"Principles of War Rules Query" Topic

The rules for shooting affect the entire group that is fired upon. However, the rules for melee only affect one unit touched by the attacker.
The renaissance rules melee example has Swedish horse attacking a tercio. Two shot units and the pike unit are contacted.
Why doesn't the entire tercio that is contacted take one damage? In the exchange the horse puts one damage on ta shot base.
The other issue is that the renaissance rules don't really explain resolving melee combat outside of the example. From that example it shows that one unit can touch multiple units but only affect one of them in combat. It seems a little odd.
Maybe the horse have a much smaller footprint on the battlefield than the base represents?
From what I understand three pike units clash with three other pike units. They add their melee value together, roll for damage and only one unit of the three recieve any damage.
It makes no sense. What are the other pike doing?
Shooting is explained so thoroughly while melee is almost a foot note. Maybe I misread something and melee damage is resolved exactly the same way as shooting.
I doubt the game police will come after me.

Does the game play well with larger forces? I want to do the Italian Wars and try to pseudo-accurately portray the forces involved. For instance a Pike block represents 1000 men (for my purposes). The Swiss at the battle of Fornovo were said to be about 4000 strong (allegedly). This means I would field 3 or 4 pike blocks. The Italians had 20,000 men! That's a lot of units.

Each commander has a command marker. Is this separate from his base or is the command marker actually his base? What happens if the commander gets outside of his command marker's range?

I really like PoW. I keep coming back to this game for some reason despite the somewhat convoluted rules. It has an old school flavor that I particularly enjoy. Please keep this message board here.

As noted in the other reply, the mechanism is actually the same for both firing and melee. For firing the inflicted casualties are allocated evenly for all units in the beaten path (i.e., all units would receive 1 hit before any would suffer a 2nd hit). For melee it's all units in contact. If 3 pike are in contact with 3 pike, only 1 unit would suffer 1 hit if only 1 hit was inflicted. If 2 hits were inflicted, 2 pike units would suffer 1 hit; and if 3 hits were inflicted all three would suffer 1 hit.

The game plays well with larger forces by having poorly motivated units represent larger numbers. For example, perhaps 2,000 per unit for your Fornovo Italians.

The command marker is separate from the commander's base as it represents the centre of the command. Otherwise it would be rather difficult for a commander to join units. The command marker is a mechanism to keep commands together. As far as I can tell nothing happens to a oommander the gets outside his command range. However, it would be reasonable to not allow a commander's base to voluntarily move outside commmand range of the marker.

Maybe you'll find this useful. I think it's from an earlier edition of the Renaissance PoW rules.

Tercios = 1,500 to 2,000
Infantry = 750 to 1,200
Skirmishers = 250 to 500
Mounted / Cavalry = 500 to 750

I looked at the lists to come up with a Fornovo at 40 points per side – with an approximate strength using the above as a guideline.

French:
CinC: (12 pts / 52 strength) – 4 mounted (3,000)
Swiss: (13 pts / 56 strength) – 4 pike (3,000) (from the Swiss list)
Main: (11 pts / 61 strength) – 1 artillery, 3 arriere bans, 1 skirmish foot (3,500)
Optional: (4 pts / 26 strength) – 2 mounted (1,500)

Total: (4o pts / 195 strength) – 16 units (11,000)

Italian:
CinC: (10 pts / 46 strength) – 2 mounted, 2 foot, 1 artillery (4,000)
Van & Main commanders: (6 pts)
Pike option: (8 pts / 50 strength) – 5 foot (6,000)
Mounted option: (8 pts / 46 strength) – 4 mounted, 1 skirmish mounted (3,500)
Stradiot option: (4 pts / 40 strength) – 4 skirmish mounted (2,000)
Foot Crossbow option: (4 pts / 40 strength) – 3 foot, 1 skirimish foot (4,000)

Total: (40 pts / 222 strength) – 22 units (19,500)

If, one used a 1,500 per foot on the Italian side it would be a total of 22,000. Close enough. Although the above list only has about 4,500 mounted for the French.

You might find more help on the Principles of War Yahoo group:

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