Colonial Portuguese – who made this list???

[hazelbark]

This is a summ of my proposed list for the Colonial Portuguese.

0 to 24 bases of:
“Civilized” Brazilian Indians: Warriors; Unarmoured; Average;
½ Bow*; Impact Foot; HW; ½ Bow*; Impact Foot
OR ½ Arquebus ; Impact Foot; HW; ½ Impact Foot

Portable artillery – up to 3 regimental guns

Artillery – up to 4: Light or Medium - 2,3 or 4; Heavy artillery – 2

So the Brazillian Indians I presume could not be used outside of Brazil?
Am i correct these units are either bw* or arqubus. A single BG cannot mix these weapons?
I would consider whether an army would ahve enough guns for both regimental and separate batteries. Consider some of the asian or chinese lists, where they come from the same allowable qty.

[hazelbark]

I was going to respond that Paul did not get things quite right.

Scrumpy in error? There is a shocker. Along side other shockers like fire can burn and people breath air.

[hazelbark]

“The Tupi option of front rank Bow* and rear rank arquebus is wrong, very, very wrong. Makes them far too powerful as they can claim the majority of shooting dice are gunpowder and not have a -2 on death rolls. They should be either all bow* or arquebus*.”
- That was my main problem when I did the list. The fact is they DID HAVE mix weapons formations, but it doesn’t seem to work well. Perhaps the arquebus* is the best solution, though it does not satisfy me. I’m eager to see what Jeff as devised to solve the issue.

Well it should be noted other lists that report a mix of weapon types make a choice. And that choice is usually bw*. So bw* can include arqubues. I think if you can mix the shooting types it creates oddites not forseen. Generally the authors have tried to avoid something that only one unit in the entire game can have.

[Scrumpy]

I was going to respond that Paul did not get things quite right.

Scrumpy in error? There is a shocker. Along side other shockers like fire can burn and people breath air.

Said the man who backed McCain & Palin

[hazelbark]

I think Cities of Gold was a spoof, a dig against the torunament mentality of many ancient, medeival, & renaissance gamers. For example, the idea that a North Ameirican woodlands indian army (who could at best put a few handred wariors into the field) matching up against a modern European army (who could routinely put 25,000 men into battle) must be considered something of a joke.

I have really enjoyed FOG:R and the European books have been great, but I think Cities of Gold and Colonies and Conquests really dropped the ball.

I think there is a point you have made, but also I think you are excessive. The armies fielded by turks, persians, arabas, indians (asian), chinese and japanese were all quite large. And are worthy of having a game.

Those armies tend to be horribly vulnerable to european pistol cavalry i might add.

It is equallly true to say the late period european bayonet foot should not be in a rule set with italian wars or TYW. As things were evolving.

The question remains do any of the armies in the books you object to provide any sustained anomalous advantages. We recently had a player doing very well with Ming. (note: he is among the best US players in any case) But I would submit that few if any of his opponents even thought up any plan to fight much less one tailored to fight that army. I think the european generals repeatedly proved that an incompetent general could lose to non euopeans

[pippohispano]

Had my 2nd game against Jeff & his Portuguese today. Kicked the crap out of them with Weimarians !

Highlight had to be a disrupted & shot up dragoon unit charging some scummy light foot who evaded through a unit of fragged Fildagos. The Superiors than routed rather than face the might of my dragoons and flew through the evading lights leaving their backsides free to hit. 2 units routing off table !

Damned cowards!!! They’ll be scorned by Diogo do Couto for the rest of their lifes!

Jeff used the Fildagos as m* if sw, which seemed to give a reasonable feel to the unit, although the problem seems to be with the Soldados arquebus armed impact foot sword types.

For my money they should just be impact foot & sword, arguing that the arquebus firing is taken into account with their charge. Otherwise we have to have an arquebus* type to reflect their lack of sustainable firepower.

Lack of sustainable firepower? Says who? There are many examples where the Portuguese mantained a sustainable FP. The Impact Foot ability is a two-pointed stick: although it gives the Portuguese a +POA, will also makes them prone to charge, not in a block, but in independant units (and if you know their history, that’s how the Portuguese were usualy defeated).

