General Mounted Wing Strategy question

[hazelbark]

So having played all of of 3 games, I think I am getting a handle on parts of this and enjoy it. All have been in-period fights so lots of even POAs.

Right now it seems very infantry centric, with the mounted needing to work the flanks. Do others have better thoughts on this. Meaning other stratagems other than win the cavalry action and fall on the flank?

I haven't tested Cuirassiers into the Pike/shot yet. Every time I drove a foot unit toward enemy kuriassier, the expereienced player turned away.

It "feels" like the early period shooty pistol cavalry may be better able to deal with the later Pike/Shot formations.

[deadtorius]

Personally after several games I have not had much luck with my cav heavy flank vs the opposing cav heavy flank.
Artillery is deadly, and protected commanded shot is your worst enemy if you have to face it, you will need 5's to their 4's. I don't see much out of the pistols as both they and the carbine get a - vs foot so you still need 5's to hit either by shooting or in melee and in shooting they get to shoot back at you for 4's with likely more dice. Still seems kind of risky. In our last game I managed to finally destroy the enemies left and center, but it cost me both my cav units so it was more like trying to get the foot to the other flank quickly (and those moves were not quick as my general was way off to the rear having routed with the cav unit and my other generals were on the opposite flank so it was single move time) Fortunately I managed to finally kill that last enemy to win the game, barely.
So not sure exactly how to handle it other than loaded dice, my appalling death rolls are not keeping my army alive and fighting so far. As far as the Cuirassier are concerned we finally got them on the table in our last game, they rode up and shot away at my cav, unfortunately we missed the - POA so counted 4's as hits, and I don't see any protection vs musket so I don't blame your opponent for running away. We have another game set up this weekend so we shall see how it goes now that I have a better handle on proper POA's and die scores, not to mention a new army composition.

[rbodleyscott]

I don't see much out of the pistols as both they and the carbine get a - vs foot so you still need 5's to hit either by shooting or in melee and in shooting they get to shoot back at you for 4's....

No they don't, they need 5s too. (But it still isn't a good bet).

[deadtorius]

By gosh you are right, no wonder Blathergut keeps hammering my poor horsies so badly, keep forgetting its 5's not 4's. One of these days I will remember it. Still not sure I want to be standing about getting all shot up, seems like that expensive heavy armour is not going to save you too much from the muskets.
As for charging in, if you charge your cuirassier in to the pike and shot you go down to a - on impact. If they charge you you will end up +
melee you will be - versus the shot but even vs the pike, assuming the foot stayed steady after impact. If the foot dropped cohesion then you get your pistols back which makes you even on the shot and the pike. If through some miracle the foot was fragged then it goes in favour of the Cuirassier, you get + for pistol and will get + for armour vs the pikes. Still good luck getting them to that point if they start out steady, and you have to withstand at least 2 rounds of shooting before you can charge in on them. No wonder experienced players turn tail and move off from your foot.

[rbodleyscott]

Attempting to ride down steady pike and shot frontally with cavalry was not a good bet historically. The rules reflect this.

[Scrumpy]

My Dutch curassier struck lucky when they pursued a routing Swiss Keil into a disrupted Aventurier unit. They quickly fragged the luckless foot, before another curassier unit hammered in to applt the coup de grace.

This is the only time in the dozen or so games I have played that my mounted have taken on foot. The only time an opponent tried it, saw his mounted quickly regret it and break-off.

[bertalucci]

Er - yes - unless you can turn the flank you are in a hard place.

[timmy1]

Yes, I have seen mounted into foot frontally 5 times (excluding into command shot). If it is into Foot armed with only Arquebus it works, if they have sword or pike it does not end well.

To answer the original question, if you have a line of 6 base average pike and shot BGs a poor horse BG can make a nice support. Better horse can be used to exploit an internal flank or an external flank of the opposing foot if they are better than yours - Dave Allen (IIRC) at Britcon use some Polish Hussars to pin one flank of my Swedish foot that was trying to get into his Haiduks.

[Scrumpy]

It works against arquebus armed foot ? I would have thought that 2 dice at 5s the muskets get long range shooting wouldn't have made that much difference.

