Garry Wills

IO – I know nothing about this thread but I am interested in clarifying the posts. George said that the French introduced socket bayonets in 1703, are you saying that the socket bayonet was introduced earlier in France? Secondly LAOK has plug bayonets as being not removable in action, is this backed up by the literature?

Thanks

Garry

Garry

The Portuguese line battalions had 4 line companies and 1 grenadier company each.  No light company after 1808. Loads of info here LINK

The rules talk about half the brigades in the army as a whole, so I would interpret the situation you describe, as the army is defeated when any two of the three brigades are broken. Obviously some scenarios involving less reliable coalition partners might interpret it differently.

Thanks IO so you are happy with the RAW.

I would recommend the Last Argument of Kings supplement (£7.50 for the pdf). It amends the rules for the 18th Century battles in several interesting ways. As has been said it removes the attack column and also modifies how march columns deploy.…[Read more]

BP2 specifies that an artillery battery should be the same width as a small infantry unit.

I have done this using Warlord’s volley light together with a model railway speaker. There is a video on my you tube channel; https://youtu.be/iaRBPhSC9Ug

Regards

Garry

A bit surprised by this thread, artillery hits at close and medium range are hard to save -2 on save,and columns get no save bonus. Given that the average stamina is only 3, artillery hits that only save on a six are pretty important. In addition you have all of Big Al’s points.

On artillery frontage, BP2 sets it as a battery being the same…[Read more]

The special rules do have point values. i posted them separately

Big Al, it looks like Richard is using BP first edition in which the French were given the Reliable special rule when in attack column. Like you, I prefer to play without the additional +1. Playing with points as Richard is, there ought to be a points cost for this but it was free in BP1.

Richard, the average benefit of the extra +1 staff rating…[Read more]

One of the differences between first and second editions is that in second edition they moved away from defining units by numbers of figures to unit frontages. In fact it is the ratios between the frontages for different unit sizes that matter. When you do the maths in terms of figures the BP1 units are on average 122% bigger than BP2 units. The…[Read more]

Welcome to Black Powder;

Orders of Battle that might be useful

French: https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/documents/carl/nafziger/705GAF.pdf

Allied: https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/documents/carl/nafziger/705GAG.pdf

Regards

Garry

Hello, the table you refer to is printed incorrectly in BP2- it is in fact the command modifiers. For the correct table see the QRS on p.196, top of the right hand column.

All the best

Garry

There is a big difference between shaken units not being allowed to charge and not being allowed to advance on the enemy. I am very surprised Big Al you are usually more precise than this. As to my previous post I was reacting to your comment that ‘the rules only specify that one gun is one gun’, which is clearly no longer true.

All the…[Read more]

Sorry big Al, but one of the improvements in BP2 is  that they addressed this issue. On p.17 the rules discuss using two or three guns in a unit rather than one. The unit is described as a battery and given the frontage of a small infantry or cavalry unit, 120-150mm.  How many real guns is represented by the unit is left open.  However the gun sc…[Read more]

Yes you have missed the ‘position the charging unit’ section on page 60. This should be in the declaration of charge orders section but isn’t. The frontal arc restriction applies when the order is given a the start of the turn. Note the use of ‘turn’ not ‘move’ in this section. Moves and turns are very different in Black Powder, which is…[Read more]

Thanks for the correction Big Al.

Regarding Break tests see p.77, which lists the specific occasions when break tests are required. P.81 says you remove excess casualties after all NECESSARY break tests are done. Consequently putting the two together, winning units with excess casualties can remove them without a break test.

To Big Al’s point…[Read more]