Again, not certain why they get muskets a lot earlier than other nations seem to, I would have thought the colonial backwoods would be the last to get new technology.

Muskets already appeared in the inventory of the Fortress of Mozambique in 1609, when it was attacked by the Dutch. I think it would be reasonable to go back a few years to consider the introduction of the musket in the colonies. Unfortunately the Portuguese tended to classify all their guns as clavinas/cravinas – carbines and blunderbuses – and espingardas – a generic word that’s used for arquebuses, muskets and even rifles.

According to your list, Jeff's version of using both Cav & Tercios is illegal as they don't overlap. I must admit an illegal version of a fantasy list is a new one on me

After two games I struggle to see how your list really adds much to improve the original list Pippo.

Probably Jeff is doing some experiments.
Regarding how much my list improves on the existing one... well, does the existing list have Tercios, cavalry and some superior troops, as it happened in the reality? No. Then, I guess it really improves, not in terms of making them far better (that would be false and I don’t like falsehoods), but in terms of making it more accurate, historically speaking.
And that is my sole concern, believe me.

[pippohispano]

“The Tupi option of front rank Bow* and rear rank arquebus is wrong, very, very wrong. Makes them far too powerful as they can claim the majority of shooting dice are gunpowder and not have a -2 on death rolls. They should be either all bow* or arquebus*.”
- That was my main problem when I did the list. The fact is they DID HAVE mix weapons formations, but it doesn’t seem to work well. Perhaps the arquebus* is the best solution, though it does not satisfy me. I’m eager to see what Jeff as devised to solve the issue.

Well it should be noted other lists that report a mix of weapon types make a choice. And that choice is usually bw*. So bw* can include arqubues. I think if you can mix the shooting types it creates oddites not forseen. Generally the authors have tried to avoid something that only one unit in the entire game can have.

The Indians, of course, can only be used in Brazil, although the WIC used some 400 Brazilian Indians in the invasion of Portuguese Angola.
I must confess that this was the unit which posed more troubles for me and my "advisors". Fortunately for me, Jeff has come with a good idea (as you can see from the list I posted above): they are all Bow* OR Arquebus (but in this case, only the front row). I believe this is a very good solution and somehow it mimetizes some Wako pirates’ BG who have ½ shot, ½ sword (or something of the sort).

[Scrumpy]

The main trouble is that the rules are great for the European theatre, but really struggles with the colonial areas.

Your list is based on dozens rather than hundreds of battles, over which time things will average themselves out.

Whilst I am more than willing to play Jeff & this list in friendly games, he agreed it would not be in a team tourney we are planning for October.

[pippohispano]

The main trouble is that the rules are great for the European theatre, but really struggles with the colonial areas.

We totally agree upon that.

Your list is based on dozens rather than hundreds of battles, over which time things will average themselves out.

No list is based on hundreds of battles! Look at the ETYW Swedish: how many battles & small actions did they fought? Did I mentioned the Swedish? Forget them! How about the Danish and the Border Reivers???
If the "hundreds of battles" was a prerequisite, then only some lists would exist: the Ottomans, the Spanish, the Germans, and not much else.

We really must use what information we have. The Portuguese were involved in a few dozen battles and hundreds of small scale actions. That's where we must take the "juice" from.

Whilst I am more than willing to play Jeff & this list in friendly games, he agreed it would not be in a team tourney we are planning for October.

I understand his choice, but probably he also says that this list, albeit not official, is better - i.e., more accurate - than the published one. For now, that's the most important thing for me. The rest will, perhaps, come along.

[waldo]

The list seems an improvement on the existing one. I do have (still) a problem with a wholly armed musket, impact foot classification. The Iroquois can have half a unit musket impact foot swords but this classification for an entire unit is, I believe, unique in the lists.

I don't think the Portuguese should be treated as an exception to the general list pattern viz. no battlegroups have full musket capability and impact foot capability. In regards to the comment about no problem with arquebus, impact foot - that is an argument to take up with the authors why there is no arquebus* capability, not an argument for a unique classification.

