Slitherine

Hi,

How are Scutarii treated currently? Mediums or perhaps heavy for the veterans in Hannibals or other long standing armies? What about Celtiberians?

Thanks in advance

John O

OK no answer on the stats how about basing? 3 per base or 4 per base?

C'mon guys throw me a bone.

John O

Spanish Scuttari: Medium Foot.
Celtiberian Scuttari: Heavy Foot.


You can base MF as you like with 3 or 4 miniatures per base. HF 4 Miniatures.


I think that is good classification, the Spanish infantry demonstrated that he was able to hold a close combat with Roman legionaries, but not too much prolonged.


David.

Thank you.

Why would Celtiberians be heavy? AFAIK there's no particular case for them wearing any ore armour than anyone else.

They might be more ferocious, or superior or something like that perhaps?

Heavy Foot is not a description of their armour - both Celtiberians and other Spanish are Protected in this regard.

Celtiberians are Heavy rather than Medium foot so that they can be disadvantaged in broken ground comaped to Romans as mentioned in Livy and it also makes them better in a couple of ways than other Spanish.

Heavy Foot is not a description of their armour

Why weren't the descriptions of foot formations used called; close, loose and open. It would save some initial confusion and be, IMHO, more descriptive as there are lots of heavy, unprotected foot and probably medium, armoured foot.

philqw78 wrote:Why weren't the decriptions of foot formations used called; close, loose and open. It would save some initial confusion and be, IMHO, more descriptive as there are lots of heavy, unprotected foot and probably medium, armoured foot.

IMHO that is an excellent idea. It would definitely convey the apparent troop types and terrain effects more clearly.

Cheers,
Scott K.

philqw78 wrote:

Heavy Foot is not a description of their armour

Why weren't the decriptions of foot formations used called; close, loose and open. It would save some initial confusion and be, IMHO, more descriptive as there are lots of heavy, unprotected foot and probably medium, armoured foot.

Because loose order infantry did not really exist as a separate entity in our period. We use the Medium Foot category to designate troops less dependent on their formation than other types such as hoplites or pikemen, but the actual formation adopted tended to have the same intervals as those adopted by those troops classified as heavy foot. Calling them loose formation would therefore be historically inaccurate.

philqw78 wrote:
Why weren't the descriptions of foot formations used called; close, loose and open.

Only in the mind of wargamers after Phil Barker introduced LMI/LHI into his rules

But surely 'loose formation' is grammatically correct. They were reasonably free to flow around minor obstacles, they were less restricted; etc. However they were close enough together to fill these gaps when possible or necessary. I'm not saying that they called it loose fromation but what they did had that effect.

The point is that their formation was no more loose than the so called close formation troops - with the exception of the synaspismos of the Makedonian phalanx, and that wasn't the normal phalanx formation.

Less cohesive may be a good description, but not loose which for wargamers has connotations of wider spacing.

Heavy has connotations with armoured and light with unarmoured though. Medium is just between the other two.

Possibly then: Close, Intermediate, Open?

rbodleyscott wrote:

philqw78 wrote:

Heavy Foot is not a description of their armour

Why weren't the decriptions of foot formations used called; close, loose and open. It would save some initial confusion and be, IMHO, more descriptive as there are lots of heavy, unprotected foot and probably medium, armoured foot.

Because loose order infantry did not really exist as a separate entity in our period. We use the Medium Foot category to designate troops less dependent on their formation than other types such as hoplites or pikemen, but the actual formation adopted tended to have the same intervals as those adopted by those troops classified as heavy foot. Calling them loose formation would therefore be historically inaccurate.

So, again, why then are Celiberians (and for that matter Romans) 'heavy'? Surely, as primarily individual fighters within a close formation they should be 'medium'? Certainly that is the impression I get reading Polybios's comparison of legion vs pike phalanx.

Indeed, if you follow the currently fashionable view of Van Wees regards hoplites, it can be argued that hoplites prior to the Peleponnesian War, could also be 'medium' by this definition.

cheers

Benny

Or still more possibilities to come

benny wrote:
So, again, why then are Celiberians (and for that matter Romans) 'heavy'? Surely, as primarily individual fighters within a close formation they should be 'medium'? Certainly that is the impression I get reading Polybios's comparison of legion vs pike phalanx.

Heavy does not mean that they cannot be good individual fighters.

The basic problem is that we are applying labels to distinguish troops that the ancient writers just don't provide us with labels for. This is partly a function of the vast time range the rules are covering so that we need labels to lump together troops.

Basically there are 3 types of foot in AoW - these might be called cohesive battle line troops (HF), less cohesive battle line troops (MF) and light infantry (LF). I guess if anyone can come up with nice, easy, general terms with no baggage for the first two the developers would be very glad as the current HF and MF carry a lot of connotations.

For troops who rely upon their formation: Close, Formed, Arrayed, Ordered. Heavy only really fits in a C19th drill manual sense

For those who do not necessarily rely upon their neighbours but prefer to close up when possible: Amorphous, Intermediate, Unformed

For troops who rely upon having distance between them: Open, Skirmish.

I prefer Formed, Amorphous and Skirmish

Just because light, medium and heavy sound like armour rather than formation. Other than that: Heavy Infantry march at 116 paces a minute, 1 pace between ranks and files. Light infantry march at 160 paces a minute, 2 paces between.

nikgaukroger wrote:

benny wrote:
So, again, why then are Celiberians (and for that matter Romans) 'heavy'? Surely, as primarily individual fighters within a close formation they should be 'medium'? Certainly that is the impression I get reading Polybios's comparison of legion vs pike phalanx.

Heavy does not mean that they cannot be good individual fighters.

With respect, that was not really my point.

Richard said "We use the Medium Foot category to designate troops less dependent on their formation than other types such as hoplites or pikemen".

You said something about "medium" troops being "less cohesive" than, say, phalangites even if still as closely formed.

This seems to me to include both Celtiberians and Middle Republican Legionaries, neither of whom I feel can be categorised as fighting in the same sort of cohesive formations as hoplites or phalangites. Individuals in their formations had much more freedom of movement, were less constrained by their neighbours and basically more flexible but less 'cohesive'. Surely that is the essential difference between the manipular legion and the pike phalanx? Have a read of the Republican Roman section of Lendon's 'Soldiers & Ghosts' and you'll see where I am coming from. Lendon suggests Roman maniples didn't even form up in precise ranks and files, just informal (but highly motivated!) blobs.

Perhaps it is just the way you are paraphrasing the definition but IF "heavy" requires a tight cohesive formation then I question how Celiberians and Polybian Romans can be graded that way.

It may be that all you need to do is clarify what you want the essential difference between "heavy" and "medium" to be.


cheers

Benny

benny wrote:This seems to me to include both Celtiberians and Middle Republican Legionaries, neither of whom I feel can be categorised as fighting in the same sort of cohesive formations as hoplites or phalangites.

Indeed, and (under the rules) phalangites suffer additional disadvantages in terrain over and above those suffered by other HF.

Celtiberrians are recorded as being at a disadvantage vs Legionaries in rough going by someone of the era IIRC - however I also seem to recall it was because of their lack of individual armour as much as anything.

It's a big call to make on scanty evidence - not that that has stopped rule writers since the beginning of time of course.....

"Loose" order may have been an invention of WRG/PB way back when (5th ed??, 4th??) but the controversy was not the term - it was that they were given a different frontage, hence got less figures fighting. It was felt, rightly IMO, that they occupied the same frontages as any otehr troops - hoplites could be in close or loose order, so couple psiloi.....

DB* and AoW and other rules now use elements rather than individual figures so that particular axe to grind has been well and truly blunted IMO.