Newest version of DBA-RRR

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.

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.

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

All good things to consider. You are right on the mark as far as representation of the units in one stand. This will not be a DBA 3.0 translation as my goal is to have a DBA-sized game like that but feel like you are playing the period.

Just make damn sure that PISTOLS are super-duper, utterly unstoppable, killer weapons, okay, Tony?  --Other than that, I have no strong feelings.  (Winks n' grins.)  

"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

Any news on the progress of this one Tony? Looking forward to playing these rules one day