As these lists are not going to be used in a colonial 'bubble' the issue of their classification vs European troops is important. If you want to use it for 'historical' batttles fine (there is no need for a list then) but as it stands the Portuguese are better shooters than French guards infantry. As you have no evidence of that (blasting natives doesn't count) then I suggest it is more prudent to have them shoot the same, as musket*. Other troops which have a 'shoot then charge in' mentality have the classification musket*, impact foot, swordsmen. Why not the same for the Portuguese?

24 superior foot seems quite high - makes me wonder why the Portuguese went nowhere in Europe and were forced to beat up hapless natives with sharp sticks for territorial gains...

Of course there is still the argument about all the other colonial lists - I'm sure there are a few Colonial Dutch, English & French would-be players who would feel hard done by if they are stuck with their lists while this one gets changed.



Walter

[pippohispano]

The list seems an improvement on the existing one. I do have (still) a problem with a wholly armed musket, impact foot classification. The Iroquois can have half a unit musket impact foot swords but this classification for an entire unit is, I believe, unique in the lists.

I don't think the Portuguese should be treated as an exception to the general list pattern viz. no battlegroups have full musket capability and impact foot capability. In regards to the comment about no problem with arquebus, impact foot - that is an argument to take up with the authors why there is no arquebus* capability, not an argument for a unique classification.

As these lists are not going to be used in a colonial 'bubble' the issue of their classification vs European troops is important. If you want to use it for 'historical' batttles fine (there is no need for a list then) but as it stands the Portuguese are better shooters than French guards infantry. As you have no evidence of that (blasting natives doesn't count) then I suggest it is more prudent to have them shoot the same, as musket*. Other troops which have a 'shoot then charge in' mentality have the classification musket*, impact foot, swordsmen. Why not the same for the Portuguese?

Blasting natives doesn't count??? Why not? I think you don’t yet realise what “natives” mean! Those “natives” were not a bunch of raggtag fellows armed with sticks, quite the contrary.
Those “natives” had propper, well armed armies, with lots of arquebuses; they knew quite well how to conduct sieges, building trenches, earthworks, mines and instaling well placed batteries; oh, btw, those “natives” also knew how to cast one piece, 5 meters-long guns (!), such as the two you can visit at the Military Museum in Lisbon (there were more, but it seems they were melted to make coins...) .
It is interesting that in its description of one of the sieges of Diu, either João de Barros or Diogo do Couto reffers to that same prejudice you’re having now. Its seems that people in Portugal though the same as you do: “natives” = a bunch of primitives armed with clubs and stones. In order to counter that idea, the author described what the Muslim army was doing, closing the paragraph with something like “this (description) is so that you may see what sort of army was this, instead of the bunch of primitives some people in Portugal think they are.”
So, are you really sure that blasting “natives” doesn't count?
Nevertheless, Musket*, impact foot, swordsmen would be a decent classification, I agree. I’ve been there, believe me.
But then, the Portuguese, at an earlier date, would have to be Arquebus (whithout *), impact foot, swordsmen, and then someone else would say “hay, that cannot be! They cannot shoot better than the Germans/Italians/Spanish/whatever”.
Therefore I had to abandon the swordsmen, but kept the Arquebus and the Musket, in this case both without the *.

24 superior foot seems quite high - makes me wonder why the Portuguese went nowhere in Europe and were forced to beat up hapless natives with sharp sticks for territorial gains...

Perhaps who should study demography, economics and politics. That would give you an answer to your question.
Why battling in Europe when all the riches were abroad? Should the Portuguese fight in Europe for a low mercenary income when they could have their pockets full with suggarcane money from Brazil, or spice trade in India, or winning the Jackpot with the China-Japan trade?

Of course there is still the argument about all the other colonial lists - I'm sure there are a few Colonial Dutch, English & French would-be players who would feel hard done by if they are stuck with their lists while this one gets changed.

That’s their problem, not mine. It’s up to them to pick up their studies and present their case. The VOC list should have some native mercenaries (and not just allies), such as the fierce Bandanese they often used as cannon fodder, but again, let someone else present its case.

