"Arcs of Fire - Why do we do it?" Topic

I've restricted this post to the Napoleonic and ACW boards but truth to tell it could as easily apply to any period where close formations of troop armed with missile weapons of some kind are employed and the rules we use to represent them.

The Arc of Fire has been around as long as wargaming, generally being deemed as 22, 22.5, 30 or 45 degrees from the unit front or part thereof.

My question is why we persist in this practice.

Over the years there have been some rules (and may still be) that have fire restricted to straight ahead, determined by the width of the unit. (In fact I use this with my home brew AWI rules) but for the most part angled fire is still prevalent. My current ACW and Nap Rules of choice both use it.

Now before people respond. I'm aware oblique fire was in various drill books and may well have been practised but so was Fire by Wing (half battalion) a far more effective method accomplished by advancing or refusing one part of the line. OK if you have three units to shoot at (front and off to both sides) this bit of a problem, however both in reality and gaming you are probably in for a licking anyway!

Artillery is of course a bit different, as a lot of rules and players don't have artillery deployed by individual sections let alone individual pieces and here I'm inclined to cut us all a bit of slack, to represent the turning of individual guns. However, even this probably needs to be tightened up so as to force people to restrict fire, or move the battery.

So, in overall terms, my question remains.

Why do we allow this practice and not force players to wheel their units to acquire the target as a whole, or employ Fire by Wing and plain old straight ahead shooting?

Which as far as I've been able to tell, was how it actually happened.

I hazard the opinion that we play games more than simulations. Rolling dice and killing things is at the heart of all these " pseudo-hunting" games we play.

Hello

I fully agree with you and in our SYW rules we only allow units to fire straight ahead. Movement comes ahead of fire in the sequence of play so you can adjust but only fire straight ahead afterwards. That is all the infantry were trained to do and in fact after the first volley they were mainly firing straight ahead at a target which they could no longer see due to the gunpowder smoke.

We all try to play by rules which reflect our concept of reality but this concept had evolved in recent years as more and more research is done but a lot of the wargame concepts from the 60s and 70s still linger and make sense to a lot of players.

Other examples are the use of skirmishers to absorb enemy fire, pirouetting columns through village streets, squeezing artillery batteries into cramped spaces without room for their impedimenta, overhead fire etc.etc.

These should be regarded as wargames conventions designed to speed up play rather than reflect reality so if you want to create a set of rules which are reasonably "realistic" they must be balanced with such conventions in order to ensure that the game works on the table.

By the time of the ACW, the units involved were well-trained in oblique fire. It was used on several occasions that I am aware of, with good effects. One of those that comes to mind is at Olustee, Florida, where the CS units concentrated their fire first on one wing of the federal forces, then shifted their fire to the other, in each case the units using oblique fire.

Also, certainly by the time of the Napoleonic wars, units fired volley by company as normal fire discipline. In the ACW, this was used, but more normally supplanted by "fire by file" with each company firing in this manner at the same time. It kept up a steady and effective, both physically & mentally, fire upon the enemy.

But firing by oblique, by the time of the ACW, was well-taught and used and I see no reason to remove it from games of that period, at least. Keep in mind that fire would have been from one unit to another.

Mostly since games are IGO/YOUGO and this helps account for the nature of that.

Massed archers, same principles apply. But it is far easier for rear ranks to copy the elevation and angle of those in front of them, who copy the men aiming from the front ranks who can actually see the target. There was no problem turning to quite extreme oblique (my rules allow up to forty-five degrees from center front) to reach a target.

Limiting to straight ahead only would actually produce more "gaming the rule" situations, and arguments along the precise line of a straight edge, which in turn would incite movement fudging to bring the front of the shooting unit into direct alignment with the intended target….

But firing by oblique, by the time of the ACW, was well-taught and used

Yes I think its fair to assume more leeway for the Civil War. For a start everyone was in two rank formation and on a lot of occasions the units were far smaller than their Napoleonic counterparts. The formation could well have been somewhat looser too.

