Through the square window , some more thoughts!

The ruleset's author, Gordon Crawford, has been in touch via  Facebook and kindly shared his thoughts on why the game does things the way it does and what he would change if he were to make changes.  We also exchanged opinions on how to make the rules more closely mirror the combat experience of the British Civil Wars.  Rather than paraphrase here is Gordon's comment from my FB post on the '17th century wargaming' board.

"I agree about the out of command/army morale test order. It is quite difficult to fail the ACT unless your army has already largely voted with its feet. I wonder if I originally intended to have minuses in it for OoC units.

On the morale, use of D8s would mitigate any harshness. My knowledge of ECW battles is very superficial and I would like to hear any tweaks you think improve the rules for ECW

Of course the rules were written for 30YW battles

Most 30YW battles were over very quickly and the significant disparity between victors and losers loses is down to most casualties occurring during the flight of which only a minority seem to have been caused by the victors.

There are also numerous examples of units taking off while in in real peril and therefore I think the fragility of units under the morale system is about right for 30YW.

The dominant feature of battles as opposed to smaller actions is CHAOS. The examples of generals influencing events once the battle begins are few and much depends on the initiative of individuals at btn and sqn level. There is too the natural reluctance of troops to close and this is built into the morale system.

It also emphasises the superiority and importance of the "well trained".

Sorry to have gone on so long but lastly two things I would definitely change (there are plenty of other things I would do differently but I don't believe on 2nd editions when things are working ok).

1. In the morale results under 2. If a unit when charged gets a retire result it does not retire but instead halts. This anomaly has suddenly begun to crop up in our recent games.

2. Light guns unlimbered should have 2 actions but may only perform any action once.

Regards. Looking forward to your next blog"

I went on to suggest that for British Civil War actions an additional cavalry type mid way between Cuirassiers and the existing Arkebusier type would be a possibility. My thinking was that they would shoot like the current cavalry type, melee with 3D6 per base but not have the charge bonus or first charge bonus of the charging cavalry type. It is quite spooky how closely his thinking on pike and shot warfare aligns with my own as independently Gordon suggested 3D6 melee combat per base as an option.

This is the type of cavalry I have in mind as a 'later arkebusier'

He then raised the issue of Scots Lancers!  As I understand it these were not formed into separate squadrons but each formation had a troop or two armed with lances.  That leads me to think that they might be best modelled by giving Scottish horse a lower combat rating but a charge or alternatively first charge bonus against cavalry to account for the lance at first contact.  The alternative is to simply ignore them and assume they are included in the unit but only in small numbers, which is what I did in the play tests.

Scottish lancer (I think this is from a Blanford publication)

As for morale I have an idea to simply reduce the chance of a routing unit dissipating on a failed rally from rout test.  Instead of it dissipating on a 1,2 or 3 I'd reduce it to on a 1 or 2 and have a roll of 3 or 4 be continue in rout with (as before) 5 or 6 is a rally.  This coupled with only the roll of a second 6 allowing poor troops to rally would still leave those poor units at a significant disadvantage as they automatically dissipate at the end of a second rout move.

As for pursuit my issue is that rout and pursuit moves appear to occur both following melee and again after any failed rally from rout tests at the start of the following turn.  This may be intentional but I'm hoping Gordon can enlighten me further.