Lines, Linear, & Combats with 'Not Over Half of Frontage' engaged
One of the things the above game really highlighted is how disadvantaged lines are against columns in Close Combat. In the above game it was essentially impossible for my British to charge into combat without being at a disadvantage, in all cases the disadvantage outweighed the benefits – i.e. trading Linear to be Valiant may add 2D to your combat, but if you always have to fight either 2 enemy columns simultaneously, or one column that doesn’t cover more than half of your frontage, it’s completely self defeating… In either case you loose half your dice basically which is far greater than the small benefit. This issue is true of all lines however, not just those who Linear (like Austrians & early Prussians) – essentially to charge into combat against columns you either (a) end up facing 2 columns simultaneously (so are out diced in combat 2 to 1 plus further disadvantaged due to penalty for facing 2 opponents), or (b) you must wheel to hit at an angle to only contact one of your opponents which will result about two-thirds of the time in you not having your opponent covering over half your frontage – either way you are screwed.
Since the ‘covering half or less of your front’ thing for combats also creates a whole swag of cheese manoeuvres (like when forming square and so on) I am now seriously asking myself why is this rule even necessary – it doesn’t add anything positive AFAICS and just disadvantages lines (and Cavalry in general) and creates opportunity for Cheeze. If it wasn’t there my British would have initiated combats regularly through the game, instead they do so only twice in the entire game… I think this will be my other ’bugbear’ for the moment, after the “amazing Collapsing Squares” issue (which happened again in the above game FWIW)… I wonder if the game would suffer in any way by dispensing with this rule – as I presume it’s only there to prevent cheese moves where people cram 3 opponents against one by charging into contact with a single corner on corner at an angle and such?
British as SK1
My initial thoughts were this is a fair proposal – I agree with most of Paul G’s (BGBEM) comments and the hypotheses the British weren’t that great at skirmishing – the perception they were is a myth (begun principally by Oman 90+ years after the events) and now accepted truth due to being repeated so often… There is no evidence the British ever gave any skirmisher training to centre companies, and when such companies were detached to bolster skirmish lines their performance appears to have been pretty marginal other than adding the appearance of numbers. However my one concern pre-game after previous discussions where Paul put forward this proposal was that this would lead the French to adopt Musketry as their primary tool against the British in the game – and while not wholly unhistorical it would result in very unhistorical game tactics. As Cam mentioned he overlooked this pre-game and only realised it mid-game, so didn’t get a chance to exploit more thoroughly…
My concern now is that as Cam and I discussed mid-game a couple of French can actually bowl up to a British line (that’s SK1) and OUTSHOOT it (in game terms)! And presumably the same applies against Austrians and early Prussians, etc… Now as mentioned I agree with PG about the general summary that the British often suffered a lot from French Skirmishers, but we also need to put that in perspective, a lot can often mean 30 casualties in a Battalion of 500+! I also wonder if the cases where French skirmisher swarmed everywhere (like Quatre Bras & Waterloo*) are better represented in Lasalle by the breakdown of 1 or more battalions into extra SK bases instead? Regardless, as Cam muses above, I do wonder if it is just a bit too much of a downgrade for British in Lasalle due to the latter’s very coarse ‘scale’ and they really need to be SK1.5 or something – which means in real terms they need to stay at SK2, or perhaps a diluted SK2 where it counts for their protection but they don’t get the bonus when shooting at other people with lower SK (i.e. treat as SK1 when shooting, SK2 when shot at)? Of course that’s far too complex really for Lasalle’s model, but may be a better ‘historical’ compromise between SK2 and SK1.
It also begs the question – what real incentive is there for French to aggressively approach and melee combat Austrians and other early Linear forces (with SK1 or SK0) ‘en masse’ when they can probably significantly out shoot them over time with 2 or more small Btns in column, and at little risk to themselves? Again that doesn’t sound quite right tome but may not be overly unhistorical, as my impression of the RevWars and early period is the French would rely on charging home in column mostly, leaving musketry to the skirmishers – but perhaps that’s about right in Lasalle with a pair of columns (SK2) probably able to out-shoot a line (SK0 or SK1) sufficiently over about 4-5 turns to break the unit…?
(* These may also be anomalous of the true performance elsewhere since there was such a high concentration of returned veterans and such from the previous 5-10 years so units were inordinately rich with experienced men.)
Valiant & Linear
I think Valiant seems right for the British – in an even situation it gives confidence to go in with an edge and probably succeed. On defence it makes them just hat little bit extra effort to roll over – and in some ways can be seen as incorporating that ability to deliver the trademark controlled close-range devastating volley (rather than this being considered part of Lasalle’s Musketry function).
Linear I think feels right too – BUT with the proviso that the ‘more than half your front’ thing above actually back fires, as it adds more cheesy situations than it removes… I’m not sure if there is a solution (short of tossing the rule) or whether it’s a non-issue and I’m just over-reading the situation as the Linear status tends to make you overly focus on lines regardless of how much you may have used them anyway when not ‘Linear’ status. But hopefully Cam and I will try them a bit more and see how they pan out…
:-)
P.S. For those who missed the earlier conversations around the British ratings it’s in the thread on our previous game report “The Hundred Days Continues...”: http://www.sammustafa.com/honour/forum/topic/the-hundred-days-continues
P.P.S. On a related note for still more of our game reports see these threads; Hundred Days Game Report http://www.sammustafa.com/honour/forum/topic/hundred-days-game-report and A Little 1809 Lasalle Affair [Game Report] http://www.sammustafa.com/honour/forum/topic/a-little-1809-lasalle-affair-game-report .
