Pretext for War

Felt the need to create a background for a tiff. Instituted a journal: Mercurius Frigidius to provide same. Painting proceeds, not fast enough.

SACRIFICIAL VICTIMS

A tour to a flea-market yielded some plunder. A bunch of tin-soldier oddments.
Some giant cowboys and indians - 65mm! Lovely colours...

Also some wierd Kongelige Livgarder. Extremely heavy 70mm tall and obviously meant to hold a rifle.

 Then some armed sailors, could be Germans from second world war or GDR ? Nice paint job...

Buried in the box I then found a nice little Holger Erikson Karl XII ! Not the right scale but I don't think I will throw him in the pot.

The rest may end their days reincarnated as 40mm PA figures. 2.5 kilo tin for 100Kr is not so bad.
I will look around the web to see if the others are anything special but they will have to be special to be saved from a tour in the pot!

SCALES AND BASING

My brain hurts..
Still trying to find an efficient scale which fits with the figures, the table and the capability to recreate a meaningfully large map.. simple, just have to square a circle, put a quart into a pint pot etc.

Lars Høglund's book includes a copy of a wonderful engraving from 1692 which shows 'The Campement of an Infantry Regiment deployed in 2 Battalions, Each Comprising 6 companies or 600 men.' The drawing is signed 'Carolus', which must be Karl XI (1660-1697). The printer? is apparently a 'Stuart' - ikke Svenske!

I noticed that this encampment closely mirrors a field deployment. Even down to the piled arms having the pikes (piquer) in the centre and muskets (mousquetter) to the flanks. The space given for the 600 man battalion is not so different than a field deployment. 20 tents are shown for each company giving about 5 men per tent. They must have been small, presumably carried on carts behind a marching army. The officers get proportionately larger accommodations!

The frontage of the encampment is given as 150 ell (66cm) which is 100m. The two battalions are laid out with the same distance between them. The four companies of each battalion in their place.

One battalion is commanded by the Colonel, the other by the Lieutenant Colonel.

There are avenues between the tents - 2 per company - which allow the companies to stream out and form up without crossing each other or getting mixed up. Presumably they form up somewhere at the top of the diagram, having retrieved their arms.

The whole thing seems to reflect a desire to allow rapid deployment from the tents into a field formation. This is consistent with the uber efficiency drive of Karl XI.

RULES TEST

A card selection gave two '12 point' armies.
Pommern, with 6 foot battalions and 6 squadrons of horse.
Maurice von Coxe Ethelburga overall commander with Justinian von Mecklenburg(excessively cautious) and Caspar Hohenstauffen. None of them have any military speciality.

Strandstaten, with 8 foot battalions and 4 squadrons. Commander Ivan Stakoplovsky(irresponsibly aggressive in command) with Ekebhard Kollwitz (artillery trained and a 'gifted professional commander') and Petrus de Blenheim.

Checking for special tactics it turns out Strandstaten's cavalry are SHOCK trained and this gave Pommern 2 extra squadrons of horse as compensation.

The battlefield included a village in Pommern's side of the table and a wood in the mid-left.

Pommern put most of  their cavalry on their left to try a sweep with their mobile advantage.

Strandstaten put a strong force of foot in the centre to try and take th evillage from what should be a weaker Pommern defence. Their cavalry waiting behind the wood to move left or right as things developed.

 The first turn saw the Pommern cavalry go for the Strandstaten right wing. They took some hits but smashed the outermost battalion then flanked the second and it was wiped out too along with Petrus von Blenheim.

In the meantime the Strandstaten cavalry marched off round the left of the wood to take on the weaker Pommern right. The centre reacted by lining up two battalions to face off the Pommern horse.

 

The dashing Strandstaten shock-trained cavalry should have rode to glory but things did not go that way.
 Ekebard Kollwitz ( a 3 rated gifted professional commander) led his squadrons into their Pommern opponents with elan. Then he threw the minimum score for their Stress Test and they beat an ignominious retreat.

This led to a final position with a Mexican stand-off. The Strandstaten centre was too strong to be crushed by the Pommern forces but too exposed by being pincered from both sides that they could not successfully attack. ENd of Game.

Size of bases work well. Battalion guns ok. Shooting could be a bit more bloody. Commanders could be more tightly limited on what they do according to character.

BASING AGAIN

The basing problem has a solution which allows representation ratio to be constant.
Some rules (Beneath the Lilly Banner) seem to have a different representation for horse and foot.
This is an easy fix and also cheaper...

However, there is another solution.. depth.

