The Loose Association of Wargamers

One of the difficulties in gaming linear warfare is the destruction wrought to previously steady troops who are burst through by their retreating or routing brothers.

It's all very well to say you should leave gaps in the second line to accommodate retreaters or routers. If the gap needs to be the same size as the unit leaving the battlefield, it creates gaps that the enemy could drive a proverbial train through.

Is it reasonable to allow for a unit to compress itself - to a degree- to fit through a smaller gap?

To get mathematical, if a 5 base unit @ a total of a 150mm in length is forced to flee, could it be allowed to move through a gap of 3 bases (eg 90mm)?

And....should retreating & routing units be treated similarly in this instance?

donald

yes, routing tends to be a more columnar formation. Wargamers tend to view millimetre gaps as things you can drive a train through, whereas I suspect in real life those gaps are much more fluid.

There's a difference between withdrawing, retreating & routing, implying differing degrees of control of the unit. Routing units are likely to run between, around and possibly through anything in their way & really can't be regarded as having any unit integrity at all, at least unless they rally.. Withdrawing units are presumably under command so presumably can change formation, as can any units that they are withdrawing though (eg opening files). Retreating units are probably somewhere in the middle, with a degree of control but less steady than a withdrawing one.

ochoin wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2020 8:00 am Is it reasonable to allow for a unit to compress itself - to a degree- to fit through a smaller gap?

Routing units are unlikely to have that level of discipline, they are fleeing. The second line units may well have the discipline to compress to allow more space, but might suffer shock/disorder in doing so?

WRG allow routers to burst through lines and round columns, which is fine in wellingtonics where reserves should be in columns. I have much pondered the issue for 19th century, I think the solution is twofold.

On routing, a unit should move away from the cause for its first turn of rout, during this turn it will burst through a line. Thereafter, it may flow around a line provided there is a gap of at least one element on the flank for it to retire through.

There are a few solutions to the issue of being charged in the flank because of too much space for the flanking unit:
1. No flank bonuses for an oblique attack - the unit must move to behind the enemy's front and wheel;
2. No flank bonuses unless the unit attacks from behind the enemy's flank;
3. The last Xcm of a charge must be in a straight line.

If you’re talking mid 18th century....

Maybe another way to look at part of the problem is our abstraction of time and distance couple with our wargamers need to bunch everything up because of limited space?

Prussian manuals for the period call for the infantry line to be entirely closed except leaving the small gaps for two battalion guns/cannon to pass between them...
And more importantly - commanders MUST ensure to keep The second line at 300 paces behind the first.

That’s quite a distance... I think in game terms we imagine a crowd running blindly into a friendly unit like a cavalry charge.... personally I don’t think Infantry are going to rout into a solid three ranks behind them after a 300 pace run. More likely They will be slowing and funnel themselves out and through the gaps between the battalions.
If however a commander has made the decision to form this bottle neck for a reason and they are within a very short distance then I get it.
Where troops were likely to need to retreat such as attacking villages, entrenchments or batteries - Fredericks orders were to chequerboard so there was supportive gaps - and he specifically wrote ‘to not cause disorder’

And cavalry wise, the first line has narrow intervals in squadrons but the second line has wide intervals entirely for this reason and to move quick to plug/gain advantage first line gaps.

Perhaps a lot of these mechanisms are just development of ‘the game’ and not the simulation of history?

I have also thought, much of the disorder gained by troops being retreated through, is morale and nental, rather than purely physical.

Well that maybe the case for a Saxon or a Frenchmen!

The question was about gaps in the line though, battlefield psychology is interesting though and fits in to that ‘game mechanic development’
Cavalry commanders frequently say that actual hand to hand combat was rare, one side would break at the sight of the solidarity of the other. Frederick liked his Prussian Infantry to not fire but march straight towards the enemy with the bayonet and yet I’ve never played a single game system where you could do that and rout the enemy without rolling some sort of ridiculous odds score...
All good fun to ponder whilst endlessly painting to play 2 games a year.

WTF??? Two lengthy posts from Purps without a single sexual innuendo, pun or reference to dildos. Someone has either hijacked his account or the end is nigh.

Hah, Kolin and did the Rascals wish to live forever.....