"Pike and Black Powder" Topic

If you don't like/play 'Black Powder' now would be the time to hit the back button – nothing to see here.

I am aware Warlord do Pike and Shotte – I actually have them. On an unplayed reading I find the treating of pikes and musket as separate units clumsy, and it means you need lots of figures for few regiments.

An idea I played with before it came out – needs playtesting, but I'm throwing it out there as a quick and dirty conversion to ECW

Units are 3-5 bases (mine are 30mm, so fit a cm rather than inch measuring scale- define base as you see fit for our basing.

The unit's stamina is the number of bases it has

Morale is fixed (ie 4+ as per normal, etc)

Musket Get 1 Shooting and 1 Hand to Hand per base
Pike gets 2 hand to hand

Thus a unit of 3 musket and 2 Pike are Stamina 5, Shoot 3 dice, hand to hand 7 dice.

A pike stand is the 'Square' rule.

Interesting ideas. We play Pike and Shotte as written. Have to say I agree with you re treating shot and pike as separate units. It can lead to some odd situations, where one element has suffered morale failure, whilst its companion elements are gungho to attack. I also dislike the fact that units can charge through others to attack; it has been justified to me on the basis that, given the scale of the game, there would be time for the attacking unit to relieve the front unit and then mount its attack. I am not convinced. One of our club members is currently writing a variant of the "Twilight of the Sunking" rules ( published by Pike and Shot Society) as a possible fast play ECW game. We currently use TotSK rule variants for the period 1688 to 1715 and have had some cracking games.

We play black powder a lot. We dropped pike and shot. The way they have the units set up is not the way pike and shot worked together during a battle.

We have played Pike and Shotte using Cuchalann's unit ammendments; the pike and shot components are combined into one unit of 24 to 32 minis. Jeff and I found them to work very well; Murdoch not so much but his objection is more about how the rules abstract certain things much like steamingdave47's opinion on units charging through each other.

We do this. We use pike and shot for Eastern Ren warfare but don't like it for Western Europe. It does work well for the 1500s, I find but not the mid 1600s.

The pike are too powerful and tend to go smashing off on their own.

"The way they have the units set up is not the way pike and shot worked together during a battle" – unless your hiding your age well, 45th, you can't possibly know that.

There are multiple interpretations of how pikes and shot supported each other, and examples of each to choose from. Surely it is a case of horses for courses.

I have yet to play P&S for ECW, and will probably play it after Baroque. But I like it for early 16th century games, and feel confident it would adapt well to later periods. It is after all, a tool box, as outlined in the introduction I believe.

There are multiple interpretations of how pikes and shot supported each other, and examples of each to choose from. Surely it is a case of horses for courses.

I have been wondering about this since I got interested in the era. A lot of criticism toward various rule sets revolves around "not the way pike and shot worked together" but no one really can provide specific evidence of exactly how they supported each other. I accept that they did- contemporary drawings and drill manuals show the regimental components deployed for what would be mutual support but how exactly was this done once battle was engaged?

I have yet to play P&S for ECW… (I) feel confident it would adapt well to later periods. It is after all, a tool box, as outlined in the introduction I believe.

Exactly. If you don't like a rule, drop it, change it, whatever.

Yep, was not there. Could not really know from actually experience. But I do read, limited to ECW era, and accounts of battles lead me to understand that the two arms fought in support of each other. But that's it, so please disregard my thoughts, as they are clearly wrong.

Codstikler – where are those amendments?

@steamingdave47

Here is a link to a brief article by the co-author of Twilight of the Sun King on converting the rules to Thirty Years War, might be of some help for your club member.

link

Look at the Louis xiv period at the back of the Pike and Shotte book. The Pike Company rule works perfectly well, no need to alter anything

Cheers
Ian

Warlord will be publishing an ECW supplement for Pike & Shotte. It will have rules amendments accounting for combined pike and shot units.

Codstikler – where are those amendments?

+
Here is part 1:
TMP link
Here is part 2:
TMP link

When we played we used the Infantry amendments but not the cavalry amendments as it was our first game and the amendments seemed slightly more complex than the infantry ones.

Cuchulann's group also did away with the Hedgehog rule and just disallowed cavalry a frontal charge on infantry. A couple of things this changes is that the foot could still have support as they would have flanks and a rear. It also means if stranded they could be charged in the flank or rear which may not be an accurate representation of the mutual support that pike and shot offered each other although he does offer a "sort of hedgehog " rule which should also work well.

Alternatively you could still allow cavalry to charge a unit of foot in the front but apply the effects of the hedgehog rule if they did.