"MacKay's Regiment in 28mm for Breitenfeld" Topic

This regiment is representing MacKay's, during the initial, 1630 Swedish expedition into Germany which led to Breitenfeld. The regiment is recorded as having been fully equipped by the Swedes upon their enlistment (after Danish service) and to have been clothed in 'Scots Kersey'. I've taken the liberty of assuming that to have been in Hodden Grey and so, with the very Scots flags, this lot could easily pass for a Covenanter (spit!) regiment, straight out of boot camp.

The pike block has full armour in the front ranks, back-and-breast only in the rear. Colours are plain: I know the colonel's was white, but the detail escapes me.

In order to enhance the uniform appearance, I've gone for only three poses with the musketeers: firing, loading and advancing. All of the pikemen, musketeers and officers are 1st Corps figures.

The colonel, who represents the commander of the Green Brigade, Sir John Hepburn, is the Warlord miniatures Prince Rupert figure.

The battalion gun and the Reverend I. M. Jolly are Redoubt.

The regiment was painted by me. Hepburn/Rupert, the battalion gun, IM Jolly and flags by the great Dave Jarvis.

Well, only three years after starting, that's the Green Brigade finished. How many brigades of foot did the Swedes field at Breitenfeld? Oh, feck.

Great paint job!!

Look very good!

Lovely unit, looks great en masse.

Wow! Great painting! Lovely work.

What game system are you using to game TYW? I see 88 figures in the regiment. At Breitenfeld Mackay's regiment had 8 companies. At full strength that would be 1200 men (I'd be surprised if it was ever that big, even in 1630.) How practical is it to game which units so large? 1:10 scale or so. Do you game this unit as one giant block or is it divided up in more company like sizes (obviously not 8 companies)?

I game large demo/participation games with colleagues from Durham Wargames Group. Usual table size is around 24'. Homegrown rules, often kriegspieled on the spot, to keep a game moving. If there are six of us playing that amounts to about 300 years wargaming experience. We can usually determine what makes a game for any particular scenario. For what it's worth, I think I've gamed every commercial ruleset available fir the period and found them universally unsatisfactory.

MacKay had 12 companies and 1183 men when the Swedes invaded Germany in 1630, Monro's squadron operated as a detached force that often had a couple of additional companies from other Scots units attached to it. (In order to solve the problem of what to do with Scots companies that found themselves far from their parent unit.)By 1631 the regiment had been reformed into the "standard" 8 company organisation as some companies had been reformed or transfered. The reformation process was one of the reasons why there was a suprisingly large number of Scots "reformados" around Gustavus entourage and Guard company.

Lovely work. I have a question for you regarding the Swedish Army in this period. For how long would the fully developed Swedish brigade system have been employed in the field as used at Breitenfeld and Lutzen? I assume that after Lutzen the Swedish army would have adopted the more linear systems derived from the Dutch (and perhaps used by the Swedes prior to the 1620s)? So, was the Brigade system largely a phenomenon of the 1620s and 1630s? I know that English armies used the system (poorly) later.

As an aside, does 1st corps use a good, hard metal?

Thanks for any thoughts on this.
Cheers,
Chris

Here is a (poor) overview of our recent participation game from Gothenburg's GothCon. The Swedes are on the left. The game is a simplified representation of the attack on the Aldbuch at Nordlingen, with two Swedish infantry brigades, totalling six regiments, on an 18-foot frontage. The Swedes are using a version of the Dutch system, each brigade deployed with two regiments up and one back. I'm not convinced that the Swedish brigade system would have remained in use by this time, despite Guthrie's assertion to the opposite, and I'm pretty certain that it would have been a curious deployment for storming entrenchments.

We played the game over two days, each time with two local participants. The rules were kept deliberately simple and the participants picked them up very quickly and without demur. For example, for the Swedes, the simple expedient of ruling that disorder/casualties could only be recovered by a regiment falling back to its side's gun line soon convinced all participants to keep reserves and to attack in waves. I think the scale convinced players to lift their focus from attempting super-reactive, flexible manoeuvres by individual units, to the problems of manipulating and co-ordinating large-scale, combined arms tactics. Certainly, all of the local participants said that they had enjoyed the games enormously.

…sorry, in answer to Chris' question, yes, 1st Corps figures are indistinguishable from Foundry or Old Glory in their material characteristics.

Curious about why you chose to model regiments at such a large scale? With a smaller scale one would get more regiments.

Interestingly, even though your regiments are large you still present them as one block of pike in the middle with two wings of shot. In a sense you are depicting them in a company formation. With so many stands why not show the regiment in a multiple company formation with the pike and shot stands interspersed? With 3 pike stands you could visually represent 3 companies.

I want my games to look like the contemporary illustrations of TYW battles. I want the formations to dictate the tactics available. The game above was a two-brigade action inspired by a real scenario from Nordlingen, that occupied 6 people for 6 hours. All the players enjoyed it, many, many spectators commented favourably upon the scale, and the in-game manoeuvres could be related to what's known about the real behaviours at the time. I'm content.

Thanks for the info, STT. Your game looks superb. I find OG metal quite soft but as long as 1st corps are fairly robust, that is OK.

Cheers,
Chris

Hi Steve- the regiment looks fabulous! A great looking game, too.

@ SteveTheTim,

Very much with you on the "big battalions" front – you need pike in more than two ranks to give the correct impression of a pike block. Keep on keeping on.

A fellow Tim (what is it about Gustavus's army of Proddies that fascinates us?).

I like the looks of big units too. Sadly, table size restrictions say otherwise.

Oh ya…..what happened to Boye?

Very nice!

Marcus the term regiment is misleading, they were administrative units rather than combat formations. A combat formation might be a single regiment, part of a regiment, or made up from parts of more than one regiment. Companies were the basic building blocks of the combat formation and comprised both pike and shot.

The combat formation didn't deploy as companies of pike and shot though. The pike of each company were drawn out and formed as a single block. The shot formed into the two wings. Period drill manuals include the orders and manoeuvres required to do this.

Hey Elenderil, I should have used the terms squadron or battalia instead of company when it comes to deployment. But the point I was making is still correct. A 10 company regiment would not deploy on one large formation, with all the pike in the middle. With a large scale like the above (88 figures) it seems to me a golden opportunity to show a more detailed deployment.

Here is MacKay's (and Spens', and the Green Regiment) in their actual fighting configuration for Breitenfeld: the Green Brigade.

The brigade of three squadrons (analogous to Mauritz' half-regiments) is attested to in the Swedish Intelligencer, Montecuccoli and Theatrum Europaeum, amongst others. It is currently supposed that only two – the Yellow Brigade and the 'Old' Blue Brigade – were comprised of a single regiment. The others were battlefield conglomerations of several: three in the case of the Green Brigade.

At Breitenfeld, MacKay's and Spens' were Scots; the Green _Regiment_ is thought to have been Prussian.

The remainder of the musketeers from each regiment have gone, as in this case, to provide the musketeer detachments that interlined the |Swedish cavalry.

I hope this makes my approach clearer, for those interested in this sort of thing.