Infantry frontages for FPPS

A question was raised about whether the four infantry brigades of Essex's army at Edgehill would be better depicted in Fast Play Pike and Shot (FPPS) as double width (or two separate bases).  To consider this we need to do some simple maths and to make some assumptions.  The assumptions are that we only want to depict units deployed in fighting formations.  This means that Essex's men are in chequer board deployment with each brigade forming in two lines of battalia.  It also assumes a frontage of 1 yard per pikeman and 1.5 yards per musketeer. 

Actually, it's not quite that simple though as there are additional spaces in the ranks of musketeers to allow ranks to advance or retire during firing drills.  Musketeers were drawn up as several small 'divisions' of between four and six files (also termed a 'corporalship' as each had it's own corporal to keep things in order).  Rather than the entire rank filing back through the body it was common for the front rank of each of the sub-divisions to use the spaces left between corporalships for advancing or retiring between shots where firing by ranks.  There were also spaces between the two wings of shot and the central block of pikemen.  So those spaces need to be taken into account.

Essex's infantry brigades at Edgehill were all between 2,650 and 2,900 men strong. With average sizes for the constituent battalia running around 640 - 650 men formed up in eight ranks.   To make things easier lets consider a theoretical battalia of 648 men (excluding officers and drummers stood outside the ranks) which gives 81 files (648 divided by 8).  With a ratio of 2 musketeers to each pikeman that gives us three blocks each of 27 files, two of shot and one of pike.  Each block totals 216 rank and file.   Four such battalia would give us a brigade of 2,592 soldiers plus officers etc.  

Our theoretical Battalia

Starting with the pike block in the centre the 27 files need one yard of frontage per pike file so that block's frontage is 27 yards, easy so far.  The shot are a bit more tricky as there are gaps left in the frontage to allow easier exchange of ranks from front to back of the body (or visa versa) when firing by ranks.  In Dutch formations (and probably in all European tactical systems) musketeers were divided into sub divisions of between four and six files, each of which was under the watchful eye of a corporal.  These had different names in different armies but here I'm going to call them a corporalship.

It's tricky to divide 27 files to make the corporalships come out even as it would need a divisor of three or nine.  so we will have to fudge things a bit.  Dividing by 6 would work but only if there were four corporal ships on one wing and 5 on the other, but that helpfully gives us a spare corporalship of 48 men close enough to the number of shot sent as to support a single cavalry squadron.  This brings up a side question do battalia strengths represent a unit before or after shot are detached to support the cavalry wings.  I'm leaning towards the before option if numbers are based upon pay returns, however we will come back to this later.

So lets assume our theoretical battalia has lost a corporal ship of shot to support the cavalry.  It now has four corporalships of shot on each wing and a total head count of 384 musketeers and 216 pikemen plus officers etc.  Each wing of shot has 24 files in four subdivisions.  As a musketeer deployed in fighting formation requires 1.5 yards of frontage that gives us 36 yards for the men plus the space allowed for the gaps between corporalships at ,say, 2 yards each or an additional 16 yards.  I make the entire frontage to be two times 36 yards (shot), plus 27 yards (pike) plus 16 yards for the spacings or a total of 115 yards. 

Horribly out of scale battalia laid out to show the gaps in the formation

The small blocks are the corporalships of shot the larger one is the massed block of pikemen. The gaps are between the sub-divisions of shot and also the shot wings and the pike centre.

Last but not least on the formation aspect, the brigade frontage.  Four battalia as described above gives a frontage of 460 yards without allowing any gaps in the frontage between the battalia, which would make it difficult to exchange or merge the lines if pressed.  I'd estimate that a frontage of around 500 yards is the minimum to deploy one of Essex's brigades.

Four battalia brigade in chequerboard deployment

The only fly in the ointment when it comes to the above calculations is that we really know very little about the way a regiment was broken down prior to deploying on the battlefield so although the above looks nice and precise in reality it is anything but.  Who was included in pay returns, what percentage of dead and missing soldiers were still being claimed, how big were corporalships in a specific regiment at a specific battle, how big were the gaps between them (if they were present at all) etc, etc, etc.  As a wargamer I crave precision so I can have nice neat units of toy soldiers.  As an amateur historian I have to accept I don't actually have the data to allow that precision and that really I'm just dressing up an estimate with spurious calculations and that while some of the neat solutions I spot may be accurate they could also just be my preconceptions colouring the few facts we do have.

