Feedback on Draft ECW rules

[ChrisGinn]

This last weekend we put on a large ECW game at Britcom utilising the embryonic Black Powder ECW rules. Whilst we realise that these are very much work in progress, you may benefit from our experience.

Firstly, it was a large game. The Royalist army fielded approximately the following:
Right wing cavalry: approx. 5 units of Gallopers
Infantry: approx. 15 Battalia/6 guns
Left wing Cavalry: approx.4 units of gallopers
The Parliamentary army fielded approximately the following and were defending a village:
Right wing cavalry: approx. 3 units of Trotters
Infantry: approx. 8 Battalia/6 guns
Left wing Cavalry: approx.1 large unit of gallopers, 1 large unit of trotters, 2 units of trotters and a unit of dragoons.

Taking the rules as they appear on the typed sheet:
Artillery out of action rule.
Putting guns out of action on a die roll containing 2 ‘1’s does not work as a gun shooting at 6 ranks of pikemen is more likely to be put out of action than one shooting at 2 ranks of musketeers. We just rolled two dice every time the gun fired. Not that we used a mortar, but it will never be put out of action.

Moving artillery.
We allowed light guns to be manhandled. We cannot see that anything heavier could move at all. Firstly they were normally emplaced on a wooden platform. Secondly, the horse or ox teams were usually miles away by the time the action started and in any case the carriages were not suitable for towing. (We could be wrong on this, but would be interested to hear of any tactical movement of other than light artillery in the ECW/Thirty year’s war period.)
We did allow light guns to make a manhandled move and then fire, although this may have been a bit generous.

6” initiative Order distance
We found this practically too restrictive. We used it, but found that apart from foot; practically no initiative moves were made. It left cavalry very vulnerable to infantry musketeers who could poor fire in with a relatively good chance of not receiving any retribution.

Hedgehog
How precisely does this work. We assumed it was as for forming square, i.e. on a double 1 or double 6 you fail. We regarded the odds as too low, so we used a command throw which allowed for the unit quality.
However, we can see that this mechanism could be misused as it can be forced, by a cavalry commander with little intention of carrying it out. It was only used once in our game. The cavalry needed three moves to make it. As it happened they succeeded, but the infantry had ‘hedgehogged’ anyway.
What does a hedgehog count as target wise? Do you count as shooting at musketeers or pikemen? Can the musketeers in the hedgehog fire? (presumably not.) Can the hedgehog move? After being charged and formed, can the cavalry just carry on firing at it with pistols in subsequent moves?

Defending an obstacle:
We found that +2 for a stonewall was overpowering.

Disorder.
What does ‘units remain disordered from turn to turn’ mean? We just used the normal disorder rules, i.e. units shot into disorder recover at the end of your move.

Troop types.
We actually dropped a massive ‘cod’ here because we did not notice that musketeers were on a +5 morale till right at the end of the game. We used +4. Put it down to normally fighting Napoleonic’s. Whilst we can see where you are coming from here, we found that musketeers normally shot at musketeers, except when the pikes were directly in front of them. If you give the musketeers a lower save, towards the end of the game you are going to have a lot of Pike heavy units running around, and/or, everybody is going to concentrate on shooting the musketeers in order to get rid of the pikes. This does not seem reasonable, or historically accurate. See later comments on mixed battalia.

Fire and Flee
Can Dragoons who ‘fire and flee’, fire in their own move? If so, they fire twice as fast as everything else.

Mixed Battalia
We had a number of problems with these:
Firstly, as already mentioned, all the casualties tended to accumulate on the Musketeers, and that’s without the +5 save.

Secondly, in multiple combats, because of the different sizes of Royalist and Parliamentary regiments, you ended up with overlaps and Pike fighting muskets. This led to some pretty funny combat results and lively discussions as to who was fighting who. Quite frankly, it does not seem to work.

