"close order Celts" Topic

Is there any consensus to how packed a Celtic Warband would be?
DBA (my newly preferred set of Ancient rules) indicates a fairly spread out array with generally 3 figures a base.
How does this accord with Roman accounts of overlapping Gaulish shields sometimes pinned together with a fortuitous thrown pilum?
This is academic to me. Ive decided to base 4 an element but Im interested to hear what the forums experts think.

I think they typically massed more than 36 to a battlefield, at the very least. So 4 per base sounds about right. I can't imagine that they would be able to maintain a super tight formation if they were running, but you never know. It is pretty likely that they didn't run, or only ran at the last instant or something.

The Greeks alegedly ran into combat at Marathon and if the phalanx is as dense a formation as we are led to believe then it may have been possible to do so even without much training.

Pictor's has it right.

There were 48 of the beggars.

IIRC DBM specified Gauls as either all WB(O), 4 to a base, or all WB(F) at 3 to the deeper base. DBA doesn't have the option, but if you prefer the 4s, why not?

I made a mistake.

In view of the forthcoming 28mm plastic Celts at extraordinarily affordable prices, the correct answer is 290 bases with 43 figures on each. You may have to crowd the stands a little.

MJS (sockpuppet for unnamed plastics manufacturer)

The new DBMM list draft, following the kind of evidence Raducci gives, prefers close packed 4 to a base.

Most people who played Gauls in DBM based their run of the mill warriors 3 to a base and their Gaesati 4 to a base. DBMM has changed this round so players with Gallic armies will have to rebase all their warriors :(

If you are basing for DBA I would go with 4 to a base.

All of mine, so far, have been 4 to a base, but I've gone for a 60x30 deep so that I can position them irregularly. I often base 8 on a 60x60.

There are quite a lot of accounts of them forming up in dense masses; Vercellae springs to mind, where they formed up in a square 30 furlongs a side IIRC.

Simon

The packing of Gauls, it will apall you to learn, was the subject of a controversy in a highly esteemed* Publication that became quite … Bitter… a few years back.

Pack 'em in and be done. When did you last count the number of figures on an opponent's element? In DBM i can see why, but in DBA? Why?

*People who esteem that sort of thing will find this the sort of thing that they esteem.

Pat

Hey Mexican Jack, whether the figures are plastic and metal they still have to be painted! So cheap plastic figures only mean we can buy more figures to sit in our cupboards, not that we can afford have units with lavish numbers.

The Celtic warband was not a well ordered military unit so would have had some inherent flexibility. Celts were probably a bit more spread out when participating in wild charges but they were also on occasion able to form up in something akin to a shield wall, particularly the eastern Celts or Gallatians. It was probably in such a defensive mode that the pilum through overlapping shields type of incident occurred.

As Big Red Bat sagely notes,DBA uses a larger base for Warband than it does for spear or blade so even if you use the same number of figures as the more ordered troop type they are defacto more spread out.
I gues Pat is right that this "How many Gauls can dance on the head of a pin" type of discussion is pointless but its fun. Or at least I enjoy reading the learned responses.
Adster your saying that in attack they would fan out some?
Hard to base for attack & defence but I take your point.

You might want to check out "The Barbarian Invasions" by Hans Delbruck. He has an interesting chapter called 'Germanic Warriorhood' that talks about warrior formations.

- Greg

Is it in English? My Germans broke.

Yes.

ISBN 0-8032-6584-0 (set)

ISBN 0-832-9199-X (v 1)

ISBN 0-8032-9200-7 (v II)

I would think it is still in print.

- Greg

ThanX Greg.
I'll look for it. Im trying to build my understanding of Ancients.

"Adster your saying that in attack they would fan out some?
Hard to base for attack & defence but I take your point."

True I suppose that is where overly simplistic rules fail to cope with the complexities of ancient warfare. DBx tries to do this by including all the characteristics in one largely unsatisfying "Warband" formation. Pseudo-skirmish rules such as WAB should perhaps have barbarians charging in waves or in wedges with the keenest warriors at the front.

As Big Red Bat sagely notes,DBA uses a larger base for Warband than it does for spear or blade so even if you use the same number of figures as the more ordered troop type they are defacto more spread out.

Not so. Warbands have the exact same basing as spear and blade: loose formations of three on 15/20mm bases (3Wb, 3Sp, and 3Bd) and dense formations of four on 20/30mm bases (4Wb, 4Sp, 4Bd).