The Loose Association of Wargamers

ochoin wrote: ↑Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:09 pm

RMD wrote: ↑Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:34 pm

Re 18th Century guns - Frederick apparently adopted the horse artillery idea after seeing mounted Russian batteries in action at Kunersdorf. But there isn't any horse artillery establishment in the Russian order of battle, so I've often wondered about that anecdote.

That's interesting. I've read that the Austrians were also experimenting with horse artillery but can't find any other mention of them in OOBs etc.

All in all, HA seems a bit like rockets in the Napoleonic Wars: great idea, gets a lot of attention, achieved little.
I'll admit to having a troop of HA in my SYW Prussian force.

donald

Yeah, I bought my first Prussian HA from Eureka last month!

My pet theory is that the Russian mounted artillery was the detachment assigned to the Observation Corps, though that's only a theory.

Maybe sometimes it's possible to be a little too prescriptive about what this or that can do. Sometimes things are impossible, except for when they're not.

I'm leaning more to letting the dice decide such things (unless I already have a perfectly workable shortcut).

And another thing. Unless you're micro managing the game, whether or not a gun is limbered shouldn't be relevant. The question is, 'I want that gun over there (imagine a pointing finger), can that be achieved'. If the order is issued, let the dice decide on how it's achieved. If the gunners spend the next four hours huffing and puffing and ultimately failing, the general may think twice about trying such a thing again.

My guess is that Horse artillery benefitted from the late eighteenth century advances in reduced barrel and carraige weight, and increased robustness of carraiges. They may not have quite been like the RHA in hyde park as first formed.

If I were a late 18th C wargamer, I think I would only allow manhandliing after the first shot. If you have a battle where artillery was redeployed, you can introduce a scenario rule. Obviously HA are an exception.

+1.

grizzlymc wrote: ↑Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:02 pm My guess is that Horse artillery benefitted from the late eighteenth century advances in reduced barrel and carraige weight, and increased robustness of carraiges. They may not have quite been like the RHA in hyde park as first formed.

If I were a late 18th C wargamer, I think I would only allow manhandliing after the first shot. If you have a battle where artillery was redeployed, you can introduce a scenario rule. Obviously HA are an exception.

Yes indeed. I take the view that 18th Century HA were simply 'mobile' rather than 'gallopers'. So they move only slightly more quickly than other light guns and critically, can re-deploy at the same rate.

The Austrians never saw the need to "mobilise" their artillery beyond ruining the gun crew's knackers by making them ride on a wurst, rather than giving them horses. Not sure I'd be too keen on manhandling a 6-pdr after riding on one of those along a European road of the time (not to mention the possibility of being thrown off if the limber team decided to become super-active - or just a bit mischievous). The upside of course was that they didn't need to find anywhere to "hide" the horses whilst the gunners were working, and none of them needed to be taught how to ride and maintain a horse, which meant gunners could be transferred from one branch to the other easily.

Usually most rules allow you move artillery and resume firing the next turn**
To discourage this you could always penalise artillery by making them spend more turn before they resume firing after moving.

** The exception is of course BP where Napoleonic artillery, horse in particular can limber, move through town ignoring the red traffic lights, do a handbrake turn around the roundabout, wait outside the chip shop until the pie & chips are ready, return to the table often moving at least half way across this, do a wheelie with the guns in the air, unlimber, then load and fire with devastating results - all in one turn

valleyboy wrote: ↑Fri Nov 27, 2020 7:56 pm The exception is of course BP where Napoleonic artillery, horse in particular can limber, move through town ignoring the red traffic lights, do a handbrake turn around the roundabout, wait outside the chip shop until the pie & chips are ready, return to the table often moving at least half way across this, do a wheelie with the guns in the air, unlimber, then load and fire with devastating results - all in one turn

What's your point, Bro?

E

BP is not representative of any horse and musket period of which I know.

And yet, somehow, it also manages to encapsulate all of them at once. Strange.....