"Skirmishers in rules" Topic

We have had many good and informative discussions about the function and relative effectiveness of the different nations skirmishers, and this is not going to be another one….

However, I have just reread the old articles by Cook from FE kindly send to me from Allan M, which got me thinking again about skirmish combat in the Napoleonic wars. One of the messages is that all nations could skirmish, troops off course had diferent capabilities and skirmishing was often not decisive. The sources are relatively few on what is such a pivotal subject, so a lot is about interpretation. But having recently read the excellent "French perspective" series by A Field, I think there is more to it.

Clauzewitz separates combat into the destructive phase and the decisive phase. As I see late Napoleonic warfare, skirmishers and artillery was the destructive part whereas formed shock action was the decisive part, as opposed to early SYW where linear firepower was both the main destructive and decisive factor (with artillery coming into play as the destructive more and more towards the end of the wars). I think we have read to much about the decisive effects and our rules do not model the destructive parts of the battle. Some players only want the decisive part, but for me that is unsatifactory.

Agreement on the above is a to some degree necessary for fruitfull contribtuion to the following rules discussion, so as not to get debased into the usual Jena and penisnsular skirmish source discussion.

My question to the forum is what rules mechanism players have seen that model the destructive part of the skirmish action/the fight for skirmish supremacy in a good way. The best I have seen from a macroperspective are the mechanisms in Et sans resultat and to some degree Revolution and Empire, but these mechanism are very abstracted. Has anyone played games that involves the following elements:

1) Fight for skirmish supremacy by gradual reinforcement of the skirmish line – as opposed to just owerwhelming the enemy
2) Dissolving of spend units into the skirmish line
3) Slow attrition of the enmy line before the attack after having gained supremacy

All of these mechanism seems extremely hard to model, but without them we do not have a historical representation of Quatre Bras, where allmost all french infantry action was skirmishing or Lutzen where almost all of the comitted prussian enden up skirmishing between the villages.

Why you think that these mechanism are extremely hard to model?

May be there is to many procedures to go through in small scale action rules, but in big battles this is automatic part of engagements. In EMPEROR rules every unit (from brigade to division) have limited amount of skirmish shots, depend of type of unit. Skirmish shots may cause hits to enemy, danger their generals or eliminate enemy's skirmishers shots. Units may have regimental artillery, which also act as skirmish shot. Also units may have added cavalry who may suppress enemy's skirmish shots. If Units are in battle contact, then every turn begins for them with skirmish fire and they may do this all day long, even not closing for line musketry range. All what you described works in this model automatically without additional involvement of players. Attritions accumulates, but presence of capable General may slow this down. But General himself are in danger from skirmish fire then.

In Napoleon's Battles 1 and 2 aren't modeled, although it could be argued that (1) is abstracted in the sense that if a brigade out-shoots its opposite enemy brigade, it can be considered to have achieved skirmish supremacy, but firing in NBs is also considered to include divisional artillery, so it's not pure skirmishing.

(2) is not modeled, since that would be happening below the radar of the NBs player, who is usually a corps or army commander.

(3) Is modeled, although again it includes artillery fire so you don't see which type of fire is achieving what because at corps/army level, you don't need to.

I haven't played Lutzen but I have played Quatre Bras in NBs, and it certainly is possible to out-shoot and whittle away enemy brigades without needing to close. In fact in NBs, dealing with a longer-ranged unit that can stand off and nibble your shorter-ranged unit to death without it having the ability to respond can be a big problem, particularly for pre-1809 Prussians and Austrians.

Thx for your replies, but just to clarify, when I sought more-hands on mechanisms, it was for less abstract level gaming than mentioned in the previous comments. Obviously brigade levels game has more abstractioin than betallion level games. I was looking for mechanisms for games where the unit is the batallion and you represent a lot of skirmsih bases on board, not abstract mehanisms for relative skirmish effectivenes. Do you think it is possible, so that a game game have tons of skirmishers on the board, or is abstract point like systems the only way to go??

Really like these:

Units may have regimental artillery, which also act as skirmish shot.

units may have added cavalry who may suppress enemy's skirmish shots.

they help solve:

pre-1809 Prussians and Austrians (being nibbled away)

Austrians had interlined infantry guns.

Is there a correlation between the removal of interlined infantry guns – with concomitant reduction in firepower – and the increase in the importance of skirmishing?

I think this is the question of cost, Stoppage. Infantry becomes cheap compare to artillery and real artillery was more effective than regimental guns. In EMPEROR rules the cost of units play important role too.

General d'Armee does a good job of representing skirmish combat and it does have an infantry unit = a battalion.

Skirmishers are represented by either:

1) A brigade skirmish line with the size dependent on the number of battalions modified by troop quality /type, national doctrine and number of attached specialist light companies. The brigades skirmish line is operated as a separate unit. It can be reinforced (or a new brigade skirmish line created if the original one was dispersed) by "dissolving" one or more of the brigade's formed battalions.

2) Light infantry units that can deploy into skirmish formation and, if desired be reformed into close order.

