Slitherine

Arguments for/against the Roman classification are located elsewhere.

Do the skilled swordsmen rules reflect the capabilities of these other types against their historical enemies?

I mean take, for example, sword-and-buckler men. In period, who are they going to get the extra POA against? English archers, billmen, and dismounted men at arms. I was under the impression that the theory was these guys were supposed to be breaking into pike formations. Odd that.

And I must be missing something altogether on the Samurai with this classification... my understanding of warfare pre the Togugawa shogunate was that the sword was a secondary sidearm.

Jhykronos wrote:And I must be missing something altogether on the Samurai with this classification... my understanding of warfare pre the Togugawa shogunate was that the sword was a secondary sidearm.

Swordsmen does not necessarily mean using a sword. It means decent fighter in melee. The samurai skilled swordsmen were so much better than those troops using what is classed as heavy weapon and those classed as decent in melee they should have a plus against them.

As for sword and buckler men ?????

But they are very manouverable to get around pike. Though I don't think its very useful. They would be better as a different troop type completely. No impact POA v Mtd, but ignore spear and pike POA v Foot. Or something.

Allways thought that SSw should have a POA against steady Pike / Spear, as historically it was their mission to attack pike formations, as said the arguments for romans are elsewhere, but they did perform well against pikes.

As it is I find sword and buckler BGs have an impossible odds against pikes, unless the terrain helps.

I agree, sword and buckler men seem to be rather pants against pike and I thought that they were developed as a counter to pike.

Pity the poor Condotta at Arbedo. They dismount as average HW and now lose to the superior Swiss halberdiers...

May be it is like the Roman? The Roman are reputed to do well again pike but they won only in bad ground. Their hability to actually close with the Pike under their shield, which is similar to the infiltration by sword and buckler unit from what I have red, have never been truely establish as efficient or superior to pike. So may be they were design to attack pike in rough terrain where they won't be disordered and would be highly efficient. Just a guess because those small buckler can surely be efficient for defflecting one or two pike but not the whole three rank of even a 20 men frontage.

The Roman interaction with pikes is just fine. Giving SSw the POA against pike will ruin this interaction. Why should veteran legions be better against pikes?
If you look on the battles the MRR fought against pikes, you will see they won them because (speaking in game terms) the pikes became disordered due to terrain, disrupted due to panicking elephants or the Romans used their superior number of drilled battlegroups to outmanouevre the pikes.

I vaguely recalled reading somewhere that the Sword and Buckler men were not thought by actual commanders to be all that useful against pike - though they did get lucky once or twice - and were replaced by other infantry in late 15th early 16th c Spanish armies operating in Italy once this became possible. They were considerably more popular among Renaissance military theorists who found justification for them by analogy to Romans fighting phalanxes.

It was my understanding that they largely fell out of use because no one was really willing to do it. As the Landsknechts were mostly mercenaries, fighting for pay rather than religion, etc., there would seem to be little incentive to volunteer. After all, double pay doesn't mean much if you're not around to spend it.

The Sword & Buckler men continued, however, in the Spanish forces into the Thirty Years War. They were more fanatical than the earlier Landsknechts, fighting for King and Religion. I cannot recall where I read it, but I remember the account of Spanish Sword & Buckler men gathering pikes points in their arms and impaling themselves to render the pikes useless. If this was ever a valid tactic, there are certainly only a limited number of men willing to do this!

GHGAustin wrote:. I cannot recall where I read it, but I remember the account of Spanish Sword & Buckler men gathering pikes points in their arms and impaling themselves to render the pikes useless. If this was ever a valid tactic, there are certainly only a limited number of men willing to do this!

And fewer as time went on I assume.