Limiting to straight ahead only would actually produce more "gaming the rule" situations

Not so sure on that one. OK a lot of players could start a fight in an empty room so either method can be a problem. To me trying to eyeball a straight line when you already have a guiding edge is a lot easier than working 22.5 degrees to the horizontal.

If you are using 45 degrees that's not too bad, particularly if you use square bases.

Having said that massed archers are easier to accept than musket fire, as rear ranks can always fire overhead. Not that easy to do with black powder weapons! :o)

a lot of the wargame concepts from the 60s and 70s still linger

I agree and Arc of Fire feels very much like one of them to me.

I guess another couple of observations are, why have an Arc at all and just what are the numbers of degrees based on. How did authors arrive at these mystical angles?

None are quoted in drill books as far as I know. Its just Oblique Fire.

Dynaman8789's point makes a lot of sense – an arc of fire is an alternative to having enemy units stop as they pass so that they can take fire.

I feel I must point out the practicallities of oblique fire and anyone who has fired a flintlock will testify to this.
Imagine, if you will, when turning 45 degrees to your right to take an oblique shot. The frizzen pan on your musket is very close the the ear of the man on your right and liable to do him minor damage from powder burns and maybe sonic damage to the ear drum. Not a good idea. Firing to the left is not so much of a problem in that respect but if you are in the second rank you could still shoot the ear off the bloke in the first rank to your left if not careful or in a rush.

A similar scenario applies to artillery. No good battery commander deploys his guns in a dead straight line in case of getting flanked by an enemy battery, so unless your are the formost gun in the battery and have the freedom to turn to either side you are severely limited by any guns that are forward of your position to the right or left.
So while a small amount of latitude to aiming left or right may be acceptable to infantry or artillery, mainly it is a dangerous practice.

Just my two pence worth :)

I'm failing to see the point of this discussion. We are complaining because rules allow units to do what they actually did. Can someone explain it to this slow fellow?

I would say that an arc of fire represents the "reality" of shooting as opposed to an artificial movement constraint in which you are forced to fire directly ahead – not one degree left or right. If you have ever fired a musket or rifle, you'll note that it actually takes very little movement of the weapon's muzzle to cover an area of fire (say a unit of troops) at longer range. As your target gets closer and expands in your field of vision, you will correspondingly have to swing your weapon further and further to cover the entire unit until for practical purposes, you will be forced to fire at what is "approximately" in front of you.

The very concept of pointing your weapon at a target is "aiming" and this process requires an "arc of fire" to a greater or lesser extent. I suggest shouldering your weapon/whatever and swinging it through an arc to see what you can see. I would say that moving the muzzle of your weapon 22.5 degrees left and right of center is easily doable.

I have no evidence to back me up but no matter what the drill manual says, my gut feeling tells me that rather than ordering a facing change,the officer pointed out the target and the NCO ordered the men to fire – even if was 12.25 or 22.5 degrees left or right. At some point, a facing change would be required – but when?

The point (if there is one) in this rambling is that there are too many variables to quantify in accurately simulating reality on a game table and it then becomes the dealer's choice as to what "flavor" of tactics he is striving to achieve. I have played games where only the figures directly opposed to the enemy could fire – no overlaps – and I have played games with a 90 degree cone of fire and this sometimes changed the way things played out dramatically. I have enjoyed them both. YMMV…

It's a gamey thing to stop you

1. having to constantly make very minor adjustments to unit facings to concentrate on broader tactical issues.

2. having deal with people making gamey 'angle wangling' moves to get out of firing arc.

Personally, I like to decide broader grand tactics, to play the role of general rather than colonel for every unit. The 'arc' rule allows me to do this in an abstract way. The arc is the permissible minor tactical changes of face the colonel is making to his line without me actually having to physically move his troops.

I'm currently playing this game solo – it would take an age if I had to make such minor moves for this lot all of the time

Some excellent practical points there Hampshire Hog!

olicana,

I think one could also argue your points as a reason for dropping Arcs as well.