[Scrumpy]

Pippo,

The point was that in the 200 years of Eurpean history there were hundreds of battles, some big, some small that the authors could use to justify their decisions on how to classify troop type A or B etc. There were not that many in any colonial wars by comparison.

The Superior Faldagos should be 0-18, giving you the option of 2 x 8s or 3 x 6s, as 24 is far too many. Although with Jeff's dice, 124 wouldn't be enough !

[pippohispano]

The Superior Faldagos should be 0-18, giving you the option of 2 x 8s or 3 x 6s, as 24 is far too many. Although with Jeff's dice, 124 wouldn't be enough !

Why do you say that? Far too many? Many other armies surpass that number by ar and large (Spanish, Germans, Sweedish, etc.), and I'm only counting on infantry!

PS - It seems that Jeff and I are soulmates...

[Scrumpy]

Jeff did a count up of other armies & their superior bases entitlement, even the Peasant Revolt got 24 bases, with the Hungarian option having upto 80..... He really needs to get out more lol

But the problem is as always with any list you are judging the army against historical opponents rather than against the whole period. I'm planning more friendly games against Jeff & this list, but still feel it is far from the finished item that could be suitable to be allowed as a tournament list.

[pippohispano]

Jeff did a count up of other armies & their superior bases entitlement, even the Peasant Revolt got 24 bases, with the Hungarian option having upto 80..... He really needs to get out more lol

Ahahah! I understand exactly what you're saying... acctually... I understand it too well... I also should get out more...

But the problem is as always with any list you are judging the army against historical opponents rather than against the whole period. I'm planning more friendly games against Jeff & this list, but still feel it is far from the finished item that could be suitable to be allowed as a tournament list.

Maybe it's not quite finished but it's pretty close I think. And somehow, I feel that people are not so opposed to the list as at first they seemed to be.

[lonehorseman]

I got the mail with the list this morning. I like what I see from a historical perspective. Once I have play tested it a bit I will be able to comment more but I agree it is close to the final product if I go by appearances alone

[jefritrout]

My name seems to come up quite a bit in this discussion. Yes I have been playtesting the list a couple of times.
So far a winning draw, a losing draw, and a big loss. But that being said, if I were to replay the Weimarians, I think that I would take them this time. (I can't roll that badly three games in a row.)

I worked from 8AM this morning until 10PM tonight. I am ready to give my perspectives on this new playtesting list. I think that it is not quite right just yet, and that is why I agreed not to have it in a friendly competion this October.

Just for the record, I ran the published list of Colonial Portuguese at Historicon and defeated the Europeans with it, but lost to the Ming Chinese. (And yes Paul and Felipe - a lot of it was the dice that went cold, but I made 2 big mistakes that certainly didn't help.)

I should have a large response tomorrow.

[Scrumpy]

Bah hmbug Jeff !! The Weimerians fiendish tactics of deploying less than a base width apart to block any overlaps you might want to create worked fine against your Portuguese, and will work again I tells ya !!!

You only have one viable tactic to beat me, hide the orange artillery dice of death... mu ha ha ha ha etc etc .......

[jefritrout]

This was composed at work, but I can't access the forum at work, because it the Slitherene sight is considered a "Game" related site.

First let me respond to the argument about Portugal not fighting in Europe. Portugal is a small country on the Western side of the Iberian Peninsula. Their only access to Europe was going through their neighbor, Spain. Spain was a large country in comparison to Portugal with 3 to 5 times the population (depending on sources). With Spain and Portugal actually having the same king from 1580-1640 or so, they obviously wouldn’t fight. Portugal found that is made more sense to expand into Africa and Asia and that is where they fought. They took with them the technology of Europe and used it against the Africans and Asians and were able to build a large empire. They had no desire to try to enter into Europe’s destructive wars when they could successfully trade with them using their empire in Asia. If you study their history, you might be able to argue that they were more successful than most if not all other European nations during the 16th Century.

