"Integrated or separate Pike/Shot stands in ECW rules?" Topic

Just curious what is your preferred treatment of Pike & Shot infantry formations in ECW rules:

1) Integrated Pike & Shot stands like Polemos or Basic Baroque, with rules dealing with possibly different pike:shot ratio?

2) Separate stands of pike / shot units like DBR or Pike & Shotte with rules dealing with formations made up of both type of stands?

Depends on the rules, though these days I am more inclined to treating a unit as a unit, whether consisting of multiple bases or just a single base.

If its a big battle, then integrated stands, in smaller actions my stands represent companies and for simplicity they are all shot or all pike. So the answer is both or all of the above.

1. would be my choice as I do big battles but as LtJBSz says if I were to be gaming smaller actions I'd prefer the 2nd option.

1 for big battles. I recall rules where once in close, each side's pikes would chase the other side's shot around. That's a tad silly.

Both here too, though I don't do much small action.

Peter Pig "Regiment of Foote" uses about 6 bases per regiment. Ecah base has 3 to 4 men on it. Uses 3 x 3 cm bases.The ratio of pike to shot can vary, but for most it is 2 pike and 4 shot. Players remove any base they like as the casualties accumulate. Although pike fight better a player needs shot to impact at a distance. Thus it "evens out". Thus the regiment statsys as a single entity.
Hope that adds to the discussion.

Martin.

I'd go 1. with ratio. I'm yet to find any significant number of references for musket running and pike staying or vice versa in pitched battles. They stand, die and fly as units.

Only in small company actions (skirmishes) do you hear of anything else, and pike don't seem to have played much (if any) part of them – from my reading, it nearly all seems to have been done by musketeers alone. I kinda wonder if the pike was an almost exclusively 'pitched battle' weapon. In patrols and raids, pikes must have been somewhat cumbersome, if not completely useless. Perhaps they left them in camp and just joined the musketeers as sword armed infantry?

The rules we use alow for indipendant pike and musket stands, but you can attach musket to pike stands. I think it works well.

We are just finishing our module for Pike and Shotte for Hex Command Gunpowder and have the following conclusion: A single stand of 6 figures for muskets, with a single stand of 3-4 pike dudes. That's a unit. Some pikes existed without muskets; some muskets without pikes. imagineimage dot org