Do you think Special Rules are needed for ECW infantry?

[Ken Portner]

My understanding is that during the ECW at least infantry, armed with pike or musket, drilled together and functioned as a unit rather than as separate units.

The rules treat pike armed infantry and shot armed infantry as separate units and that there is nothing preventing a unit of shot from operating independently and far from a unit of pike.

I do understand that the rules cover far more than the ECW, and that perhaps separate units make sense in those other periods, but do they make sense in the ECW?

If not, then do you think a house rule requiring pike and shot to remain within 6" (or some distance) if each other would make sense?

Any other suggestions for tailoring the rules more closely to the ECW?

By the way, if I have it all wrong I'm certainly willing to be educated.

Thanks.

[BigMike]

I suppose it depends on how 'restrictive' you want to be. I suspect with the way that the rules are designed most people who play the system will play in the spirit of the period and will keep the pike blocks and sleeves of shot relatively close together so they get a realistic gaming simulation of the warfare of the period. How far this distance would be would surely depend much on the scale of your game and interpretation of your players.

To other thing is if you send the pike sleeve too far away you'll start finding it pretty tricky to move again as the command distance penalties rack up, especially as only the General and brigade CO can issue it orders.

Or you might try tisking, murmuring under your breath or rolling your eyes if people try these things to often!

[Ken Portner]

I suppose it depends on how 'restrictive' you want to be. I suspect with the way that the rules are designed most people who play the system will play in the spirit of the period and will keep the pike blocks and sleeves of shot relatively close together so they get a realistic gaming simulation of the warfare of the period. How far this distance would be would surely depend much on the scale of your game and interpretation of your players.

To other thing is if you send the pike sleeve too far away you'll start finding it pretty tricky to move again as the command distance penalties rack up, especially as only the General and brigade CO can issue it orders.

Or you might try tisking, murmuring under your breath or rolling your eyes if people try these things to often!

Yes, and the devil is in the details. How far is too far? That's why I'd prefer to just pick a reasonable distance to make things simple rather than making ad hoc determinations every time the issue arises. So I suppose I'm soliciting opinions on what's reasonable (assuming the distances prescribed in the game are being used with 28mm figures).

Of course, this assumes that I'm right in my thinking about the way infantry worked during the ECW. As I said, I'm certainly willing to be educated if my understanding is incorrect.

[BigMike]

If you want to tinker with it i'd be tempted to set it around 12" - to allow a certain amount of flexibility to your manoeuvres. Personally i'm not sure it needs a hard and fast ruling on distances and allowing/not allowing seperation of pike and shot units. I'm pretty sure that if an officer felt there was a need to split off part of one of his units then that's what he'd do, and the difficulty of re-unifying the units and getting any sort of 'dressing'/order back would be dealt with by the -1 command penalty. Remembering that P&S dealt with the larger sweep of the battle in it's command and contro system rather than dwelling on too much micro management. and if your opponent insists on separating his shot units too far from a pike block then isn't that what a cavalry charge is for?

[Jammers]

Linked into the last post - its covered in so far as you can only form Hedgehog if the Shotte is within, what, 4" of its Pike unit

[jazbo]

From my understanding, any fire unit can form hedgehog with any pike block from the same Battalia. So for ECW, I would say, if you need to form hedgehog, you do one roll for the Regt (one pike, 2 shotte) and it must all then form hedgehog as a single unit, or all fail as a single unit - ie you can onlly form hedgehog in one go as a regiment and only with your own Regiment.

[Jammers]

Totally agree that it should be the particular Regiment rather than any within the battalia as a whole - that would be a nonsense

[EDIT: but i don't see why both sleeves would have to go into hedgehog unless each have a charge reaction - 2 chances to fail that way]

[BigMike]

From my understanding, any fire unit can form hedgehog with any pike block from the same Battalia. So for ECW, I would say, if you need to form hedgehog, you do one roll for the Regt (one pike, 2 shotte) and it must all then form hedgehog as a single unit, or all fail as a single unit - ie you can onlly form hedgehog in one go as a regiment and only with your own Regiment.

No i don't think that's the case - i think you can decide how many of the sleeves of shot you want to hedgehog based on the battlefield situation. If you look at the illustration on p81 it shows one unit of shot combined with pike while the other wing is still in line formation. so you could order one unit into hedgehog one turn, and then if needs be you could order the other unit in a turn later.

[jazbo]

Mike - the OP's question was do we need special rules for the ECW. My answer was yes I think so, a whole Regiment (ie two sleeves of shotte plus the pikes) must all form up as one order.

In the normal rules, it says any shotte from a battalia can form hedgehog with any pike block from it, for me that is too flexible for ECW. Cheers.

[trevor allen]

Mike - the OP's question was do we need special rules for the ECW. My answer was yes I think so, a whole Regiment (ie two sleeves of shotte plus the pikes) must all form up as one order.

In the normal rules, it says any shotte from a battalia can form hedgehog with any pike block from it, for me that is too flexible for ECW. Cheers.

They can only form up with a pike block that is "close enough". In practice this WILL mean they are usually limited to their own regimental pikes. Methinks some questions are being asked before any toys have been laid out and therefore the scale of the problem is being missed.

Looking forward to playing Jammers this week in a skirmish game (600 pts). I am sure we will both have a lot more queries after that.

Trev