"How many officers, standard bearers, and musicians?" Topic

I've been on a bit of an ECW kick of late and finally ordered some models. Not as I've been looking around at painted stuff, I've noticed quite a few people include 2 officers, 2 musicians, and 2 standards in their Pike units. But then others use 1 of each. Is there a reason to go with one method over the other?

In 15mm I do 2 Standards, 1 Musician and 1 officer for my command stands

The Regiment generally had a flag as did each company – My units are Regiments – so I use two flags historically to represent the regiment and then perhaps the 1st captain's company or a second colonel…

For me its taste as much as anything

If I was doing company sized units I would do 1 per company

A question requiring deep consideration of the number and proportions of such persons in historical regiments and the finer points of game design. Personally I rely heavily on how many came in the pack.

Without knowing how big you plan to build your pike units, it's really a 'how long is a piece of string' issue.

I do similarly to DisasterWargamer for the following reasons:

ECW Foot had a colour per company, so several colours creates an appropriate impression.
I use the number/position of the colours, officer and musician to indicate the unit's strength and morale.
It looks good on the table!

But do what looks/feels right to you.

I use 3-4 standards in each unit, plus a colonel or major, a sergeant and a drummer. The more flags, the merrier!

I do one officer, musician and flag bearer, but two sergeants per regiment, because Blue Moon sells sergeants too. None of them matter for game purposes unless you're doing a skirmish with a figure ratio of 1:1.

It's partly about not having any leftovers, and also I like my pikes, where command elements are positioned in battle, to be spiky.

Thanks for the explanations! I'm not as up on my ECW military history as I probably should be. And I like the look of multiple flags but I hate making flags so I'm seriously torn, lol. But y'all have helped me figure out how I want to do it, I think. Thanks everyone!

You can get free flags here – just print and glue:

warflag.com/flags/ecw/ecw.shtml

I just do one flag, one drummer, one officer and one sgt. for a command base of 4 figs. (28mm)

In 28mm, my standard 2:1 regiments are either 18 or 24 figures with pike blocks and sleeves of shot of 6 or 8 figures, respectively.

Because the ideal was one colour per company and I think that more colours looks better and is more in keeping with the period, I use a minimum of two colours, often four, on a separate command base as big as it needs to be – in the rules I use, the command base does not count in combat. Both GMB and Flags of War sell their colours in pairs. I use more if I can manage it particularly for units with important individuals as colonel. The King's Lifeguard of Foot, for example, is resplendent with six colours.

I use 3-4 standards in each unit, plus a colonel or major, a sergeant and a drummer. The more flags, the merrier!

I'd laugh at the notion , but it looks too damned good!

ardyer,

There are plenty of ready made flags in all scales.

I have mine in pairs with an officer on a round base that I can position in front of, or behind the unit, depending on what it's doing. I prefer upright pikes as this makes going into base to base contact much easier.

I like to keep the flags out of the pike block as I reason you want as many pike points as possible to try to give the impression of mass, which is hard enough as it is given how few figures we tend to have in a unit. (My pike blocks are 12 or 18 figures.)

The advantage of having the flags on a separate command base is that I can change unit IDs rather then having to use the same old regiments in every game. I have far more command bases than I do units for them all so sometimes I can use more than one command stand per unit. This looks good and gives the impression of battalia being formed of several small regiments, as was often the case historically.

As an example, I can swap out infantry command bases to give me units suitable to be commanded by Waller or Essex.

Hmmm good points Timmo. I deliberately tried to include a ranked pikeman with the three command figures so I know what regiment they belong to.

I base the sergeants with the musketeers displacing enough of them to build up independent musket companies.

Thanks for the tips on the premade flags.