Thirdly, when you send in a pike block on its own, the supporting musketeers on either side of the defending pike block do not get to do closing fire. The situation when the charging pike block is wider than the defending pike block is another complication. Do the musketeers fight as well and can they then do closing fire.

Fourthly, should not the defending pikes be allowed to counter-charge in pike vs. pike combats?

When we originally started using the rules for this period, we utilised the pikes and muskets as a combined unit. Command musketeers in front were used like skirmishers in Napoleonic’s. Otherwise the shot were deployed on either flank or mixed on alternative bases. We think this is a much better idea. It removes all the arguments as to who is fighting who, and whether the casualties are pike or shot and ensures the units stay together, not wander around the battlefield in different directions. You also tend to stick to battle lines. In combat or shooting, you just throw the appropriate number of dice for the number of figures and type present. All you need to adjust is the morale levels of the bigger units. They will then become shaken as a whole. I am not convinced by the present system where parts of a regiment become shaken.

I understand the point made previously, that in some periods you might require independent units of pike and musket, but I do not see why either method cannot be catered for in the rules as appropriate to the period or tactics of the troops in question. Otherwise, I think you are in danger of creating all sorts of problems in order to cover a wider period. Precisely, the mistake that the George Gush Renaissance rules made.

Pursuits
On both right flanks, the opposing cavalry were completely swept away. The parliamentary cavalry on the right succeed in doing this very early on, so we actually recycled the defeated royalist cavalry, as the game was meant to last two days. However, not a single unit of horse pursued off table. Given our understanding of most engagements in this period this seems to be a major omission in the simulation.

Cavalry Combat resolution.
Nearly every cavalry combat was decided by the placement of supports. I actually do not have too much of a problem with this, but it does mean that that as the combat starts to turn one way on a wing, it is almost impossible to reverse the trend. The problem is that with similar types of cavalry, it is difficult to win a combat with more than an advantage of 2 casualties. However, some of our players were not happy. Any thoughts on the subject? Are supports too great an influence, and is this desirable in a ‘fun’ game?

[Invisible officer]

I like to draw your attention to the newer study of Stephen Bull: The Furie of Ordnance, Artillery in the English civil wars.
He states the writings of Captain Stone RA in time of the Peninsular war about the ECW guns he checked. There are little differences in quality. The carriages of a Napoleonic 12pdr was only slightly more mobile than an ECW one.
They needed no plattforms for field battle use. The fire rate was identical.

The main difference was the tactic, artillery is like muskets. The single gun does little, but a group is devastating. And the ECW commanders did rarely form strong Napoleonic field batteries.

With civil drivers movement under battle conditions was a problem. In 1642 and 1800.
A 3pdr can be manhandled without problems. On dry earth it moves faster than any Infantry horde that has to be controled. Try to get 80+ men with pikes to move in battle order, you will fast volunteer for the artillery. Even a 6pdr was no problem, battalion guns of this size moved in SYW and Napolonic time with the Infantry lines. A 12pdr can be manhandled for distances of some hundred meters without exhausting the men, get some firelocks to help, just keep the smoking pipe away from the powder.

Nobody expected 18pdrs or larger to move in battle, they are position guns.

[Cubster]

I almost get the impression when reading about ECW guns outside of sieges, that they were included more to prove that the commander could afford them and raise the morale of his side, rather than for their physical effect.

[Invisible officer]

At Marston Moor the tactic was influenced a lot by the artillery.
Sir Thomas Stockdale wrote about the "execution" he saw done by the guns, "..... forced the enemye to leave the ground and remove to a greater distance."

Among the named artillery victims at Marston moor are Captain Roger Houghton and Thomas Danby, gentlemen volunteer, "cutt off by the midst of his body".

Peter Young must be blamed a lot for the picture we got from ECW field artillery. His wrong statement of 1 round in 3 minutes is typical. Like many others he counted the number of rounds fired in a certain time and divided numbers and forgot that the tactical situation has to be regarded. Nobody would claim that a PAK 40 can fire once every 3 minutes if we read that it fired 5 rounds in a 15 minutes fight. Modern experiments proved that ECW guns could be fired as fast as Napoleonic ones using powder cartridges (in use since 16th century) , not the wooden shovels older authors wrongly assumed.

