Russian and Austrian Infantry: Reformed or Unreformed?

[Sarmaticus]

On reading Col. Bill gray's Loubino scenario and his review of FOGN, I see that he recoomends classifying Russian and Austrian infantry as Reformed for movement and Unreformed for firing (reversing the British definition). IIRC one of the authors has explained that that option was tested and rejected. On the face of it, Col. Gray's point is well made: later Austrians favoured columns for movement and close columns over squares. The Russians (or at least one of them) seem to have regarded their own and Austrian troops as inferior at skirmishing to the French.
I'd be interested to know what the effect of the discarded option was: at first sight it might be a worse option for the Austrians but was it unrealistic? Largely idle curiosity

[BrettPT]

I vaguely remember discussion of this type during playtesting. There can be difficulty in classifying troops at times - Brits are an example, Prussian landwehr another (no light companies but moved as quickly as other Prussian units).

I recall Andy Hunter recommending that the movement and skirmishers capabilities be split. You buy a unit thta is either reformed or unreformed - which only effects movement speed. You then pay additional points to give a unit inherant skirmisher ability (ie medium range shooting). You could therefore have reformed Prussian landwehr that cannot medium range shoot, unreformed Brits that can medium range shoot, or whatever.

Anyway,

For the Austrians at least, I quite like the unreformed for movement. Although I agree they did use columns in the main, from 1809 onwards at least, these were often slow. It seemed to take an age for Austrians to maneouvre on their enemy - look at their right flank at Wagram.

Skirmisher shooting aside, the effective difference between reformed and unreformed on tabletop is a 2MU difference in tactical movement. Moving only 4MU makes it much more difficult to pull off swinging flank movements in a 4 hour game - entirely realistic for Autrians in my view - so I have no problem with the Austrians being classified as unreformed.

Not sure about Russkies, don't know a lot about them...

[KendallB]

I always thought that Russian line infantry from 1809 should move 6MU but fire as conscripts due to poor training and quality of their ammo and muskets. They work well as unreformed up until then but some argument can be made of allowing them to move at 6MU following Suvorov's doctrine of attacking with the bayonet in columns.

[Sarmaticus]

For the Austrians at least, I quite like the unreformed for movement. Although I agree they did use columns in the main, from 1809 onwards at least, these were often slow. It seemed to take an age for Austrians to maneouvre on their enemy - look at their right flank at Wagram.

Skirmisher shooting aside, the effective difference between reformed and unreformed on tabletop is a 2MU difference in tactical movement. Moving only 4MU makes it much more difficult to pull off swinging flank movements in a 4 hour game - entirely realistic for Autrians in my view - so I have no problem with the Austrians being classified as unreformed.

Not sure about Russkies, don't know a lot about them...

I see your point. I wonder whether such slowness wasn't at a higher level than the regiment: General officers or even, dare one say it the C-in-C's themselves. Apologies to Archduke Charles fans but woudn't worse commanders or even worse players (or players not willing to take the brunt for their allies anymore) have done the job?
What were the disadvantages of using semi-reformed-ness?

[Sarmaticus]

Looking again at the Austrian lists in the book of rules (p, 133), I'm reminded that the Austrian infantry there are Unreformed for movement but fire as Reformed: the opposite of Col. Gray's suggestion. Was it ever tried his way in playtesting?

[deadtorius]

After release it was posted that page 133 (along with many other pages in the rules) was a misprint and it should have said Austrians were just plain unreformed. It was way back in the early days of the forum shortly after release.