has Tilly posting his troops 30 ranks deep; while Guthrie, whatever his faults, claims 16 ranks deep. Guthrie notes that there may be a difference between Tilly's Imperial tercios, with nearly the same firepower efficiency as Swedish units, while allied league tercios were deeper, closer to what Moor cites, and less firepower efficient.
The Horse and Matchlock boardgame rules do not distinguish between more firepower efficient and less efficient (as I would propose), but between veteran and non-veteran infantry.
Next, week, a brief post on volley fire at Breitenfeld, courtesy of James Turner.
Be safe all my friends.
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Post by mthrguth on May 17, 2020 15:15:28 GMT
I can't get an image of a typical game map to upload. Apologies, advice welcome.
Guth
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Post by mthrguth on May 17, 2020 14:36:21 GMT
I've just downloaded from wargamevault.com Horse and Musket dawn of an era, and Horse and Matchlock. These are games similar to Commands and Colors in that an entire battle can be simulated on a 9x13 hex grid. There are scenarios for about 30 battles between the 2 games. No game uses more than about 14 units a side as far as I can tell. C+C divides the board in thirds. Movement is then controlled by a hand of cards drawn from a deck. Surprise, you have no right flank cards. Enemy attacks your right flank. You are toast.
The Horse and Musket games, get this, use Command Pips! Guess where they got that from? I encourage a look see at this game, not because you want to play it instead of DBA-RRR, but because it shows what can be accomplished with a small number of units, a pip system, and a variety of troop types interacting in an interesting way.
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Post by mthrguth on May 17, 2020 14:30:25 GMT
I share your concern about markers, ever since seeing multicolored tiddlywinks appear behind units in ADLG. I'm not a big fan of lucite either. A bit of cotton in with some red or black placed over the unit gives me a very visually acceptable marker for this period.
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Post by mthrguth on May 17, 2020 2:14:26 GMT
Turner claims that Giovio describes that 4000 Christian arquebusiers were deployed in 5 ranks against the Ottoman army, supporting his opinion above.
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Post by mthrguth on May 17, 2020 2:11:10 GMT
From James Turner, Pallas Armata, an English officer who served with the Swedes in the TYW; p228 West Point edition:
Regiments or Brigade marshaled a third way:
the Great Gustavus used another way of marshalling his regiments and brigades of foot, whihc taken altogether was not square of front, yet all the four parts or bodies which composed it, were square. The manner was this, Suppose one of his brigades to be 1800 men (as i can assure you he had many weaker) whereof 1200 were musquesteers, and six hundred were pikemen; The Pikes advanced twenty paces before the two bodies of musketeers, who immediately joined to fill up the void place the pikemen had posessed. Then were the pikes divided into 3 equal bodies two hundred to each to each Batallion, the middle body whereof advanced before the other two so far htat is rear might be about 10 paces before the Van of the other two [bodies of pike, we now have a triangle of pike bodies]. The two Bodies of Pikes that staid behind, were ordered to open a little to both hands and then stand still, all fronting one way to the enemy ; by this means the place which the two hundred pikes possessed in the middle , remaining void there were two passages like sally ports between the rear of the advanced body of pikes and the two baatallions that staid behind, out of one [passage] on the right issued constantly one or two or more hundreds of musqueteers, who before ALL THE THREE BODIES OF PIKE [ed. caps} gave incessantly fire on the Enemy, and when the word or sign for a retreat was given, they retired by the other passage on the left hand back ot hte great body of musqueteers, where so many of them as came back unwounded were presently put in rank and file, the fire continueing without intermission by Musqueters, who still sallied through the passage on the right hand; and it is to be observed that the firemen fought thus in small bodies, each of them not above 5 files of musqueteers, and these for mot part but three deep So you may consider that near the third part of the musqueteers being on service, the other two thirds were securely sheltered behind the three battalions of Pikemen who were completely armed for the defensive. These pikes had field pieces with them which fired as oft as they could as well as the musqueteers; This continued till the pikemn came to push of pike with the enemy, (if both parties staid so long, as seldom they did) then the Musqueeters were ot do what they were order'd to do, and the order did depend on emergencies and accidents, which as they could not be then seen, so no certain rules could be given for them. In this order did I see all the Swedish Brigades drawn up, for one year after teh King's death; but after that time, I saw it wear out whne defensive arms first, and then pikes came to be neglected, and by some vilipended.