BTW: Thanks for the Pics and inducing Wargames Envy among those viewing this thread! :o)

I'm failing to see the point of this discussion. We are complaining because rules allow units to do what they actually did. Can someone explain it to this slow fellow?

The point is questioning if that's actually the case, or are we just following some made up convention from the dawn of modern wargaming, along with those old chestnuts like taking moral tests at 30%, 50% or whatever losses. That are based on the bright idea of the first person to write it down and not a lot else.

I think one could also argue your points as a reason for dropping Arcs as well.

Agreed, if you want to play every level of command at the same time, you should do so.

But my point, from where I'm looking, stands. I play big games that take several sessions of play – games lasting 7 -8 hours are common – so I don't want that level of detail, life is too short, I'll just play C-in-C and make believe, and trust, my officers are looking after the minor unit things.

In addition to the weapon considerations and the tactical flexibility of the formations already mentioned, I think a big reason for using fire arcs is that most rules use a time scale of 10-30 minutes or more per turn. Fire arcs are just another way to reflect the minor adjustments in facing or position a real unit would make in this time span without forcing players to make the same tedious alterations on the table top.

Got to agree with Forager there. My complaint is with allowing the same arc on the right side as on the left. With Flintlock weapons you don't want to arc your lock towards the bloke next to you. There's a large flash, gouts of flame and smoke, and bits of hard burnt powder that come out of/off the priming pan!!!

For artillery, I've always handled this by mounting the guns on bases composed of equilateral triangles. The gun is mounted pointed out from a flat side, and the "arc" is determined by the sides of the triangle. This yields an "arc" of 30 degrees to either side, and no measuring devices are required.

I would agree that infantry should be more restricted.

I also agree with Forager, and olicana for that matter. Tim adds another good point about the distortion of ground scale.

I like rules (Piquet, for example) that subsume that sort of detail and allow me to focus on generalship, as olicana says. We readily accept that "casualties" in war-games terms covers a variety of effects, be it men (dead, wounded, shirkers,etc.) or effectiveness (cohesion, morale, etc.), or even both, depending on your rules. We should just as readily accept that things like oblique fire (in a limited form) infer any necessary adjustments.

If you think a game mechanism is not plausible you should change it. Simple.

Phil
(if, of course, you can't convince your wargame friends maybe the mechanism isn't implausible after all … )

For line infantry I opt for straight firing only, so when a column is attacking, only those in direct line of fire are taken into account.

For artillery – it is a good question – the closer the aim – the less liklier oblique firing – and also the artillery must have a direct line of sight – not shooting through anohter friendly battery.

battle field tactics are a crucial part of generalship and those who ignored it – failed on the battle field.

It will make well a big difference whether you deploy in line or in column to the middle or right or left – those are vital decissions to make – a rule system cannot absume those points of tactics.

Napoleonic infantry units would only fire effectively with the first two ranks. Although well known, N himself formally recognised this in 1813 when he ordered a change from deployment in three ranks to two. Period regulations had also recognised the concept in another way by specifying the minimum number of three-deep files for a tactical sub-unit (twelve for the French, for example) and thereafter filling out from the third rank. The practical reason for effective fire in two ranks was the length of the musket. Don't forget that the formal spacing from the chest of the first rank to the chest of the second rank was 30" or less. Firing at an angle was practised and, from memory, was limited to a specific angles (15 to 30 degrees comes to mind). I even recall the Prussians having two limiting angles of fire: one to the left and a smaller angle to the right. 'Cloudy' presents a very useful practical opinion, above, from the point of view of a re-enactor. As for artillery, I am on less sure ground, but didn't battery CO's stagger the line of ordnance to limit the effect of incoming enfilade fire.

Essentially then, I would suggest there is nothing fundamentally wrong in principal with an angle of fire.

Allan

Just try a game that is not a skirmish with a "turn" of 10-30 minutes without arcs of fire.
I did… was invited, in two different places.
It was so silly you cannot just imagine. had to position horse artillery like they were early medieval bombards… they just could not hit much of anything, especially cavalry.