All that said I'm coming around to the idea that Essex's brigades need to be broken down into smaller formations to fit the 100 - 200 yard grid concept in FPPS.  Which would match the way cavalry has already been dealt with.  I'd have to calculate a frontage for each 'brigade' for each battle to determine what the break down should be but that's not that big of an ask.   What do you think?

Upcoming posts

 Just a quick update so no one wonders about me completing previous strands.  The next few posts will return to the 17th Century armies thread.  Swedish cavalry first then a look at the development of the Imperial and Catholic League formations.  Then it will be on to British Civil War armies to finish that theme.

Next weekend is the Joy of Six show at Sheffield which I'm hoping to attend so there may well be a post covering that.  After which who knows!

Second Edgehill Playtest

I know that two games played in under a week is unusual for me but I really wanted to get a handle on how the fast play P&S shots play out. So on Sunday I laid out the troops and went at it again. This time I took the historical refight brakes off and played the rules as written. That meant using the one unit at a time deployment with sides alternating placement and each new unit (after the first) having to be placed next to one that had already been placed. That led to a race for the flanks effect with both sides laying down their infantry brigades first and then extending the lines to try to avoid having an overlapped flank. Now that might just be my preferences coming out and a real life opponent might have made different choices but it showed another aspect of the game that didn't crop up using a deployment based on history. Unlike the last game I used markers to show those units with attached light artillery or commanded shot support.

1.  The initial deployment you can see the effect of the race to the flanks effect

Move one - jockeying for advantage

The Royalists opened proceedings by making a measured advance down the slope.  Byron's Horse starts to move to the right to extend the Royalist line further as they risk being flanked.   Their artillery battery popped away as they did so but didn't hit anything.  In fact neither sides artillery battery was of any use all game!  Also unlike last game Parliament was more aggressive and came forward from their high ground (high ground who am I kidding, it is a slight rise and no more).  Their three infantry brigades took on a shooting stance, advanced and waited.  On the flanks the dragoons occupied the enclosures on the right flank and the commanded shot did the same on the left.

2. Parliament grabs the enclosures while the Royalists move forwards

Move two - close to contact

At the end of turn one Parliament has brought some of it's troops into range for a cavalry charge to make contact.  On the Royalist right Rupert's Maurice's and Prince of Wales' horse take advantage and charge home, well not quite home Rupert's and Maurice's are fighting to breech the hedges around the enclosures held by Holles' and Ballard's detached shot.  Prince of Wales' though get a clear run at the opposing horse (Sandy's) but as all three moves are of two squares they loose the support of their commanded shot.  

In the centre most their infantry holds it's ground to avoid moving into musket range of the larger Parliamentarian brigades, the exception being Wentworth's Brigade who are shielded by the rise of ground to their front and are not facing infantry. on the left Grandison's horse charge The Lord General's Horse and inflict hits but come off worse from the reply (remember both sides both attack and defend in a close combat so two attack rounds occur in each turn, which can get messy).

Parliament's moves allows their Infantry to advance in shooting mode and they inflict hits on Byron's and Fielding's brigades.  On their right Holles' and Ballard's come to hand strokes with Rupert's and Maurices Horse rather than be caught in shooting stance next turn.  Although they inflict hits the return  drops both units to wavering.  Sandy's are engaging Prince of Wales' horse frontally and can't avoid a flank attack from Waller's.  They are broken and flee with Waller's loosing two steps in the pursuit roll.  Confidence is ebbing away rapidly where combat has occurred!

3.  The Royalist right flank where both sides are looking vulnerable

In photo 3 you can see that Waller's are wide open to a flank attack from Byron's while the commanded shot in the enclosures and Maurice's are all breaking (one more hit will 'kill' them).  Close combat is brutal in these rules. 

4.  The stand off in the centre two Royalist Foot brigades are wavering

Move Three - End game

Things are about to start moving quickly!

The Royalist infantry adopts close combat mode and surges forward to contact with Parliament's centre.  Essex's Infantry are at a disadvantage having lost the advantage of the ground and being caught in shooting stance.  Byron's horse hit Waller's in the flank.  Waller's break and Byron's manage to avoid pursuit weakening them too badly.  the fight in the centre is a blood bath with Grandison's horse destroyed by The Lord General's Horse's return attack.  In Parliament's turn Ballard's and Meldrum's destroy Fielding's and Byron's Brigade but are destroyed in turn.  On their right Usher's dragoon's are destroyed by Wardlow's but Urry's Horse come off worse in close combat and are also destroyed.  In a deperate (literal) last throw of the dice Holle's shot close assault Maurice's horse and despite being roughly handled manage to break the cavalry and destroy them.  This tips the Royalist over their break point at the end of the turn and Parliament wins 6 - 4 although they are in no condition to follow up on their victory.