Why might this be important to DBA RR-It shows that in the Swedish T brigade the shot were actually IN FRONT of the pike. It also makes sense out of diagrams in Brezezinski's work on Gustavus' infantry and cavalry, which challenges a lot of Nosworthy's earlier work on the subject.
Turner's opinion, conforming to the description above, is that 5 ranks of shot can maintain continous fire without difficulty.
He does not explain, in view of the above description; how Gustavus was able to get 6 ranks of troops to fire in volley just before closing with the enemy; although he describes how this was done, possibly by the Mac-Key regiment at Breitenfeld.
Great book.
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Post by mthrguth on May 16, 2020 21:12:57 GMT
Combat Results table for pike and shot:
A unit which is beaten becomes disordered and marked with a casualty figure or a puff of smoke
A disordered unit may have the disorder removed in a player's bound for the cost of 1 pip, by rolling equal to or greater than the number of inches between the commander and the unit.
A disordered unit which is doubled is destroyed.
A disordered unit which is beaten by mounted is destroyed.
Two types of foot units. Foot with more pike, foot with more muskets. Troops with more pike have +1 against troops with less pike in close combat. Troops with more muskets have +1 against troops with fewer muskets.
Something to start with. Minimizes the effect of the dreaded 6-1. Morale and discipline now become key features of the battlefield. No longer just a product of the random 6-1. The commander can now decide to lead from the front, or put his effort into steadying his line.
Guth
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Post by mthrguth on May 15, 2020 19:03:58 GMT
Importance of base depths and ground scale. If a DBA element represents only 400 infantry deployed in 8 ranks or a 50 file front. Then our 40mm base front represents about 40 yards. A 20mm base depth (universal in DBR) is about 20 yards. So the base could represent troops with about 8 ranks of troops is 6 yards, and you have 6 yards in front and 6 in back.
IF we are going to let the base represent a brigade of 1000 men then a 20 mm base depth will be 40 yards (The depth is actually not just 8 ranks, because some of the shot may be in front of the pike). So, we have about 15 to 17 yards of empty space represented on the base in front of the actual combat unit and behind. This is probably not enough to say that ONE element represents two lines of elements deployed one behind the other.
But, for cavalry! The 40mm base depth means that the base represents almost a football field in depth This is enough distance to state that the element represents 2 regiments of cavalry, one behind the other in 3 or 4 ranks, or a regiment divided into checkerboard formation with intervals between units, which we can't depict with our 15mm scale figures.
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Post by mthrguth on May 15, 2020 18:47:23 GMT
Dell’arte Della Guerra - campaign and battlefield rules for the Italian Renaissance: I found this on wargamevault.com I have not read it or played it, just the blurb and contents. One of the new 'hotnesses' in miniature wargame design if a pre battle phase. DBX games have a simple pre battle phase, attacker/defender; place terrain, choose side. This set of rules appears to have something more extensive. Peter Pig was famous for this in their Poor Bloody Infantry game. I'm going to have a look. Will report back.
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Post by mthrguth on May 15, 2020 18:44:59 GMT
When DBA was first introduced the goal was simple, simulate an entire battle, not an action; using 12 elements. Now PB has changed the rules and scale so that at most we may be representing 5k troops with a DBA army. Not enough for most ancient battles. Could DBA-RRR simulate an entire battle with 12 elements?
I suggest two exercises. First, go to MAA 262, The Army of Gustavus Adolphus vol. 2 Cvalry by Richard Brzezinski and check page 33, GA's battle line at Lutzen. You have 8 infantry briagdes. Then you have cavalry left front and left rear, cavalry right front and right rear. Boom, 12 elements. So, if you want to scale the game to represent an entire battle, you can do it. Your scale is defined each element of foot becomes a brigade. Each cavalry element becomes 6 cavalry squadrons. Combat wise, the cavalry squadrons will also have some shooting ability as they have intrinsic shot, stripped from the infantry brigades which had excess shot to pike; too many pike to be protected from cavalry by the shot. (An important concept-rule authors sometimes fixate on the theoretical pike to shot ratios in the units of different armies, but I stripping shot from brigades was common in the ECW as well, and even in the 80 years war.....).
See the notes also on the figure below on pge 33, which discusses how intervals between brigades were set so hat a squadron of horse could march out betwixt brigades....I'm not sure how accurate the scale is on the Lutzen figure. But I suspect that it would define a ground scale of 1mm equals 1 meter. Notice also that T brigades are depicted for the Swedes. Turner, in Pallas Armata, says that these were not used much after Breitenfeldd.
