"Black Powder - Squares Vs infantry" Topic

I have read the rules regarding squares and I think I'm pretty up to speed with them.

Last night we played a game where the following situation arose.

A British line was forced into square by French cavalry and, unable to charge home, the French cavalry duly retired to about 14" away. In the following British turn the infantry were not within 'initiative distance' to come out of square and they failed to order a change of formation. They couldn't change formation as a free move because they only get that to move away from the enemy (towards own lines). So they were stuck in square.

This is going on a bit so forgive me, I just want to set the scene and show the workings.

In the following French turn, the square was charged by a column of French infantry which duly won the melee with ease. That's fair enough we thought. Then we did the break test. The result was 5 – retire disordered – but of course this is overridden by by the rule that squares ignore retire results and stand in good order instead.

If it had been Vs cavalry, we agreed that the result would be reasonable because, for cavalry, a square is a very tough nut to crack. But, Vs infantry that had given the square a good clobbering (it was shaken by the melee) we thought it strange.

Are we missing something, or is it an anomaly?

If anomaly, any house rule suggestions?

Thanks for looking,

James

It's been awhile since I've played BP, but I'd go with anomaly. Go with ignores retires with cav fights, but count them with inf fights.

I believe a lot of people house rule that columns in continuing melees with inf have to shake out into line. I imagine a square would do the same thing and become disordered & then would be subject to a retire result in the following melee if it loses again.

I guess the problems really begin, with house rules, when a (disordered) square is charged by cavalry and infantry from two directions at the same time. In BP it's all treated as one melee with one melee result and one break test (if applicable) – it's a bit of a conundrum.

@stecal: we play Napoleons Battles and an infantry square charged by infantry has to roll against its response number to shake out into line. If it fails, it gets well and truly pummelled. When I was playing " Over the Hills" regularly, we had a similar house rule. Easy to introduce a similar rule into Black Powder – after all, the authors ptomote the book as a " tool kit" rather than tablets of stone.

Black Powder's rules state that you should adopt house rules if you feel it is necessary. They seem to be pretty flexible in that regard. IMHO rules are not generals, soldiers, or weapons but an attempt to recreate a human endeavor that is many times not possible to accurately recreate on the table top. Either that or get 2 different opinions and then roll a dice. Whoever wins that roll gets the decision that time and if it appears superhuman, then give that unit medals. Or not.

I think I'd have them remain where they were as a shaken and disordered square. More clumps of soldiers fighting back to back because order has broken down. Or you could adopt the column versus line rules in Clash of Eagles and treat a beaten square the same as a beaten attack column versus infantry. I think squares should also get a charge reaction to form back to line if charged by infantry, as long as there is no cavalry within initiative move range.

I am working from memory not the rule book ( I'm supposed to be working!) but this is how we would play it. The square would stand and combat with the column would continue into the British turn. As the square is now shaken, it would 'attack' with two dice hitting on 5's. The French having won combat would now attack with 6 dice hitting on 3's. Both sides would be saving on 4's ( the French having lost their column bonus after the first round of combat.
Unless there was an unusual dice score, you would expect the French to comfortably win the combat forcing another morale check. Bearing in mind that the British are already shaken, every hit made by the French would be deducted from the British morale roll.
It could be that the square survives again and in subsequent combat rounds and that it is the French that eventually break but this would need a perverse set of dice results…
The way that I would imagine it would be that the French Column , having charged the square and failed to break it immediately has meant that the combat has descended into a desperate melee.
Of course you are free to use either a house rule if you think that Squares should break when attacked by infantry, or perhaps it would make sense to 'disorder' the square as this should load the odds more in favour of the square failing it's break test ( an additional -1). I hope that helps, Regards Steve

Contrary to received wisdom I don't think there's much evidence that squares were particularly vulnerable to infantry attack, so maybe the BP rule makes sense, and isn't an anomaly.
Squares lack firepower and are a good infantry target, but they are difficult to shift. As, apparently, Bachelu's division found out at Waterloo. Also I think Austrians and Prussians held their solid square/close column formation in face of infantry threats very often (e.g. Aspern Essling for the Austrians).