5.  The end of the affair.  Just look at all those orange and red markers!

Conclusions

My first thought is "Wow! That was fast".  Only three turns, but they were busy turns with action all along the battlelines.  If you wanted to make games last longer you could add an extra confidence rank between Steady and Wavering perhaps called Shaken.

One thing this play through highlighted was the effect of holding defensible ground.  The minus one to all attacking dice rolls for troops shooting into or fighting close combat into rough ground halves the to hit percentage from 33% (roll a 5 or a 6) to 16.6% (rolls of 6 only).  Being caught in the wrong stance has the same impact and if both apply it's impossible to hit the enemy. Flank or rear attacks are equally deadly as a unit only rolls half it's normal defence dice!

Are the rules finished?

Is there scope for further tinkering?  Of course there is, the question though is would it be worth it?  I intended to create a simple beer and pretzels style game, adding more chrome would defeat that object even though it's my natural inclination.

However, feel free to play with the rules and add more bells and whistles if you want.  Here are a couple of things I considered.  Allow deployment to be any of the eight squares surrounding a previously deployed unit, so that's adding corner to corner contact as a choice.  This allows refused flanks to be easily created.  Another option is to remove the free 90 degree turn and replace it with a diagonal move for 1 movement point as a way to manoeuvre as an aid to lining up with enemy units.  If I did that I would also restrict cavalry's charge bonus to cases where the 2 square move is in a straight line directly ahead from the starting square.  An evil little voice at the back of my head keeps murmuring 'This would work better on a hex grid' and I'm not sure it's wrong.  Align the hexes with two frontal sides, two rear sides and a single flank side to right and left and keep most of the rest of the rules the same? 

Last but not least, the key question.  Do I like these rules?  If I'm honest they are not entirely my cup of tea as they don't have all the nuances of the period.  However, I wrote them for a specific kind of game and gamer and I think they hit that target.  I can get a big battle onto a small table and finish it in an evening without rushing things, both players are busy at all times and there are decisions to be made and risks to be run though out.  So while I wouldn't say they are the best rules ever, I wouldn't say they are the worst and I don't hate them.  Writing them gave me some interesting insights into why some rules for this period fudge things and don't feel right to me.  It's because sometimes it isn't worth the additional over head that trying for accuracy over game play creates and sometimes we don't have all the data on 17th century combat to do it anyway.

Edgehill playtest of fast play pike and shot

So after much faffing about I finally got the troops and rules onto the table top.  The battlefield was an abstracted version of Edgehill and the troops were as the army list I posted a few days ago, plus the additional rules for commanded shot with the cavalry and light guns supporting the infantry brigades.  I'm ashamed to say that I had to keep checking the rules, you know the ones I only wrote a couple of weeks ago, to ensure I didn't miss anything.  The troops are not based as they will eventually be I used my existing 2mm pike & shot stuff just to avoid pushing empty cardboard outlines of the bases around!  When I am happy with everything I will create some less generic brigade and squadron bases for use with the rules.  The attached ultra-light artillery and commanded shot were not modelled.  I assumed every unit had these in place.  As a game plan I initially followed the broad outline of the actual tactics applied in October 1642 as this gives the best test against reality. 

 

1. The battlefield before deploying the troops

So how did it go I hear you ask, you did ask didn't you?  Well allowing for breaks to walk the dog and eat, the entire battle played out in about 90 minutes or so, covering five full turns.  So that's 'fast play'; ticked off the objectives.   There a couple of minor things to tweak and one slightly bigger issue to consider but more about those as the after action report unfolds.

The table and the initial deployment

The battlefield on the tabletop is an approximation of the Edgehill battlefield but restricted by the need to have terrain fit on a square grid.  I didn't model the lower slopes of Edgehill instead treating the first three rows of the grid on the Royalist side as a slope and rough terrain.  I also didn't use the deployment system in the rules instead I tried to replicate the actual deployments as far as possible.  That meant that not every unit was in grid to grid contact with another once deployed.  This left gaps in the Parliamentarian infantry line which probably were not present in reality which flags up an issue with basing or perhaps unit sizes per base.  I'm going to have to think about that point and decide if I can live with the mismatch or if I need to change things.