Another exercise might be to take a map from one of the old SPI TYW quadrigames. Take 12 elements of DBA-RRR troops and superimpose them over the set up area, which has a printed OOB on the hexagonal map. Now you can see how many cavalry or infantry units a DBA -RRR element must represent to allow us to simulate the battle with only 12 elements. It also gives you a clue then of what the movement rates should be for your units, and how big, or rather how small! the playing area should be at this scale to recreate a battle, as opposed to an action.
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Post by mthrguth on May 15, 2020 18:31:25 GMT
Just ordered horse foot and guns myself. Always wondered why Phil took so long to bring it out, and didn't seem to support it very much. I'm look forward to giving it a try.
Dell’arte Della Guerra - campaign and battlefield rules for the Italian Renaissance.
I found the above rules on the wargamevault.com site. I have not purchased nor read them. But what intrigues me is that the rules feature a battle generating system other than the attacker/defender, place terrain, choose sides mechanism of DBA. It might be fun. Poor Bloody Infantry from Too Fat Lardies depends heavily on a pre-battle phase to set the stage for the battle; and Mortem et Gloria also has an extensive pre battle phase. If I were designing DBA-RRR or HFG from scratch, I would look to see if this new 'hotness' of the strategic pre game phase could be added to the game.
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Post by mthrguth on May 14, 2020 1:47:18 GMT
I view each element as a 12th of the army frontage. French gendarmes might be deployed in only 1 rank, 'en haye'. If we assume a pike element represents a front of 300 files infantry on a 40mm base, then there is enough base depth (15mm) to claim that there could be 60 to 80 ranks-way beyond the historical requirements for a 7 rank Dutch/Swedish/later Imperialist pike and shot unit. You can conclude that a single base may represent one or two regiments covering the gaps in each other's formation. (A discussion from Slingshot in early days by Roman Szwaba-why base depths are too deep in miniature wargames).
Why the 300 man front? Well, 300x7 ranks equals 2100; 12 of those bad boys gets you to 24000, which means that we are fighting battles and not skirmishes again but using just 12 elements.
I'm going to post some stuff from Turner's Pallas Armata on the Swedish T brigade, and from Marco van Der Hoeven's Exercise of Arms. Turner is actually primary source, and his description of the T Brigades at Breitenfeld is ignored in many secondary sources. van Der Hoeven gives the best explanation of how the Dutch structure gave a more efficient use of----firepower. Still even at Newport in 1600 Spanish units were a mix of larger Tercios and smaller more flexible units but the Tercio was not a Keil by this time. And because of the terrain, shot could fight in some places without a lot of pike support.
Mike
T
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Post by mthrguth on May 14, 2020 1:23:46 GMT
Dear Altefritz,
We're of the same vintage. Sold off my huge minifig and Hinchliffe Napoleonic collection for pennies a figure in 1987 thinking I had found true love.
Spoke with DBR gurus. First, they prefer DBR 1.2 to 2.0. In their opinion DBR 2.0 killed off the interest in pike and shot gaming from here to Michigan in 2004. Wish someone had told me. We could have gone back to 1.1. They say that 1.1 or 1.2 was more intuititve and faster. The very complicated pip costs in 2.0 were not my idea. I just wanted an extra pip to be paid for 'closing the door', because the movement rates were so fast.....
How badly written is DBR 2.0 regarding combat. Well, here it is, what happens when two pistols meet and one wins. Don't shoot the messenger....
"for example, Pistol(O) Vs Pistol(O). Give one of them a flank support. So the combat factor is 4 for one of them, 3 for the other (4-1)
Now add the dice to each of those - assume it is a 3 thrown by each. The final total is 7 for one, 6 for the other. The guy with a 6 has a score less than the enemy, but more than half. And as the enemy final score is odd (7) he is not destroyed. If the enemy had rolled a 4 and had a total of 8 he would have been (destroyed)."
Note that my rule expert and national champion at DBR forgot to mention that you also have to check whose bound it is. In the above example The lower scoring unit would only be destroyed if it was the higher scoring unit's bound. I can see the justification, aggressive chargers kill troops standing still, like Edgehill or Roundway Down.
The DBR 100 was really pretty good. Pistols I in 3 ranks in the first edition of the rules were pretty cool!
Mike Guth
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