Hi all,
My name is Lluís and am currently running a what-if campaign focused on the latest stage of War of the Spanish Succession, 1713-1714. This an ill-known period wherein, while the main powers were maneouvring around negotiation tables between Utrecht and Rastatt, an extremely furious, bloody campaign took place for the subjugation of Catalonia, still stubbornly supporting Archduke Charles Habsburg.
Such campaign, and the what-if Nation itself, are hosted under name of
The Defiant Principality in a blog whose URL is
http://what-if-catalonia.blogspot.com/. This is in turn affiliated to the
Emperor vs Elector 18th Century Imagi-nations community (
http://emperor-elector.blogspot.com/) --such has allowed us a lot of funny, exciting inter-actions, even some what-if diplomacy.
While still essaying several differents rulesets for skirmish-sized fightings, we're currently using BLB v.1 for all major engagements, with a prospect to evolve toward BLB v.2 pretty soon. Oh, we always play with 15mm miniatures --Dixon, Minifigs, Roudway, Essex... anything at hand in that size, in fact.
Well, I had to introduce myself first... Apologies for such an extensive introduction
The matter is that campaigning WSS in the Peninsula can hardly be sustained without having into account the crucial role of
Miquelets, or
Mountain Fusilier Infantry --especially if playing the Austro-Catalan side, that used extensively such kind of troops to the discomfort of Philip d'Anjou's generals.
We're experiencing a lot of trouble at representing
Miquelets properly enough in accordance to BLB (or any other Lace Wars ruleset, in fact). It would be inaccurate classifying them as
tribals, because most of WSS
Miquelets were regular troops, dressed and armed according to ordnances prescriptions.
Although mainly used for skirmishing, ambushing and rear or rough terrain actions, they had been trained for line fighting too --so that usually half their companies were armed with regular musket and bayonet, while the other half had
escopetes (=a smaller calibre, local made rifle, appreciated among them for sharpshooting). And in fact it wasn't that rare for them to adopt the role of line infantry in small countryside engagements, and to charge enemy foot. Contrarily, it seems that they could hardly stand face to enemy horse, rather preferring to disperse and evade.
What advice would you give us at this respect?