"What would be the ideal-sized pike block piece?" Topic

Hi all,

As some of you may know, I'm in the process of starting my own line of 3d printed plastic miniatures, Forward March Miniatures. The primary idea behind them is that they'll let you field armies at 1:1 figure scale, or as close to it as I can get, in 2mm. So, if you have an OOB for a battle, you can use my line of figures to design your table-top army to have the exact same footprint as the units would have on the day of battle. In other words, no abstraction is present on the table. What you see is what you get.

Here's a preview on my new blog: link

The line has begun with the 18th century through the late 19th centuries, but I've had a few people ask me about the Renaissance, specifically the ECW and the TYW. Thing is, I don't know too much about either period, although I am beginning to learn quite a bit. The Pike and Shot era of warfare has always interested me, in large part because of the impressive wood-cut carvings showing all of the formations.

I have a few questions and queries for you dyed-in-the-wool ECW/TYW players, to get me going in the right direction.

1) Were pike blocks solid? I've read that tercios at least had hollow centers filled with swordsmen, but the swordsmen were later dropped. Did the center remain solid? I understand that standards were often inside the pike blocks; about how many different standards would you see? Were they solid by the time of the ECW?

2) When sources say that the shot would withdraw "behind" the pike when threatened by calvary, does this mean to the rear of the pike? Or does it mean into the pike block, meaning between the ranks? Or does it mean they fell back beneath the reach of the pikes and continued to fire? If this last option is correct, is this why you often see the shot marching in a thin line around the perimeter of the pike block? That would make sense to me….

3) What would be more useful/ cool to you as a gamer: being able to buy a single pike block piece in different strengths- say, 300, 400, 500, 600 men square, or having it broken down in ranks and files (100 men wide by 12 men deep), or having 20mm blocks (for instance) that you could use to create your own formations? What would be a useful denomination or game piece if you wanted to model 1:1 pike and shot formations according to historical OOBs? Keep in mind that I can make multiple variations available. Right now my experimental model has 600 pikes on a 40mm x 32mm base, which is about correct for 1:1. A smaller block, at 20mm, would have 150 pike in 6 ranks.

4)… which brings me to my next question. What frontage did the pike deploy on? 20"-24" per file as in the Napoleonic era? Or were the formations looser? From what I've read the shot deployed six or so men deep with a man missing between each file; this will be easy to model, its essentially like my skirmish units.
If there is any additional information, if any useful primers on tactics in this period that I'm missing, please let me know. The more I delve into the Pike and Shot period the more determined I am to get it right in my range. Although I love the large Napoleonic field formations, I feel like a fully deployed pike army in 1:1 might be even more impressive.

Pike blocks in the ECW would be very different from the pike blocks of the Italian Wars, and different again from the tercio of the later 16C, but with the TYW pike block looking not quite so far removed. Essentially, ECW pike formed up in six ranks, in a solid block with the ensigns (usually one per company – could be up to 10 per regiment) in the centre; with the shot on either side, a unit looked like a thickish ribbon viewed from above.

I'm not sure how others more knowledgeable would regard it, but I found the Osprey "Pike Shot tactics" book helpful in understanding the Spanish, Dutch and Swedish formations of the 1550-1650 era.

See this Irregular Miniatures link for how they have done their 2mm pike & shot units:
link

I'm not saying that it is 100% accurate but it's how they chose to model them.

Great idea looking forward to this hopefully this helps some. I hope what little I have found in English on the TYW helps
1.It depends on the time frame. Italian wars maybe by the TYW pike blocks were solid. In TYW one standard for each company and this varied by country. I think one regiment had something like 12 flags. So there really isnt a standard on number of standards ;)

2.We don't know for the TYW I believe personally it was the first example they fell behind the pike as the cav went around but the second example makes sense too.

3. That's a tough one. Generally speaking Imperial Pike blocks could have up to 1000 troops 10 to 12 ranks deep. The Swedes and Dutch (I think) had smaller blocks of 100-300. I can see the merits of ranks and files but we are talking whats on paper. Blocks are nice but IMHO if you want accuracy then ordering ranks and files is neat. but that's just IMHO. We need Daniel S to comment on Swedish formations.
4. Again depends on the army. The Swedes did do 6 rank musketeers, the Imperialist probably adopted this later but in early war the shot would have been as deep as the pike so 10-12 ranks deep. As far as my little bit of knowledge there is no standard soldier/pike frontage like later wars. I would imagine they would clump as close as possible. There were several types of shot formations were there was a space between each file so after firing you walked to the back of the line and then there was a gap in each five or 10 files so the whole rank after firing would march around the group to the back of the formation. I like the space between each file but that's just me.

Hope that all makes sense would love to see 1:1 pike formations.

You didn't mention Cav but for some reason 3 or six ranks sticks in my head. Will have to do some research.

Ok-
Update-
The pike block arrived. 500 individual pikes on a 40mm square. It came out PERFECT. I might change one element of it, but the model is basically a success. I'll get some painted pictures of it up by this weekend. It's tough, clean looking and will look even better once I glue some company standards in amongst the pikes. You can see all 500 pike-tips. As much as I love the H&M models, this thing is by far the most technologically impressive model I've done to date (sorry for the teasers, I have some really urgent work to do tonight, I'm going to be up late-late as it is!).

This means that my renaissance expansion plans are going to go forward, as soon as I get the H&M sprue issue straightened out (which is basically now, that drama is fortunately in the past…)

The first thing to understand is that there was flexibility in 17th Century formations. Spacings between files was not the same at all times but changed dependant on the action being taken. Plus there were differences between different tactical styles at different times. For TYW Daniel S is definately the man to listen to. I'm not to bad on the ECW so let's take that as an example.

At the start of the wars Parliament used the Dutch system infantry forming in deep formations of some 10 or 12 ranks. Files of shot were deployed at one of three spacings open order, Order or close order. Commonly open order for firings by rank and order for manoeuvre close order when ranks were doubled for volley fire (not much used in the Dutch system) Pike tended to be in order or close order. Later Parliament moved to the more aggressive Swedish/German system deploying In 6 ranks using the same spacings but with more use of volley fire so more use of close order when the frontage was doubled (rear three ranks merge I with the front three ranks). Horse manouevered in 6 Ranks but fought in three in the later stages but like the foot used deeper formations at the start of the war to allow pistols to be fired by ranks.

This just the tip of the iceberg and I am generalising to a horrifying extent. You need to do some background reading. The Osprey is a good starting place the period drill books. Whatever you do there will be some fudge factors. I tend to use musket in blocks that represent the foot print of 6 ranks at order. Pike are 6 ranks at close order. Horse in three ranks at order but I would model currasiers at close order and light horse at open order. I don't have my notes to hand so can't recall the exact distances but google will give you that.