Although for purposes of describing progress I have broken the project down into distinct parts in reality the parts overlapped. For example I couldn't write rules without knowing what figures I would be using, or how the units fought. Period drill manuals gave me the answer but raised new ones as well. I decided to create units based on the most common distances between ranks and files. I had to take into account that in the real world formations can change but little lead casting are immobile. Once I started to read some of the drill manuals I started to realise that so much of what I thought I knew I couldn't show to be accurate. For example Horse attacking Foot, once I knew the size and footprint of a Foot Battalia I started to ask if a pike hedgehog was a defensive formation used in practice. Can 400 musketeers really hide behind 200 Pikemen? If it isn't possible what were the real mechanics involved. Would Horse really charge home into well formed and well trained infantry?
On the plus side the formations I settled on do look like the those shown on the deployment maps created by De Gomme so something was going right.
No comments:
Post a Comment