Matchstick madness stage 2

The next step is to determine what the unit footprint for a Swedish brigade so I can decide what the size of the base the unit needs to be. The wargamer in me has already whispered in my ear that I also need to know what the footprint of opposing tactical units would be, so I can consider standard base sizes. There is a game in here someplace seems to be the driving thought! So with that in mind it was time to do some mock ups on paper.

A quick check of the period military manuals available to me online suggested that Pikemen formed for combat on a 1 yard frontage per man and shot on a 1.5 yard frontage plus some extra width for the gaps between corporalships (used to allow ranks to advance or retire if using introduction or extraduction shooting tactics).  I decided that would be an additional 1.5 yards per four files as an approximation.  Different armies had different numbers of files in those subdivisions of shot but I needed to standardise for ease of calculation and production of the printed unit paper skins.  This wasn't an issue with the Altar of Freedom units as they were purely representational, butd here I'm going for something closer to a true unit footprint.  Well anything else would be too easy wouldn't it!

Test layout for a Swedish three squadron brigade at 1mm to 1 yard.  Sorry about the poor focus.

That of course feeds straight back into the reading I had been doing on the various armies of the Thirty Years War.   Not that everything I would like to know is easily available information.  Who knew that there was so much missing detail in the period records and manuals!  It's almost like the people back then had more important things to do than provide answers to sate my curiosity like fighting the Thirty Years War!

Next is the first of the messy stages cutting and gluing the matchstick cores to the bases. Originally I had thought that big brigade size bases was the way to go but it created some huge footprints.  That would have required a major rewrite of the existing rule set and probably a completely different game altogether as some concepts would have been very different.

So I decided to go to the squadron level and group all a squadron's pike and shot into two or three  separate bases.  These wont be the standardised groups of 100 men per base so each group will get a combat rating of one per full hundred men represented and a half for any part left over which exceeds fifty men.  I think I can see an easy way to make that work within the existing rules format but multiplying the combat hits by that factor rather than the number of bases.  The key phrase there is “I think” with a strong emphasis on think!

So having got that debate out of the way it was out with the PVA glue.  Because these units are six ranks deep I'm using four matchsticks in depth on a 1cm deep base.  Frontage varies according to the number of files on each base.  For pike after adding the wrapper I have used three matchsticks cut shorter than the unit so as to leave some soldiers showing all the way around.  Stained brown with an ink and then with some silver dots added to represent the pike heads.

Prototype Pike block at tabletop range

And in close up

 I don't think these are too bad at all.  Musket blocks just have the match stick core and wrapper.  The only change I made from the prototype is to make the wrapper a single item.

Musket block for a Swedish squadron in a brigade

Lastly the full Brigade but without the small block of reserve shot, as I am unsure whether to model it or not at this stage.

Swedish Yellow(ish) Brigade deployed.

Overall I'm happy with the look of these and will be making some more for the swedes and the Imperialists.  Lutzen in 2mm anybody?

More matchstick madness

All this posting about early 17th Century armies and how to recreate them on the wargames table got me to thinking.  Dangerous I know!  As a result I find myself descending the rabbit hole that is 'can I make reasonable representations of those armies in 2mm'.  I will admit that the thought had crossed my mind before but I had all those nice Irregular Miniatures 2mm blocks for my BCW armies, so I didn't pursue it.  The issue was that after posing the blocks for pictures I wasn't fully happy with the look of things, especially with the pike blocks being made up of smaller blocks of pike with gaps around them.   After all these were huge blocks of pikemen not small clumps aggregated together.  So off down the rabbit hole I have proceeded.

Much messing around with MS Paint later I have some prototype three rank blocks of musket and pike.  I'm debating making the pike blocks deeper so six ranks or more.  I'm now looking at various sources to make pikes to stick into place on the pike blocks.  Nylon broom bristles are looking favourite so far, I just need to find some that are the right thickness.

So far so good (I think)

What attracts me to this system of creating armies is that I can get more detail onto the figures by printing a wrap around skin than I could paint onto a casting, oh that and the fact that it is cheap.  Cheap is good.  Plus the actual creation process both drawing the figures and creating the blocks is an exercise in mindfulness.

Watch this space for further developments.

Putting it all together

The 17th Century Armies stuff  that is.    It's one thing to look at how armies were made up and deployed and another thing altogether to create those units on the table top.  So without further ado lets see what some of the formations I have been blogging about actually look like when laid out using Irregular Miniature's 2mm blocks.  These are based in blocks of 100 men 6 ranks deep with the bases covering the correct footprint for pike in close order and shot in order.  The distances between men in these formations was pretty much the same across all armies in the period.