Or is there another reason that the arquebus struggle ?

[deadtorius]

Arquebus only shoot 3 MU so you don't get as many chances to shoot at the mounted with them. Also they can move within say just under 5 MU by a poodle hair, and your arquebus can't shoot at them as they are out of range for shooting but they can charge you next turn. So you either stand and wait or move up and pop a round at them, either way it seems the cav is safer from arquebus than muskets. At best you will get one turn of shooting with the arqubus musket you get 2 turns of shooting.

At Migs my one lonely down a base of muskets pike and shot foot unit was in a bad position where 2 cav were set up to charge frontally and into my flank. A last ditch hope we can save our behinds by shooting attempt ended with all misses at long range. I had totally forgotten about the square, which I have not used so far and that was game 3 of FOG R for us so stood as pike and shot in line, which I think was also disrupted.
End result was that they went fragged and then broke the turn they got double charged.

Blathergut and I keep forgetting its 5's to hit mounted so his many victories have been to due to dubious shooting up my horse with 4's, we are both at fault for that one. Now that I have it in my mind that mounted shooting and shot at is always 5's (except arty at 4's) perhaps my horse will finally manage to survive and I will see if how they manage foot, although protected commanded shot is a pain. Almost seems like you need to spend the extra points for amoured to try and even out the protected status in melee.

[Blathergut]

Mostly the battles went:

>horse vs horse (and the poodle lovers were the ones with the commanded shot shooting at 4;s )
>foot vs foot in centre

So I don't think the battles would have changed too greatly. The last one, with the early Parliament horse all having carbines, probably a bit, but there weren't vast numbers of shots.

It's actually tricky to get a foot BG into the horse.
>difficult to reposition a foot BG towards the flank
>at 3 bases wide, you leave a big gap if you do turn and move off to the flank

I do keep trying though.

I miss the superior foot BG of the NMA when running these earlier dudes.

[ethan]

Almost seems like you need to spend the extra points for amoured to try and even out the protected status in melee.

Armour advantages don't count against firearms in melee IIRC.

[Scrumpy]

Correct.

[hazelbark]

Attempting to ride down steady pike and shot frontally with cavalry was not a good bet historically. The rules reflect this.

I get this. I am wondering in game terms to what degree we will see fewer and fewer mounted until people figure how to use mounted to turn the flank.

It seems you need "sufficent" mounted to prevent your mounted wing from being too rapidly overturned.

[Blathergut]

Foot are horrible to try and turn and manoever with. You do seem to need to plan on one wing overcoming the other and then coming back in to aid your foot.

I've actually been taking more horse lately.

[timmy1]

I agree with Blathergut. It seems that the side with the best/most horse usually has the upper hand.

[SirGarnet]

I think you've just described in the course of the post how well the game follows history. Mounted can effectively turn and move in one turn, something awkward for standard pike and shot regiments. Mounted are so much more nimble than pike and shot foot that they can readily turn a flank and exploit any sizable gap.

[deadtorius]

If the horse survives to turn on a flank then yes I suppose that might happen. Have yet to see any of that in our games so far. Usually we end up with the cav on the flank getting into it and the melees last for most of the game, by the time we have punched through the mounted, or in my case my mounted finally gets punched through, the foot battles have pretty much decided the winner. So no luck on that grand turning the flank with the cav for us so far.

Armour advantages don't count against firearms in melee IIRC.

Armour does not count mounted vs shot in melee, it would still count vs the pike and mounted vs mounted. I have been dropping my armoured horse to unarmoured in our last few games and Blathergut has been coming in with poor armoured horse for the POA benefit hoping it will off set the poor rerolls, not to mention first time we have seen the cuirassier on the table. Those are not too pleasant to go up against with mounted. There you want the commanded shot beside you since armoured or unarmoured your up against better armour regardless and the commanded shot will even things out for you.

[Scrumpy]

It is a shame that the rules don't allow for Cavaliers etc to go charging off table in pursuit of troops for a set number of turns too. Would reflect Naesby etc.

[nickdives]

I think that the rules make if more difficult for Cavaliers to break off pursuit of routing troops.