I need to put 5 cavalry (125) in a frontage of (125/3 =) 41 mm .
40mm figures are 12mm wide ....no go.

I then thought of the Swedish arrowhead formation for horse.

This allows the arrangement of figures to overlap if they are arranged in depth. If each figure tucks in behind the previous one by a couple of milimetres then it is possible to fit 5 figures inside a front of 41 - or 45.

45 can be used if we allow that cavalry will not actually manage to stay boot to boot the whole way in and gives us a practical leeway for setting the figures on the base. We have already decided that the infantry will have 45mm so this will match nicely .. for the tightest cavalry formation.

But what about the depth ?  The arrowhead means the 5 cavalry figures are 45mm wide but 90mm deep !

Looks like a problem.. but is it ? If we consider the infantry have a depth of 60mm for their two ranks is 90mm so odd? 6 ranks of foot will be about 3 to 6 metres deep. 3 ranks of horse will be 6 to 9 metres deep. (depths taken from Napoleonic drill). In true scale this means 6mm and 9mm respectively !

If we look at the proportionate 'flank' of a foot or horse formation to true scale we can see that the 'flank' is almost non-existent.

This means that the notion of a 'flank attack' is a misnomer. A 'flank attack' actually means 'an attack which is delivered behind the enemy's front : where he projects his combat power.

The actual result of a flank attack is a progressive series of -surprise - attacks in the rear of the line's sub-units. The idea that one of the line's sub-units can a) turn and b) stem the attack while their comrades do something , is a non-starter. If you examine the relative widths of a unit advancing down a flank of a line you can see the impossibility of this.

  The real process is one of enveloping the outflanked line. If the outflanked line is unengaged it may turn to try and defend itself.
Otherwise it is slaughtered.




This means.... that the depth representation is not really crucial if we make the rules in relation to flank attacks realistic with reference to the reality of how relatively thin battle formations actually are.

I can now return to model the bases thus :
SHOCK cavalry 45mm front with 5 men in arrowhead.
LINE cavalry - must be broader than arrowhead to acknowledge tightness of that formation 3men 50mm wide with 2 in the second rank.

Foot shown in their 45mm frontage with 6 men representing a company, 2 pike armed for Swedes.
The different types of cavalry can now be distinguished easily and the units really look like they mean business!

CASUALTIES AND ATTRITION

In making rules there seem to be two ways, no three, to knock out figures.

Karoliner wounded in battle by Johann Philipp Lembke(1631 - 1711 )

BANG! YOU'RE DEAD : die roll dictates removal or not of figure

BANG! YOU'RE DEAD, MAYBE : some form of saving roll can reduce figure removal

BANG! I'll file that under Casualties,Incoming : recording losses without immediate figure removal

Having records hanging over the action is not something that appeals to me.
On the other hand, if the casualty process must deal with full figures things can get bloody..lots of figures...

Historically, units seem to have stood in the face of forests of blazing muskets without being annihilated.

The ragnarok of Poltava inflicted 40% casualties : but I dont want 2 survivors after an exchange of fire.

Dead Karoliner by Johann Philipp Lembke(1631 - 1711 )

My solution is to use a variation of BANG! YOU'RE DEAD , MAYBE

Shooting and fighting inflicts HITS.
HITS are assessed within the game turn to see if any figures are removed. Nothing carried over.
( Many years ago we rolled a D20 with WRG rules to avoid records. Score =/less than chart to kill)
Removed figures are an indicator of reduced manpower, organisation and will to fight.
Hits and figures can be directed at individual companies or troops within a unit.

Have to wait and see if I have created a self-inflicted podiatric injury with no saving roll.

ARTILLERY RANGE AND EFFECT

Artillery shot with a level barrel unless in siege situations or stationary targets. Shooting on a high trajectory became much more difficult to sight and accuracy dropped markedly.

Heavier field guns were positioned ahead of the battleline or between divisions or on heights to send fire over friendly troops. Mortars were in use but rarely mentioned outside siege actions.
These data are  from  HERE 

Range must be up to first graze, when ball hits ground.

Kanon	RANGE 1690 (m)	RANGE 1700 (m)	RANGE 1707 (m)	RANGE 1720    (m)
12-pundig	525 - 600	525 - 600	600 - 675	750
6-pundig	375	450 - 525	525	600
3-pundig	225 - 300		410 - 450	375
3-pundig regementskanon		225 - 300		225 - 300

Plunging shots could be sent TWICE as far. But reduced accuracy, rate of fire and bouncing.

Canister could be sent 500 metres with effect but after 200m results were markedly reduced. READ