Reform and Storm Again!

Over the past week I've been picking away at the rules getting farther and farther away from where I wanted to be so I put it away for a while. As so often that helped. When I came back I had identified a possible answer involving a theoretical rather than applied aspect.

Early on, the assault on the left hand redoubt has been repulsed but the right hand one was stolen before the garrison could tumble out of bed. The table looks a little empty but this is an early morning surprise attack by less than 1/3 of Red's theoretical field army.

The visible issue was partly that the areas looked empty but mostly that the figure/unit frontage/depth issues just weren't aligning properly, especially for artillery batteries who should easily fit 2 full batteries in an area and for early period infantry. Essentially, through most of the 19th C a battalion of around 500 men would normally occupy a width of around 150 yds (very roughly) with a skirmish screen in front of a formed body. Initially a thin screen with the main body doing the main fighting and an overall depth of less than 300 yards but eventually with the skirmish screen becoming heavier with the rest forming a series of reserves to reinforce the main fireline or to pass through to assault with the whole having a depth of as much as 500 yards to keep the reserve safe. My areas were now theoretically 300 yards since I started fiddling with the Great War.

Without going into detail I seemed to need to be able to handle having variable numbers of subunits in an area while tracking their unit status individually and figuring out which figures could shoot, etc. In other words a conventional game not really using the grid except as a built in ruler. Nothing wrong but not what I wanted. The only other solution I could see involved quartering my nice new 6" squares which seemed counter productive. All of the solutions seemed to favour doubling the size of my units but allowing them to split.

At last I hit on the right question. Why can't I go back to a theoretical 150 yard areas like the Square Brigadier used for years and bring back the old rules including support by adjacent units and ignore or rationalize scale variances as usual?  The only valid answers I could think of were that the heaviest rifled artillery would be able to shoot across the table and then some if  I enforced the scale uniformly and that a battle like Tel El Kebir would need either a bigger table or bathtubbing. Not much when you get down to it.

So I reset the rules and tidied them up, confirmed my commitment to my current organization of 8 infantry or 4 guners, cavalry or specialists as a "unit". Then I reset the table using a 1:1 game unit to scenario unit match rather than the 2:1 ratio used previously. Worked like a charm. Nine turns in just over an hour, lots of tension and swings of fortune for this one of the smallest scenarios.

Mid game. The Counter attack has begun but while the cavalry rallied and  ran amok in the open ground  and  the right redoubt was only narrowly saved after a 3 round melee, saved it was and Red eventually carried the day. 

Next up, a bigger scenario to see how the 1:1 unit ratio looks and plays with 12 to 16 units per side. The current draft of the Square Brigadier rules as played are available from the menu at right or here.