In the time span of a turn units can do minor adjustments, turn a bit etc. if not then you are doing 2-5 minutes turns and then forget about any battle unless you are very patient and have days! I am talking horse and musket / ancients.
The the arcs are often too wide in these periods games though it is practical too not to be fiddly; probably 22.5-30 degrees are Ok.

For artillery individual pieces were placed quite a long way apart – I think 15m was quite typical – farther apart than we usually see on the tabletop. That, and given that targets are quite a long way away, even at "close" range, surely makes up for the staggering of pieces.

If the staggering is 5m and the interval 15m, that is plenty of room to accommodate a 45 degree swivel. Problems arise at very close range, but that's another matter.

For all that I suspect that wargamers are too free and easy with use of artillery and selection of targets. I like to limit the choice to nearer over further, and towards the centre over angled.

As for infantry, I agree with the comments that this is a time-saving abstraction. The lower-level and shorter time interval being represented, the more this assumption has to be critically examined. Unfortunately when you get to the level where you are managing types of fire (platoon vs wing vs battalion vs file, etc), the difference between angling right and left, drill moves, etc, you usually only have time for one battalion per player.

Matthew

I think it is lazyness to position your troops, an art which seems to be forgotten and not furthered by rules, it doesn't matter how you place them, they will be effective anyway.

But that was just it in warfare, how to place your troops in that way that they have a good field of fire, that they are protected from enemy fire, that you keep reserves – etc.

When firing in rank and file you will get 60 hits out of 36,000 shots – on average which will be a fire fight of two or three hours and the catridge boxes will be empty.

As for placing of guns, there was a good thread on TMP on it, and seemingly they could be placed quite densly.

I wouldn't allow an arc of 45 degrees, being drilled on the drill ground or not. If you placed your artillery so badly, tough, to hit more efficiently you have to re-place your artillery or should have thought before placing it.

I wouldn't allow an arc of 45 degrees, being drilled on the drill ground or not. If you placed your artillery so badly, tough, to hit more efficiently you have to re-place your artillery or should have thought before placing it.

Assuming, in the time scale of the turn, that the guns are always exactly positioned 'on their bases' as depicted in your little vignette.

The base on which your model gun stands marks its position, and the space it takes up, on the table. But, it is a lifeless model of the gun and its crew – might, if they were a living thing, the crew be swivelling the gun on that base when they needed to fire at things to one side or another; swivelling a gun, on a well balanced carriage, is an easy thing to do.

It is merely a matter of what your imagination will allow your bases of model troops, in the time frame of the game turn, to represent.

OK geometry lovers, here's one to ponder on.

From the US 1863 Manual. School of the Battalion.

Item 33: The fire by company and the fire by file will always be direct; the fire by battalion, the fire by wing, and the fire by rank, may be either direct or oblique.

So the fire by the smallest parts of the battalion was always supposed to fire to their front. Who would have thought?

This being the case a lot of the detailed fiddling about people have chosen to assume is in the Arc of Fire rule wasn't there to begin with!

Which reminds me. I have had a lot of rules over the years and I can't recall one that has even remotely suggested that Arc of Fire is to cover the lower end detail of battalion drills.

That kind of suggests to me that this has never even occurred to authors and maybe thinking along those lines is a hefty assumption on the part of players to rationalize something the writer has just made up!

When you would have to re – deploy or just wheel to 45 degrees to create a direct line of fire, you would make your battery vulnerable to counter battery fire – from the flank, you would expose one and indeed tear a gap into your own line of battle, then how would you place the needed support unit of the battery ? Or the ones flanking it.
It would need more thought than to just place the artillery in the center of the table where it can blast in all directions.
I don't agree that it is just in pointing your guns differenty, you would have to align your gun teams as well etc.
So – if you all ignore this – of course it is easy to play assuming that those minor allocations are already delt with in the back ground of the rules, which I think they aren't – of course it depends what game a player likes to play risk or a more complex approach – simulation??