[ChrisGinn]

I do not have any problems with the casulties and effects, but could artillery be manoevered?

Modern Black Powder is considerablly higher quality than anything that could be made in the 17th century and I would think fouling would have been considerably worse, so I am not certain how valid modern experiments would be on that basis. The limiting effect of firing rate for artillery, is not the gunners ability to reload bur the heating effect on the barrel. My understanding is that 17th century guns used greater chargers than was subsequently found to be necesary by 18th centuary experiments. Presumably this would agrivate the heating problem,. However, I think we would need a Master Guner to put us right on that score. Smoke wopuld be an additional problem.

I cannot say that I have seen any descripition of manoever of artillery on the battlefield except for Gustav Adolphus's leather guns. But I would be the first to admit that I am not terribly well read on the ECW.

I am sure that the artillery could force troops to give ground, or to attack, that is not the argument.

[Invisible officer]

The Black Powder mix was not realy different. In fact not the amount of powder but the oygen between the grain decides the burning and the heat, so a better grained more modern powder produces more heat, not less. Excess powder burns outside the barrel (more slow burning powder gives not more power, the moment the ball is out......) , you see this on the BP shooting range. (Same effect on modern guns with self loaded Rambo cartridges, spectacular flashes but not more power) Fouling was washed out, there was little difference between that of an ECW or a Napoleonic gun in this regard.

That artillery was movable is clear from my earlier statement about modern experiments. Young and others saw the heavy fantasy reconstruction siege carriages and believed that the field guns could not be moved. An ECW 6 - 12pdr is not much heavier than later systems. A Prussian 6pdr SYW Battalion gun is very much the same than the ECW gun of same calibre. And it moved with the Infantry in the fast Prussian Avancier pace. Without horses!

Give a modern Congreve or Gribauval gun 15 % more power and 15 % less weight and you still have a superb and movable 6 - 12 pdr arm for ECW, comparable to some older Napoleonic wars systems.

[Fury]

I cannot say that I have seen any descripition of manoever of artillery on the battlefield except for Gustav Adolphus's leather guns. But I would be the first to admit that I am not terribly well read on the ECW.

I'm not familiar with artillery in the ECW. Gustavus Adolphus used leather cannon in Poland, but they had been phased out by the time the Sweden entered the TYW. Instead, they used bronze 3-pound regimental cannon which were quite mobile. According to Wikipedia, such a cannon could be towed by one horse or three men.

[TheGreatMarquis]

What did the late Peter Young know? After all, he was only a professional soldier, war hero and expert on the English Civil War. What is knowledge and experience compared to a good book?

[Invisible officer]

Young was an officer , a man who knew how to lead men in a WWII battle.
If this is enough to be an expert on ECW Artillery we could argue that ECW artillery expert Stephen Bull must be a superb Commando leader.

Young's research in the sources was much more important for the historic science than anything he did in the forces.
He wrote his ECW books around 40 years ago. Research did not stop in the 70's. Young was an intelligent man, he would be the first to admit that. Why did he inspire the Sealed knot? He knew that experiment is an important method for historical research. And reading any newly found source.

40 years ago the picture of the Roman army was very different from today. Why should that not be the case with ECW? To claim that English Generals of the 17th century strained the train with field guns of ca. 5 - 12 pds without much battlefield effect ( and little or none against town walls) means that we think them to be idiots. Spending a lot of rare money in arms without use.
Lets get 10 men and try to move a 12pdr gun on a field. Surprise, it works.

[zedeyejoe]

I think the real question is how BP is going to handle the mixed pike/shotte units. That is rule change priority.

Then cavalry, especially the difference between out-of-control cavalry and disciplined cavalry.

Artillery, should not be terribly effective - did it blow up? - but perhaps allow for a lucky shot.