skismishers in napoleonic period

[duc de limbourg]

What is the best way to organise the skirmishers in a BP battle; concentrate all the skirmishers of a brigade as a seperate unit (more like General de Brigade does) or as the rules suggets?

[Alan Charlesworth]

You can use skirmishers in both the Mixed Order and Skirmish formations as defined in the rules. In one of the narrative sections there is reference to concentrating the skirmishers of an army into separate units as you suggest.

From a purely gaming point of view separate skirmisher units give more fire per unit frontage than Mixed Order does. This is due to Mixed Order having 1 die and Skirmish 3 dice when shooting. The differential is most pronounced between Mixed Order lines and Skirmish units.

I tend to be guided by the historical practice of the army I am using.

[duc de limbourg]

Alan,
is that last remark correct.
I assume that the converged skirmish unit is in front of several infantry units so they cannot fire.
instead of firing various mixed order units, now there is one unit (skirmish one) which fires.
So this would even out?

[Alan Charlesworth]

Hi duc

The increased firepower of Skirmish over Mixed Formation Line is due to the following:

Skirmish line is a minimum of double the frontage of a Mixed Formation Line. Therefore if you have four units in a Mixed Formation Line they will get one die each so four shots total.

They can be opposed by two units in Skirmish which will get three shots each, so six shots total.

Therefore the Skirmish units with half the men get 50% more shots, a 200% increase in overall effectiveness!

That is what I meant by "more fire per unit frontage".

[duc de limbourg]

Alan,
thanks for the explenation.

greetings
jan