Which reminds me. I have had a lot of rules over the years and I can't recall one that has even remotely suggested that Arc of Fire is to cover the lower end detail of battalion drills.

That kind of suggests to me that this has never even occurred to authors and maybe thinking along those lines is a hefty assumption on the part of players to rationalize something the writer has just made up!

Authors of rules, in my experience, very rarely tell anyone what they were thinking. Things are stated as rules and, like the law, the legislator rarely feels the need to explain himself.

The criticism of war game rules by many, especially the older hands, is fact that the author has not explained the intention of a rule or why it written the way it is. In a set of rules, authors notes rarely encompass more than page; they, more often than not, stray in to the reasons why the rule set was written in the first place and who is to be thanked for play testing rather than explain the individual whys and wherefores of the rules contained; authors notes are laudable but usually useless to the rule set user.

Re-phrasing the question, did the author say that wasn't what his intention was?

45 degrees arc really is 22,5 degrees left and 22,5 degrees right, right? This is practically direct fire.

I follow these principles..

Artillery must fire..
1. Closest enemy directly in front. (45 degrees arc)

If such target missing, then with half effectiveness..
2. Closest enemy in 90 degrees (45 left, 45 right) arc for loose order battery.

3. Dense packed battery (Grand Battery, fortified battery) may allways fire only directly forward (45 degrees arc).

In the ACW oblique fire was certainly practiced, but it could only be done if the troops were firing vollies under the order of their officers. Most accounts indicate that all fire became independent pretty quickly, so firing at the oblique becomes rather difficult. OTOH, troops will almost always attempt to return the fire of an enemy who is shooting at them. So I'd say that the most reasonable rules would be to require infantry to fire at any enemy directly in front of them and only be allowed to fire at an angle if there is no one directly to the front.

At the risk of being accursed of being a curmuggen, I seriously disagree with many of the viewpoints expressed above. There are two major reasons- both based upon what I see as a complete lack of understanding about the actual geometries of the napoleonic units involved. Our "little green men" are representations and models of the actual units and we should not base opinions upon only the geometries that we see on the wargame table. These are NOT real and can lead to some silly conclusions. (I will have several follow-up posts here, which may take a few hours of days to get out).

First of all, many of our "it feels right" assumptions supporting a wide arc of fire are based upon modern, very dispersed infantry formations. An emplaced medium machine gun typically would have a 180 arc of fire and be expected to be able have a fire beaten zone out to 200-400 yards. An infantryman in a foxhole would have a 360 ard of fire. A battalion frontage would be 500 yards to 3000 yards. The napoleonic battalion might cover 100 yards. There is a difference.

The representation that we see in figures and even in historical deployment/movement diagrams are grossly out of scale. Cribbed from several sources (see the URL for the references) are the following pictures.

our wargame figures

a period explaination of evolutions
TMP link

and a picture of models at the actual width

Sorry, but (in the last picture) its clear that a right 30degree arc from the left-most soldier in line is going to be a lot different shot from the right most soldier in line. BUT if you look at the first figure (the model soliders) the conclusion would be different.

A soldier's musket, if not exceedingly ill bored, will strike the figure of a man at 80 yards; it may even at 100; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded…at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him; I do maintain…no man was ever killed at 200 yards, by a common soldier's musket by the person who aimed at him.¹

- British Col. George Hanger, 1814

Okay, lets reconsider. Might there be a difference between a battalion shooting at an enemy battalion that is straight ahead of it, versus a battalion that is 60 degrees or 45 degrees offset? (and we haven't even considered what the safe oblique angle was for the standard 3 rank formation)

Regarding Napoleonics; I don`t have arcs of fire for formed infantry units.

But in the big scheme of things, I do have the slightest of positive modifiers for overlapping units… because units rarely match 100% evenly in one to one combats, you may end up with a couple of overlaps.

To get the full benefit of the unit`s effect, wheeling out of line is possible, but potentially it is hazardous as of course as units doing this could be enfiladed or attacked in turn and may not manoeuvre successfully anyhow.