2. Opening deployments Royalists on the right

Turn one - The Royalists advance

The Royalist army all adopted marching stance to close on the rebels as quickly as possible.  The exceptions being the Gentlemen Pensioners who I decided should not move except to protect the person of their king.  This provided some separation between the two lines of the army as the second line had to move through a grid line of rough terrain while the front line moved straight into clear ground.  I immediately decided that infantry march moves were too long and should be reduced to two movement points from three.  This allowed the cavalry to get slightly ahead of the centre infantry command.  Using the full march movement bonus for the horse turned out to be a mistake as it brought them into charge reach of the Parliament horse wings and reduced their combat effectiveness.

3. The Royalists push forward, Parliament occupy defensible ground

Unlike the actual battle, the Parliamentarian horse acted aggressively in response to this as it created a chance to strike at a significant advantage.  Firstly they threw Wardlow's and Browne's dragoons forward into the enclosures on the right flank and Holles' detached shot into the enclosures on the left flank.  Secondly where the chance arose their horse used the charge bonus to attack.  The combat mechanisms for close combat worked well including the plus one bonus to attack dice where a cavalry unit moves two squares into contact.  The ability to fight back for the defenders also worked well and the use of defence dice to negate hits would keep both players busy even though this is an 'I go - You go' style game.  Very quickly unit confidence levels started to be reduced.

Turn two - The Royalist Infantry continues forward.

The leading three Royalist infantry brigades switch to shooting stance while their second line stay in March stance to close up.  Their cavalry caught in march stance shift to close combat and take the fight to the enemy.  Their dragoons on the left dismount and shift to shooting stance and engage their opposite numbers who are ensconced in the enclosures and hedges ahead of them.  Over on their right their dragoons dismount ready to engage the enemy.  The fast moving Royalist horse and foot have lost their commanded shot and artillery support because of that rapid advance and this would tell over the next few turns.

Essex keeps his infantry in place and exchanges fire with the leading Royalist infantry brigades.  The fire fight is ineffective on both sides, although hits are scored the defensive dice are successful at negating them.  The parliamentarian cavalry reserve moves forward to fill one of the gaps between infantry brigades.  On the left the commanded shot get into position and start to shoot at the approaching cavalry, behind them the cavalry close up to be ready if the shot come off second best in the approaching combat.

Turn three - Fighting becomes general

Having found the use of musketry to be slow going in reducing the enemy's confidence the Royalist's opt to go to close combat and move up to contact.  Very quickly both sides start to show the impact of close combat, due to the double combat effect of both sides fighting in close combats.  some hits are defended against (think of it as men being pushed into gaps in the front ranks and officers leading by example) but not all.  The effect of Parliament holding the rough ground of the enclosures, boggy ground and slight hills does show though and the Royalists are taking more losses than Essex's men.  That said the first unit losses occur at this point with Holles' detached shot breaking and fleeing the field.  The pursuit test has some of Maurice's Horse pursuing but not all.  Parliament launches Their cavalry reserve against Fielding's Brigade and the armoured cuirassiers hit them hard causing two step losses in confidence.  Further to the right the Lord General's Horse attempt to move around the flank of the Royalist line.

Turn four - Losses start to mount

The Royalists are determined to take the enclosures on their right and push forwards into the enclosure vacated by Holles' shot.  They continue the close combats along the rest of the line but fail to make a breakthrough.  Digby's Horse seeing The Lord General's Horse flanking attempt, use march mode to block the route around their flank but stay far enough back to prevent Balfour being able to catch them on the march.  In the centre Fielding's Brigade breaks and runs in the face of a Stapleton's cuirassier attacking their front and a flanking attack from Balfour's cavalry.  The dragoon v dragoon action around the enclosures is a stalemate both sides causing damage and then also negating the impact on confidence (think of this as officer's leading by example and sergeant's dressing lines and filling gaps in the front ranks from the rear ranks).

Essex continues to hold his defensive line but Charles Essex's Brigade is suffering confidence hits and Meldrum's are being hit hard too.  At this point it is looking like the King will be victorious as Parliament has lost three units to the Royalist's one.

