Please review my WSS unit width calculations

[modartis]

Hi everyone,

I'm buying some OG 10mm figures for the Marlburian period. The infantry are on 1 inch wide strips so I'm basing in inches for infantry, cavalry and guns. I want to fool around with some rule mechanisms I've come up with. I'm not basing for any rule set on the market.

I decided to try to make unit width relative to a French unit being 3 stands (three inches) wide so I can get a flag in the middle of the unit without having to chop up strips. I may change my mind if this looks like a problem but it is my starting point for now.

I have made an Excel sheet with my calculations:

http://www.reinforcementsbypost.com/tmp ... ations.xls

My assumptions (which probably make an - out of me )
1. Units at 80% of paper strength
2. French line infantry bttns are between 400 and 450 strong on paper
3. British line infantry bttns (and by extension some allied units) are 650 to 750 strong on paper.
4. Cavalry 150-180 men strong on paper for most nations
5. Width of one man 22 inches
6. Width of cavalry 43 inches (knee to knee)
7. Cavalry generally assumed to be 3 deep

It looks like allied units end up being 5-8 inches wide (the lower at three deep the upper at 2 deep) compared to the French at 3 inches. Cavalry are about 2 inches wide.

My ground scale ends up being about 20 yards per inch.

Cheers

Neil

[hwiccee]

Hi Neil,

I think that in general it is nearly impossible to do what you are trying to do because there are too many variables or things that rely on how you view the available information. In short most of the numbers/unit sizes would vary greatly depending on year/theatre/time within the campaign.

1: Units could be some where near full paper strength at the beginning of the campaign. This would depend on political will, situation at the end of the last campaign, etc. The British and allies seem to have been more likely to achieve this. By the end of a campaign a unit that had ben at near full strength at the beginning of the campaign could be at 50% or less strength, even without fighting a battle.

2: These paper strengths obviously vary with different types of units. So the folowing are 'typical' sizes. Basic paper strength for the French was 690 men although they never seem to have got anywhere near this. 500 is probably a more realistic number to use.

3: British had a paper strength of about 825. The various allied units strength varied greatly.

4: Paper strength was 150 for British, 135 for the French. Cavalry generally didn't suffer as badly from attritionand so likely to be closer to paper strength than infantry.

5 and 6: I personally doubt these kinds of numbers but I suppose you have to use something.

The first point here is that because cadenced marching wasn't used, and other later improvements, the men weren't so close as later in the century. The infantry for example normally had a gap of about the width of a man (and this gap will vary depending on which source you believe, etc) between each man.

The second point is that units did not directly alongside another unit as is common on the wargaming table. There were always gaps between units and sometimes between sub units. The exact size of these gaps varied depending on circumstances and source you use. But the cavalry seem to have usuall had gaps of 50 to 100% of the frontage of a squadron between each squadron.

The frontage would also vary depending on various other factors - the presence of light support artillery when defending for example. All this adds up to the unit frontages being certainly larger than your calculations but how much is open to debate.

7: Yes cavalry in 3 ranks and also British infantry. But French and others used 4 ranks generally (and sometimes 5). On a brief look I am guessing that you have not factored this in.

I am afraid I haven't had time to look at your figures in detail and also I am not exactly sure of what you have done. But hopefully you can have a better try now.

All the best.

[modartis]

Thanks for taking the time to look at my file and for writing a comprehensive reply. I have books by Sapherson, Schorr, Condray and others giving me ORBATs and unit strengths for most participants but I don't pretend any depth of knowledge on the WSS so I am grateful for the advice of my fellow gamers and people with an interest in the period.

Somehow or other I have to come up with a ground scale and basing widths for units. What I'm doing now is like someone trying to figure out a Chinese puzzle by initially trying the pieces in various combinations to get a feeling for the puzzle. My approach wil change as I learn more.

I've put together models for Computational Neuroscience in the past which is considered a black art. You put together a model of part of the brain and come up with some sort of result. How it relates to actual brain activity is totally up for grabs. So I'm not expecting too much from my Excel sheet

I'm starting by saying that I will aim to have a standard French Battalion made up of three one inch stands and make everything else relative to that. It could be that I'll add/remove bases to represent units of different sizes. This is just my starting point.