I apologise for the lack of accurate uniform colours and flags.  I used my ECW blocks to portray all of the formations so they are mostly NMA units.

Infantry

Lets start with the Spanish as they have a lot of variations and they are fun to try to recreate!  The formation commonly thought of as a Tercio had several variations as shown in my original post here Small but Perfectly Formed (elenderilsblog.blogspot.com).

Here in all it’s glory, the late 16th Century Spanish ‘Terció’

Big isn't it!  This version comes in at 3,200 men rather than the 2,922 in the original post.  By the early 17th Century it was probably no longer used at this size.  I certainly don't have any plans to use a formation this large.  Instead I would opt for one of the following two formations for the period to 1620-25(ish) again these are slightly larger than the versions in the original post.  I could reduce the number of pike bodies to four (representing 400 men) for smaller formations

A Spanish 'Extended Square' (of 1600 men) early 17th Century

The same number of men but deployed as a 'Square of Men' (El Gente)

These would work as a Spanish Formation until the very early years of the Thirty Year's War but quickly evolved into the next formation.  This is more recognisable as a pike and shot formation akin to those we see in BCW images.  It still has the arquebusier garrisons on the flanks of the pike though.

A mid 1620's or early 1630's Spanish Escuadron of 1,200 men

By the mid 1630's the formation is smaller so I would drop two hundred of the shot.  The formation is probably only 9 ranks deep by this stage but that isn't easy to depict with blocks in six ranks so I styed with 12 ranks.  By the early 1640's the formation drops to six ranks in depth and a headcount of between 900-500 men which is easier to depict, and a formation that (apart from the high number of arquebusiers) wouldn't look out of place in a BCW engagement of the same period.  

Spanish Escuadron of 900 men mid 1640's

Once I laid out the formations for the 1630s and '40's I could see the Dutch and German influences in the deployments or possibly the Spanish influence the other way around.

Keeping to the armies in the order that I posted about them brings us to the Dutch.  Deployed in 12 ranks each battalia is slightly oversized at 600 men due to the fixed numbers in each casting.  I could manage batallia of either 300 men or 600 men but the smaller version would not have the proper shot to pike ratio.  

A Dutch Brigade of four battalia with artillery support

It does look the business though, doesn't it and looks like it could face off against a Spanish Field Square.

Lastly, lets look at some Swedish formations

Three squadron Swedish Brigade (of 1,400 men) in the initial deployment layout.

The first thing that jumps out at me is how wide the initial deployment is.  I can see why some authors suggest that Swedish pike may have sometimes been deployed in shallower formations to allow then to adequately cover the unit's frontage.

The same brigade deployed 'shot forward'

Not too hard to change the opening deployment to one of 'shot forward'.  The leading pike body simply stays put , the left and right shot bodies move forward and the right and left pike bodies step outwards allowing the central shot bodies to wheel into place.  I'd think that the latter stage of wheeling would be the tricky part.  Simple if you don't have an enemy body closing fast of course and your troops know the drill to use.

This time pike are deployed to the front.

Once again relatively easy from the initial formation, the two flanking pike blocks step forwards and form on the lead pike body.  The outermost shot bodies then close up on the central body of shot.  I have shown the shot in twelve ranks matching the initial deployment of the centre body of shot but that may not have been how it was done.  Leaving the flanking shot in six ranks would expose some of them unless the pike move to the order (loosing the advantage of mass against a cavalry attack) or they were deployed in shallower bodies of three or four ranks as mentioned above.  This would leave the brigades flanks open too, as the frontage contracts an awful lot.

Switching between shot forward and pike forward would be more difficult and I'm wondering if the brigade did that in two steps.  Firstly redeploying to the initial formation before continuing to the new one.  It could be done by having the pike open order and letting the shot move through but that is speculation.

Seeing some of these formations laid out and knowing that they would have some artillery attached at brigade and squadron level makes me think that I might need to create a second smaller base size for ultra light artillery.

One interesting point.  All of the above images are on the same base cloth.  The shots display a range of shades of green between shots which just goes to show how lighting can impact on a camera phone's ability to capture colour!

As I haven't completed the posts on the  Swedish army or even started the German one I will leave it at this for now.  A further shorter post on depicting cavalry will follow in due course.