Turn five - exhaustion sets in

After a concerted effort to break Essex's line the Royalist centre collapses with the remaining two of the lead infantry brigades breaking and running.   Partly this is due to Stapleton's cuirassiers counter attack but most of the heavy fighting fell on the infantry who despite taking confidence hits managed to both negate hits and then rally off a confidence step loss at a crucial point while the Royalists never managed a successful rally all game.  On the Royalist left the dragoon fight continued as a stalemate but Digby's Horse break their opponent and manage to avoid a full scale pursuit thinning their ranks too badly.  Over on the other flank Parliament is doing badly as there are now no cavalry facing Byron's or the King's Life Guard who looked posed to roll up the Parliamentarian lines.  However, it is too little and too late as at the end of the turn both sides have reached their break point and the game ends as a draw.

4. The end positions

Conclusions

The biggest issue is whether I need to reconsider infantry unit sizes to match them to the ground scale size of the grid.  Currently the large Parliamentarian infantry brigades should extend beyond a single square. Cavalry brigades had the opposite problem and I have already changed the size of the formation represented by each base from a brigade to a smaller squadron sized unit. That said the under sized unit frontage for Essex's infantry didn't seem to hamper them so I need to calculate some unit frontages before I make a decision on this.

I found the pursuit rule wasn't as effective as I expected in taking cavalry out of the action.  As a result I'm going to remove the 'defence' roll for those troops with a reputation for bogging off in pursuit seeking glory and or loot (Prince Rupert's Horse I'm looking at you here)!  It will stay as is for more disciplined troops.  I'm also going to allow all units a single free 90 degree turn each move to allow more flexibility as they manoeuvre into contact.

I need some removable markers to show cavalry units with shot support and foot with ultra-light artillery support, the action stance they are currently using and whether units have defensive fire available.  This is mostly because when playing solo I loose track of those things!

Overall though I'm happy with the rules and with the exception of the points noted above I'm calling them done.

Matchstick madness - back in the saddle?

Well I say matchstick but actually this time its plastic canvas aka Granny Grating to my American readers.  Never one to give up easily I spotted a post on You Tube about making 6mm figures using this stuff which wasn't entirely convincing but it gave me pause.  It's sold as a framework for cross-stitching at most hobby suppliers and comes in a few different grid sizes.  I think the mesh number is how many 'holes' per inch so a 14 grid has 14 holes per inch.  I had two sheets in the hobby pile used on my 28mm wild west building project a 7 mesh and a 14 mesh, so I dug them out and had a bit of a play.

The 7 mesh was much to big for what I had in mind but the 14 mesh is about perfect.  Following the idea on the 6mm post I had seen I went smaller and created an initial test strip of three horses in a file.  These are almost identical in size the my favoured irregular Miniatures' castings.  So much so that I wondered if they had been used as a dolly for the sculpting of their 2mm cavalry.

This is the stuff I'm using

The process is slow and unbelievably fiddly.  I sharp scalpel blade is essential along with a good pair of scissors for the longer cuts.  The stages of the process are shown in the image below.

The stages are in sequence top to bottom and left to right

I had a small offcut (top of the image) which I used in the trial run.  For the second run I cut a longer strip.  The important point is that you keep a solid line at the base of the strip, and then cut above the top of the next full grid so that stubs are left sticking up which will be the 'riders'.  Next cut the long strip into shorter sections in my case of eight stubs and keeping part of the horizontal line of plastic sticking out front and back (this will be the horses head and rump.  Now comes the tricky bit, trimming this strip into shapes that vaguely resemble horses and riders seen from the side.  Starting at the end of the strip (on the right in the image) trim out every third vertical and the stub over the rear vertical on each 'horse'.  This leaves you with a single grid square with three stubs one at either end of the top horizontal and one above the front 'leg'.  cut the back corner of each horses body at 45 degrees to create a tail.  Okay so the rider is too far forward sat over the front leg, but it looks like a line of horses.

Not a great image but you can see the size comparison

The bad news is that the individual strips are too thin and I had to glue two together to get a decent cross section view.  The good news is that in groups they look OK.  The worst news is that I would need to make a Metric Sh!t Ton of the little blighters.  I may try to get a slightly larger grid say 10 squares to the inch which may not require two strips to be glued side by side.  So it's off to the local hobby emporium to see what may be obtained before I try full scale production.  Or it may still be easier to buy from Irregular, but if I don't try I won't know!

2mm scratch building eh?  You don't have to bonkers to try this, but you may well be when you finish!