Now on to my most obvious problems which you pointed out in your post

1. My unit strengths were off. Now I'll correct this and make them more reasonable in my excel sheet.
2. You pointed out that infantry took up more space (about double).
3. I will have to take account of gaps between units and the presence of artillery support (but I won't base including the gaps)
4. I haven't factored in the ranks for French and other correctly

From my limited understanding I'd guess that the Cavalry of different nations would take up different widths based upon their charging doctrine. Those charging knee to knee may have taken perhaps 43 inches and perhaps double that for those with other doctrines? I'm probably on controversial ground here!

Cheers

Neil

[hwiccee]

Hi Neil,

I am always happy to help if can and if I have time.

On ground scale and basing I tend to think that wargamers make too much of this. But it is of course up to the individual.

On the points you made about my points.

1: I personally think , although others wouldn't agree, that you weren't too far away with the infantry numbers. I would put field strength of a British infantry battalion in Marlborough's army (i.e. not in Spain or portugal) at 500 to 650. With the French at 300 to 450.

3: There are many ways to do this - whether you include 'gaps' on the bases or on the table. But these gaps were important, and not just in this period, and the armies just couldn't function without them. So the normal thing you see on a wargaming table of the units representing just the area of the men and all crammed together just would never happen in reality.

Cavalry: I don't think that there is much controversy on cavalry as far as doctrine is concerned. I think that the biggest problem is that most commonly available books contain a now out of date view. i presume that here you are talking about the idea of the French recieving a charge at the halt and firing. Is so this view is out of date. British cavalry charged at the trot with no firing and in good order. French cavalry fired there pistols and then charged at the gallop and in not so good order. The effectiveness of these two was about the same. All cavalry if they, in wargaming terms, failed a morale test when trying to charge or counter charge will do something stupid like stand and fire.

I think that not many people would argue with the above nowadays. But the actual width per horse is a different matter and many would argue for and against different numbers. Also finally on cavalry the gaps are relatively large with cavalry and you will need to think what to do with them.

All the best,


Nick

[modartis]

Thanks for your post.

What were the gaps between infantry and cavalry units used for (and between sub units)? For evolutions of one kind or another? I'd be interested to know how a unit would suffer from a lack of an adequate gap.

Going back to your prior post:

>7: Yes cavalry in 3 ranks and also British infantry. But French and others
>used 4 ranks generally (and sometimes 5). On a brief look I am guessing
>that you have not factored this in.

Is that 4 (and sometime 5) for French and other cavalry or infantry?

Cheers

Neil

[18th Century Guy]

The '4 or 5 ranks' would be for Infantry while Cavalry was in 3 ranks. This is an interesting discussion. Thanks for all the tidbits.

[hwiccee]

Hi Neil,

Well 18th Century has covered the ranks thing (thanks for the kind words as well).

On gaps. The gaps are important for some evolutions especially for cavalry. But you also need them even if you are just going to walk forward. Basically being jammed together with no gaps is fine on a nice flat parade ground, or at least usually. Real ground though is not flat. It has dips and bumps. Slippery/muddy/marshy parts. Small bushes, rocks or isolated trees, etc, etc. Basically even with the flatest real terrian there are always lots of small 'terrain' features which aren't big enough to feature on a wargames table but are there in reality.

If you don't have gaps then basically any or all of these are going to stop you dead while you change formation or throw your entire line into disorder, etc. So you need gaps to allow for this so that all or parts of your units can swerve round say a small clump of bushes without colliding with the unit or sub unit next to it.

Similarly units will 'drift', 'lurch' or 'concertina' because of small slopes, dips, etc, or simply because they don't march so well/are tired/are drunk/are scared, etc. If you don't have space for them to do this then again they collide.

So basically if you don't have gaps the units will all collide with each other.

But the other reason was tactical/operational. In short you had gaps so that the troops behind you could intervene. Whether they be the 2nd line troops for everyone or the supporting squadron for cavalry. So for example cavalry needed big gaps because horses are difficult to manoevre, compared to a man and also so that the supporting squadron could intervene/take over if the lead squadron got in trouble. So if they didn't have nice big gaps they would in effect fight a lot less efectively.

Nick

[modartis]

Thanks for your post Nick.

I can see your point that gaps in and around units, which are required for getting around obstructions that are too small to represent on the gaming table, should be built into the space a unit takes up. This will impact on my ground scale. If the increase in the size of units is proportional then it won't have an impact on the size (in inches) of units on the table since I make all unit sizes relative to the width of a French infantry battalion.

You raise an interesting point about gaps between units being useful for tactical/operational reasons. I could either incorporate this into the width of units, and assume that all sides are playing it safe, or make it a feature of the game and allow commanders to screw up if they want too tight a line.