Re. the ACW. I think I`d agree with Scott and Trajanus that a supporting fire would be more effective and likely because a looser order was adopted.

Now this has to be treated with a lot of care

"A soldier's musket, if not exceedingly ill bored, will strike the figure of a man at 80 yards; it may even at 100; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded…at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him; I do maintain…no man was ever killed at 200 yards, by a common soldier's musket by the person who aimed at him.¹ "

It may be true at single targets but not as mass targets, this quote is the most misunderstood of all times.

Otherwise there are good points in 1968 billsfan photos of wargaming photos, in case you would have to bring in the whole line against a column – you would have to wheel part of your subunits into action – and by that opening gaps again in your battle line and making your sub units vulnerable from enfiladinng firing

So – in my view – no oblique firing whatsoever and only direct fire with maybe a slight overlapp – now that brings interesting questions about attacks by column, there the defenders fire power in case it is only one straight line – is not that much superior to the attackers in column

In ACW – what is the second rank doing shooting the heads of their first rank, when trying to shoot obliquly?

And again look at the wargaming unit in real scale, how would the front rank wingmen do an effective oblique fire?

"we should not base opinions upon only the geometries that we see on the wargame table"

I agree absolutly

The question of a "safe" angle interests me.

Earlier a possible Prussian angle of a certain number of degrees was quoted for oblique fire but to me that seems likely to have been more illustrative than real as it would have been hard to implement in action.

We have seen that in the Civil War there were occasions when oblique was permitted and when it was not. After I posted that extract I found a re-enactment site where people were in agreement that Casey and Hardee both said the same thing as the U.S. 1863 manual (not surprising as all three have the same heritage – Winfield Scott) but no one could really tell why these conditions were applied – other than safety.

It then struck me that as Scott wrote his first manual following the War of 1812 (he was around a long time!) and used mostly French practice as a guideline that he was carrying over Napoleonic practice too.

So as we know that Napoleonic armies had a whole bunch of "firings" including Platoons, which were smaller than the Civil War companies, then it's a reasonable supposition that these were for "direct" fire only as well.

So given that platoon and company fire was more prevealent than battalion or fire by rank in the Nap period, so as to avoid the whole or Half to one third of the unit being unloaded at anyone time, I t seems to me that direct fire was more prevealent just by the nature of things.

This suggests to me that Arc of Fire is OK as rule if your detail level goes to the extent of the actual different types of fire delivered but that "direct" fire is the default option!

Opps, my prior post didn't get edited in time (my computer hung up) , I wanted to include the results of simple geometry for the left-most and right-most soldiers in the battalion line. If the left most solider was firing at a target 100 yards in front of him, he would be firing at 100 yards range and with a zero oblique angle. Not so bad. The right-most soldier, firing at the same target would be firing at a range of 156 yards and an oblique angle of 50.2 degrees.

• One source for Brown Bess musket hits (unstressed environment) gives a 25% hit rate at 100 yards but only a 13.7% rate at 156 yards.
  
• pointing the muzzle of your musket 50 degrees to one side, from the 2nd or 3rd rank, is going to either blow the head off one of your mates or blow your frizzle pan flash into one ear and out the other
  

A lot of the battalion's fire would be useless unless the target was directly opposite. Restricted and prohibited oblique fire as well as much fire being at longer range.

So might we have different fire effects?

Scott, I know in JR2 there is a primary fire zone that is directly in front up to the limit of normal weapons range. 5" for rifles. The unit must fire at anybody in the primary fire zone. I don't know if JR3 has similar rule.

I agree that with the ACW, the situation bears quite a bit of different thinking. My wild-asked speculations include:

• they used two ranks
  
• when in deeper rank situations, they readily passed up loaded muskets to the first ranks
  
• a percussion cap firing system could be jiggled a lot more and still work
  
• the formations were much looser with fewer files per length of frontage, so greater oblique angles could be used.
  
