The Loose Association of Wargamers

An historical wargame has to obviously be historical but also offer reasonable parameters for an enjoyable game. My home-brewed rules work well enough for Roman civil war games but I want to allow for battles between Romans & enemies from outside the Empire eg to include battles between the Late Romans & some barbarian alliance (Goth, Hun & Sarmatian at this stage).

It appears the Goths were big on foot archers, which is good as I have 4 units of them available. They'll be reasonable at firing but would prove disastrous if an enemy closed to melee. The rest of the Goth infantry is heavy infantry which I will equate with the Roman legionaries & auxiliaries (no problem) & 5 large units of warband- poorly armoured. They have some terrain & speed advantages & have some missile potential but aren't that formidable.

The warband be easy pickings for the Romans unless.....if you placed archer units behind them & allowed overhead shooting.
This means even armoured Roman foot & cavalry will have to brave a gauntlet of fire before closing. This should even things up a bit.

Thought? Impossible? Possible with a penalty (lose 1 in 4 dice)?

donald

By 'gauntlet of fire', are we talking about English Longbowmen of Agincourt, or 1,000 year older Goths with basically small hunting bows? You can't be classing these rag-tag units of archers in the same league as properly 'drilled' archer units? Even the roman Auxiliary archers would be 'specialists', so I'd say they could certainly shoot overhead.

Many other rules tackle this using terrain and the use of high ground....Hail Caesar might offer some insight?

The question should be more about interpenetration of light and heavy units...can archers be in the front ranks and then melt through the infantry behind etc??

Jamanicus wrote: ↑Wed Oct 06, 2021 9:31 am By 'gauntlet of fire', are we talking about English Longbowmen of Agincourt, or 1,000 year older Goths with basically small hunting bows? You can't be classing these rag-tag units of archers in the same league as properly 'drilled' archer units? Even the roman Auxiliary archers would be 'specialists', so I'd say they could certainly shoot overhead.

Many other rules tackle this using terrain and the use of high ground....Hail Caesar might offer some insight?

The question should be more about interpenetration of light and heavy units...can archers be in the front ranks and then melt through the infantry behind etc??

The stats for scoring "hits" in my rules would indicate these Goths are not the Yeomen archers of medieval England. I certainly agree with your point about the inferior nature of their bows but I think Gothic archers may well have served with the Romans and, at any rate, seem to have been a serious part of the (Visi)Gothic armies of the period.

High ground - sure. But you can't necessarily set this up for every game. If the archers "hit" on 5-6s (less armour saves), would shooting over a few ranks of Warband in front of them be OK if I took 25% of their shooting dice away? I've thrown a few dice to test this and it often results in a charging Roman infantry unit typically losing one or two figures: not devastating but taking the edge off their effectiveness in melee against such "easy-beat" opponents.

Your point about interpenetration is a very good one. I will think further about this as a solution.

donald

Hmmm, I think it depends on how the combat/shooting dice are acquired.

If its 1 dice per man or a number of dice for a unit etc then the effect of a shooting phase could change a subsequent combat quite a bit.

Obviously, a charging unit wouldn't be able to be engaged (during their charge) by archers behind the unit being charged, in the same style of reactionary shooting??

There definitely needs to be some distancing ruling about any kind of overhead shooting, full-stop. I think in Infamy Infamy, it makes sense that you have to be X inches away from the unit being shot over and the target enemy has got to be X inches infront of that same (overhead shot) unit...otherwise huge potential for fratricide

Does it not come down to Visibility too??

Is it realistic for a bunch of archers to see over the heads of a big unit of their mates in front, shouting and preparing for combat... waving their arms, weapons and shields about?

Not least to be able to effectively judge a distance to shoot a bow at an enemy 'somewhere over there, beyond our lads'

You keep raising valid objections, darn you!

I am still thinking about allowing interpenetration but that then, seems to be too much of an advantage.

donald

You could always just say if it's a light infantry/skirmish style of unit, they can just 'disintegrate' through a heavier unit and just reappear behind them....like they're going through any gaps and round the edges of the units etc.

You'd then say that a heavy unit can definitely not do this action, as they're less nimble etc

That way, it's a tactical decision for someone to retract their archers from their front line before an enemy gets too close to charge

I wouldn't allow this rule for light infantry with shields though...for me, the shields would make them less nimble and harder to fine gaps in their mate's lines etc

Gothic armies, especially the later Ostrogoth ones were largely organised on Roman lines. This included large units (but smaller than the close combat units) of archers which could provide indirect fire support in the same way that Roman Archers were trained to.
In terms of the bows used the composite bows of the "steppe" warrior (Goths and Huns are pretty much interchangeable) had a draw weight of 80-100lbs, roughly half of that achievable by the English Longbow of the Middle Ages. The effective ranges were pretty similar and the difference in draw weight is mostly due to the draw length being used, (composite bow drawn to chest, longbow drawn to cheek). Worth noting though that there seems to have been no difference between the length of "Dark Age" bows in Britain and British Medieval Longbows, the latter possibly getting it's name by the long draw used rather than the length of the stave.
Until platemail became more widely used the composite bow was probably the better choice as it could fire two to three times faster and was more than capable of penetrating armour of the time.
Later Mongolian Archers using the composite bow could loose 4 arrows in as many seconds from horseback, using a thumb ring to avoid wearing their thumbs out!
So why weren't there armies of massed bowmen laying down hails of machinegun like bowfire? Two reasons training and manufacture. A composite bow is more time consuming and costly to produce than a one piece bow and is more susceptible to damage from ill treatment.

Not sure if that answers anything but is a long winded way of saying Goth armies with Roman influence would probably have used indirect bow fire (possibly utilising spotters?) which was no more or less effective than similar Roman tactics.

I think you're right Paul...it probably doesn't

Only kidding, but some useful food for thought there!!

The question now needs to be 'who' are these rules written for...are they specifically to be used for forces of Goths vs Romans?? If so, crack on with the indirect/overhead shooting, but if they want to be more palettable for other factions and slightly early (or later for that matter), I'd look to solve it in another way...like the lighter unit interpenetration through/around heavier units thing...maybe

Could there be a simple 'faction characteristic' element to the Goths?? I'd assume this would be the case for Romans with formations like the Testudo and release of Pila etc?