Is there any evidence that commanders used a chequer board formation in WSS? If it was used I'd imagine there would have been some comparison to Roman tactics in contemporary memoirs.

The chance of second, and subsequent, line troops intervening in a combat must be influenced by possible evolutions (drill etc.) as well as having a gap between front line elements. For infantry, in my limited understanding, it was impossible to deploy to a flank with the drill of the day. So I'm assuming that infantry 'snaked' its way around with the head of the 'column' forming one end of the battle line (hope that makes sense.) I don't have any idea about their cavalry drill. Can anyone recommend a good text?

[huevans07]

Nic, I echo the query about whether a ECW type "checkerboard" formation was ever employed in the WSS. I also rechecked this thread after reading the thread on individual battalions forming square in the WSS.

Given the large gaps in the line, wouldn't there be an ongoing danger of flank attack? For example, a larger British battalion simply closing with a French counterpart and flooding around the gaps on either side of the narrower French formation?

BTW, Nick, why do you have a Welsh Dragon as your sig pic?

[modartis]

I've altered my Excel sheet in line with the discussion we have been having. I've included units from the various participants of WSS (at full strength).

I didn't worry about reducing the strength of units for the spread sheet because the spread sheet already has a wide range of unit strengths for you to see. When I make up an ORBAT I'll take the likely strength of units into account.

I altered infantry width to 44 inches and included cavalry width (knee to knee) at 43 inches and in a looser formation at 69 inches.

For infantry I have width calculations for units in 3, 4 and 5 ranks.

I calculate the width of units in "table inches" by defining the average French line infantry battalion to be three inches wide on the table.

From my calculations, Infantry battalions are generally 3-5 inches wide (taking into consideration the ranks employed by formations of the various nation.)

Knee to knee cavalry squadrons are only 1 inch wide. In a looser formation cavalry squadrons take up 1 to 2 inches. I was surprised to see how narrow the cavalry turned out to be relative to the infantry.

http://www.reinforcementsbypost.com/tmp ... ations.xls

I'm going to make it possible to vary the size of units to reflect their strength (campaigning, losses etc.)

[hwiccee]

Deploying: Both infantry and cavalry used the 'snaking' columns idea. Also they used 'doubling' of ranks for moving around. In this you basically keep the same frontage but use double the number of ranks that you will fight in.

Checkerboarding: I think that there was often an element in all deployments but rarely a full checkerboard for infantry at least. Cavalry more so though as the lines had large gaps between squadrons and so supporting squadrons would quite often be this way in the gaps. Then the 2nd line (or more) would continue the idea and make a checkerboard.

The full checkerboard was certainly used for infantry at the time and was used in 1702 in Poland for example but not normally I think. But the general idea still applied I think but in a newer way. Put crudely the infantry didn't, generally, need a full checkerboard as this would be formed by casualties making the line checkerboarded.

Exploit gaps: I think that while this seems possible in theory, and is done on many wargames table, it is not practical really. Generally the units were just not flexible enough to exploit the gap. Or by doing so they would expose themselves to flank/rear attack by other parts of the enemy line - remember in reality, as opposed to gaming, there is always a 2nd (or more) line. You are also automatically disordering yourself unless you can get a whole unit in.

Having said the above it was still actually possible to do this and it was sometimes. For example at Ramilles the French cavalry were so understrength and outnumbered that the Confederate cavalry were able to exploit the gaps. The same happened to the Swedish infantry at Poltava.

Welsh Dragon I am from Wales originally Hugh. I was born in Powys/Radnorshire

[danschorr]

Nick,

You peaked my interests with the mention that the Saxons used "checkerboarding" in 1702. Please explain further, and what are the sources for this conclusion.

Regards,

Dan

[hwiccee]

Dan/Iain: I said the checkerboard idea was used in 1702. I have no idea where either of you got the Saxons from?

It was used by the Swedes against the Poles (and some Saxon cavalry) at Kliszow.

[danschorr]

Nick,

OK. My error, but I'm even more surprised by you saying the Swedes used it at Kliszov. How about explaining it in more detail. I don't recall anything of the sort, but perhaps it's a matter of your definition of "checkerboarding".

Dan

[huevans07]

Welsh Dragon I am from Wales originally Hugh. I was born in Powys/Radnorshire

A fellow "boyo". I'm from Ystrad Rhondda myself. But I haven't been "home" for over 20 years! My family moved to Toronto when I was 7 years old.