• with soldiers who were more flexibly trained (and willing to sass the officers), they would easily pop out slightly ahead of others to get a clear line of fire
  
• the ACW rifled musket had a lower muzzle velocity but a heavier streamlined slug, which went straighter and could be shot at longer ranges (where the light round, ping-pong ball projectile fell to earth). You could effectively engage targets at longer range, which made restricted aiming angles less of a factor.
  

I will use 45 degrees angle from a regiment for ACW but much less than that for napoleonics.

this kind was taught in drill regulations, but in reality, not even the first rank did kneel – hardly even in the 7YW, all this oblique firing, in any case, is only possible when you do a very strict and controlled volley firing, which wasn't usually the practise but the fire at will, the second rank can only shoot when the front man openes up a gap in his loading procedures and puts his shoulder a bit oblique, otherwise one has to shot into the air, in Napoleonic time the smallest soldiers stood in the second rank, how on earth would you fire obliquley – usually you would use the space at the right shoulder of your front man to stick your musket through – by a small side step, it wasn't even easy on the drill ground – and even less in real combat

TMP problems today. After trying to make a very small amendment to previous post, the system replaced the whole thing with somebody else's post on a totally different topic. So I'll have to start all over again, and try to get it right first time!

It isn't just wargamers that haven't got to grips with this. Historians from Oman onwards (and perhaps before Oman) make a big deal out of the supposed fire superiority of British two-deep lines over French columns. So if two battalions of 600 men faced each other, the British would have 600 muskets, against the French 67-133. They will also like to say that the British held fire until the range was short (say 50yds or less). But at this range the only way the British flanking platoons could get involved was by wheeling round – a dangerous manoeuvre.

Thank you 1968billsfan and von Winterfeldt for binging a dose of reality to proceedings.

It makes sense of one bit of evidence. The longest firefight between British lines and French columns was with the Fusiliers at Albuera. But the British only inflicted 20% or so more casualties than the French (from memory) – and it was superior stamina that was the critical factor.

What a lot of nonsense gets written in supposedly authoritative histories!

Authors of rules, in my experience, very rarely tell anyone what they were thinking. Things are stated as rules and, like the law, the legislator rarely feels the need to explain himself.

The criticism of war game rules by many, especially the older hands, is fact that the author has not explained the intention of a rule or why it written the way it is.

In a set of rules, authors notes rarely encompass more than page; they, more often than not, stray in to the reasons why the rule set was written in the first place and who is to be thanked for play testing rather than explain the individual whys and wherefores of the rules contained; authors notes are laudable but usually useless to the rule set user.

Re-phrasing the question, did the author say that wasn't what his intention was?

All true, sadly. Over time it looks more and more like not a matter of what were authors thinking but were they thinking at all!

There are exceptions, of course.

However, the more I consider the Arc of Fire as an example the more I think people have just followed suit along with a load of other things like a 6" move for infantry!

TMP link

Okay, looking at Napoleonic rank and file spacing, basically from Imperial Bayonets but also in other sources we can find the following. Lots of information about the file spacing (I'll use the typical French spacing of 26", which is elbow to elbow). A bit shaky on the "pitch" for the spacing of the ranks. Often seen is 0.325meter between ranks (12.8 ") but nothing really on the room taken by the body & equipment of the soldier- front-to-back. The deepest part of a man's body is typically 11.5" (oddly enough that is the length of the foot). 12.8" plus 11.5" = ~ 24". Sometimes seen is the distance for the pitch of "one pace", which is often 30". ANYWAY, for the purpose of calculation, I'm going to say that the file spacing is 26" and the rank spacing is 30". (If you have better numbers, let me know, but the overall conclusions are not going to change much.

Imagine a regular array of dots, with the left-right spacing at 26" and the front-back spacing at 30". (representing the beanie on the top of the soldier's shako). If the rear soldier obliques his musket to 40 degrees from straight ahead and pulls the trigger, then he will blow the head of the guy to his front right. 0 degrees straight ahead, the guy in front of him. Let's say he splits the difference and points it so it is 13" from each of those front rank guys. Then he can fire obliquely within a narrow arc at 23 degrees deflection. If he points the muzzle 6" to the left or right, then he will get a musket butt in the middle of the forehead.