There is probably a lot of skepticism to this but that is because we approach this with a Eurocentric slant. I will admit that I am still biased a bit that way, but found the history of the Portuguese conquests quite fascinating. The major problem is being source material is mostly in Portuguese. Therefore you will get folks like Paul discounting it. Whereas English history is accepted, and much history that has been translated to English, the Portuguese history is hard to find. The problem is now how to translate this country of 1.7 million to 2 million who conquered much of the world to a functioning army in this rule set.

One of the big concerns that have arisen is the complaint about Portuguese having Superior troops. I went through and complied how many superior troops each army can have. I can start to mention things like Swiss having 96 and nobody has a problem with that. I agree that they should be Superior. But you have armies like the Peasant Wars having 24, and if you take the Hungarian section of that you can have 80 Superior troops in a Peasant Wars army. Tatar can get 90 superior troops, Wallachian get 26, Border Reivers – 20, Japanese – 98, Ikko Ikki – 180, Ethiopian – 28, Hawiian – 32, Chinantec – 18, Zapotec – 32. Almost everyone gets Superior troops.

I think it is more interesting which armies do not get Superior. As far as I can tell

Irish and Confederation Irish; most versions of Scottish lists, Venetian lists (except for the earliest one where they can take a unit of Swiss. 7 versions of English lists from Later Henrician through the West Indies expedition. Add in the Portuguese who have 2 lists with no Superiors. In South America there are only 4 lists without any Superior troops. The Machupe who weren’t conquered until the late 19th Century. The Tupi who had remnants remain unconquered well into the 20th Century. (In fact I have a missionary friend who was chased for almost a day by a Tupi-people group tribe that didn’t want any non-Tupi people near their lands back in the 1950s.) Then there are the Colonial Portuguese and Colonial Dutch lists. So the countries that were defeated and conquered during the period these rules cover get superior troops, but the ones that stayed independent or defeated the superiors are only average. In Africa the only countries without Superior troops are the Zanj and the Portuguese. (The Portuguese who conquered many of these tribes, or at least took the land they wanted on the coast to set up their trading empire.)

Now let’s look at the armies that the Portuguese fought against and the way their battle infantry are armed. I am not going to look at cavalry for the reason that the Portuguese were deficient in cavalry and that is not the arm of their foes that they defeated.

Carib warriors bow swords
Amazonians warriors bow
warriors bow swords
Tupi warriors bow* Impact Heavy Weapon
Jaga warriors Impact sword
Kongo warriors Light spear sword
W African Forest warriors Light spear sword
Warriors bow
Japanese warriors spear spear
Hindu Indian warriors sword
warriors bow
Indonesian warriors light spear sword
Malaccan warriors Impact sword
Burma warriors light spear
warriors sword
Settled Arabs warriors light Spear sword
Oromo warriors impact sword
Funji warriors light spear sword
Zanj warriors light spear sword
Horn of Africa warriors impact sword
Warriors light spear sword

Colonial Spanish MF/HF musket/pike pike
Colonial Dutch MF/HF musket/pike pike
Colonial French MF Musket/arquebus

Discounting the Europeans, you have the exceptions of the Amazonians, Tupi and Japanese, every army has an impact weapon of some sort and a sword.

The Portuguese managed to defeat these armies, but in game terms they are extremely disadvantaged. The key being the sword. As a result of the way FOG works, the Portuguese might have an advantage in the charge being impact foot – but against quite a few of these armies they are even. Then the Portuguese are at a distinct disadvantage in melee. They are down a POA after impact. Whereas the “enemy” units would not be at a disadvantage agasint a Pike and shot unit unless that unit goes disordered, the Portuguese get the short end of the stick in every melee. Basically if we take FOG-R as our model, I think the Portuguese must have been using loaded dice to get their empire. (And you can ask Paul how good my dice have been with Pippo’s list. Loaded is not the term that comes to mind.) So I think just to make the Portuguese be able to compete against the armies they actually fought (and fought successfully I might add) we need to look at giving them swords.

Now what to do about that, and Pippo's list - to make them effective against whom they fought and not overpower them. I have some ideas about that, I will post as soon as I get back from the weekend trip that I am going on. I will also be ready to discuss this on Monday.

[Scrumpy]

Loaded to roll 1s....