If he takes a sidestep 13" to the side, then he can fire straight ahead with about the same separation from his front rank friends. I think this is about the only thing that Napoleonic close-formed troops did. Notice in Nafinger's book that there is almost nothing said about oblique fire. Perhaps only two narrow arc of fire (3-4 degrees centered around 23 degrees deflection?) were possible and those rarely used. It appears that having the first rank kneel and the second rank fire over them was very rarely used. Its a lot safer down there and the sargents are behind the 3rd rank!

Conclusion: for napoleonics, they fire straight ahead.

A hobby horse for myself for tomorrow is the consideration of what this means for columns attacking lines. I have to go outside today and dig up the last of the leeks from the fall planting because we are getting a hard freeze tonight.

What I see that has been missed in the understanding of a column attacking a line are the following five factors.

• As illustrated in my first post above (4:17AM), the part of the line that is far from the impact point is firing at a significantly longer distance than those soldiers seeing each other eye-to-eye

• the second rank who are NOT eye-to-eye (who are also getting the reloaded muskets from the unfiring third rank) has only a limited ability to fire at the approaching line because that column soon becomes "shadowed" by the men in the front rank. Sorta like the attackers getting close enough so that the incoming defensive artillery is going beyond them.

• even the men in the first rank who are far from the point of contact, eventually become squeezed out from being able to aim at the attackers. Certainly at the actual point of contact, the first rank of the end of the line unit are unable to fire directly down the front of their own unit! Also, (and I think the readers are awake enough to catch this one ahead of time), our toy soldiers are much much deeper in depth (front to back) than the real solders in scale. Figures might be 25mm (God's scale 1/64),,,, 15mm (human's scale, 1/107),,,,, 6mm (XXX, 1/285) but the ground scale is something like 1"= 100 yards or 1/1800. The tail of the attacking column will stick out ~ 20 times further than it should and it looks like the entire line can shoot at it when the units collide.

• perfectly straight lines and perfectly flat terrain was rare and there were significant irregularities on the sub-division level scale on the real battlefields. Columns are very maneavuerable and could and did snake around using depressions and corpses of woods to escape artillery fire and detection. Attacking at a point or apex of a line would reduce the fire received. Attacking across a up or down slope would reduce the fire received. Shall we say something good about the value of experienced line officers?!!

But more about these later, as my supply or quarters for the computer is almost gone.

1968billsfan, you have made some really useful points here by illustrating the line in one to one and considering the angles.

My take on the column versus line is that the column should be looking for gaps in the line caused by artillery and skirmishing rather than just bear down on the line and hope to force a way through. The key to Wellington's defensive tactics is lateral movement to place the battalion across the direction of the advance of the column. This is very evident at Bussaco in the defeat of Reynier's corps. At Waterloo the use of brigades in double column is perfect in allowing lateral movement and deployment.

Looking at this a different way, a 600 man battalion would be 300 men wide. Fudging it, that means the battalion would be 300 yards wide. If a smoothbore musket was only accurate to 100 yards, that means the battalion could only fire 1/3 of its width to the front effectively. Doing a little math, that means that the maximum number of troops who could use flanking fire at 45 degrees without having a better target to their front would be 140 men. Suddenly it seems the whole argument is a little picayune…

If you are looking for a simulation then fire straight ahead is fine. You've plenty of justification and historical examples above to convince me at least.

However, the level I want to play at (15mm and 1-20 figure ratio with lots of units and a 20-30 minutes per turn time frame) then as JCtheFrog and others have pointed out, it is a game mechanism to allow the internal movement of sub-units without having to actually move anything.

In the many years I've been playing Napoleonics, I've looked at all the various sets and mechanisms, and I keep on returning to how I want my games to look rather than a strict method of simulation. Having settled on the aesthetics I'm happy to live with a little rationalising.