The problem is, as much as anything, one of game scale. If I have to deploy and then reinforce or withdraw the skirmish line, then I am acting as a battalion commander. So that limits my ability to command units. I can maybe command a division, but nothing larger. And if I am making that many decisions for each battalion, probably a brigade or two is more reasonable. So this is a purely tactical game.

But if you are fine with this level of game, then there are plenty of rules that have skirmish stands on the table, and don't abstract them out (though, admittedly, most of them are older rules sets).

Republic to Empire are a more recent set that includes rules for skirmishers.

Summary: link

Buy a copy:

link

"Over the Hills" , from Stand to Games has easy to use mechanisms for skirmishers in both the basic and optional rules.

Thx for the the comments above. I have studied most of the above rules, and although they have mechanisms in place, I have a hard time seeing them facilitate the above described mechanism. The dynamics of a skirmish battle seemed to preclude just pushing out a lot of skirmishers from teh start, they were usually committed piecemeal, so there seems to be a top effect on how many could be send in with effect at a given time and an extra effect of fresh reinforcements.

As for the command level which this happened on. 1) It often seems arbitrary in rules 2) Deployment of whole vatallions into the skirmish line was often decided at brigade or divisonal level.

Has anyone ever played a game where most of their brigades ended up deployed into skirmish formation, which seems to be the fate of D´Erlon at Waterloo.

If you want a system that models skirmisher screen combat in great detail, then you will be limited in the size of battle that you can have. There is only so much time that the players will tolerate a game's length before they lose interest, so some abstractions are generally deemed acceptable.
The "Rebels & Patriots" rules comes to mind, where you may be controlling only 6-8 units and the units are not in close order formation for volley fire purposes unless you order them into that formation. Casualty rates are therefore not that high for that reason: the units are in some sort of loose order. Units can find themselves in dire straits after losing only a few men.

General D'Armee models all three of your elements.

Hello Sparta!

"1) Fight for skirmish supremacy by gradual reinforcement of the skirmish line – as opposed to just owerwhelming the enemy
2) Dissolving of spend units into the skirmish line
3) Slow attrition of the enmy line before the attack after having gained supremacy

All of these mechanism seems extremely hard to model, but without them we do not have a historical representation of Quatre Bras, where allmost all french infantry action was skirmishing or Lutzen where almost all of the comitted prussian enden up skirmishing between the villages."

Your questions remind me of one of the rule sets I played over 40 years ago. Our battalions were 25mm at 36 figures, 6 figures per company on two bases. In order to change formation you had to do it by wheeling your companies in the same way they did historically. Turns were 2 minutes and some formations took longer to change then others and some nations also took longer. So a formation change could be anywhere from 1-3 turns. It was an extremely boring game, way too tedious. They were also very limited in size, brigade vs brigade, maximum. You could use a few players, but every player over four greatly reduced everyone's command.

To implement your three questions would require similar limitations, unless you're prepared to abstract the situation. This is what most rule systems try to do so that they can play big Napoleonic battles. As most of us know Napoleonic warfare is way more complicated then the rock/paper/scissors concept of just changing formations. So you have to isolate the important factors for the players to handle and abstract as much as you can to cover off the lower command decisions. Almost all rule systems use dice, modifiers and perhaps cards to govern their games. How realistic is that?

In writing "Ruse de Guerre" under the Baccus Polemos rules system I had to address how best to handle skirmishers and light infantry in general as they played a very important part in the horse and musket era. At the time there seemed to be only two basic systems in play. The old skirmish strip of figures from a battalion i.e. roughly six figures or an entire battalion of six figure strips for light battalions. The other seemed to be easier to use and made the games move along faster, simply giving modifiers to battalions. I finally decided to blend the two together. Depending on the size of a brigade and the nationality a percentage would be considered as skirmishers (0 to 30%) and formed into skirmish battalions to represent the brigades skirmish line. All light infantry are automatically 100% skirmish capable. They are all rated accordingly by the game designer, well trained, trained, poorly trained. They are all harder to hit and the well trained shoot better and are easier to recover. Overall a very simple system that removes the need for players to deal with your three questions. In other words the results of their interaction with enemy troops assumed that they handled those items as effectively as possible and won or lost accordingly.

Oddly enough we recently just gamed Quatre Bras and just as the French were about to test their superiority in the number of skirmish and light troops, Ney ordered a withdrawal. He clearly saw that the Allies not only outnumbered him, but that they were also in an excellent defensive position. Should his attack on the position fail the Allies would be able to launch a very effective counterattack that could possibly destroy his army. If our rules were designed to implement your three points in any detailed way we might still be trying to sort out this battle three weeks later.

Best regards,

Glenn

Thx for the responses – I know I am propably trying to have my cake and eat it at the same time. I ususally play large multicoprs engagement – normally around 40-60 btn a side. We have had skirmish rules that allows intergral skirmishers from brigades to be represented and batallions to be send into the skirmish lines. We have the skirmishers fir at each other, no problem, simple mechanics and we still play in real time. The problem is more one of representing the integral dynamics of a skirmish fight.

It seems that you often did not have an extra benefit of just pushing tons of skimrishers out from the start. Generals would usually reinforce a skirmish line when it was pressed, representing a contiuous drain on ressources if no side made a definitive push. Normally rule mechanisms allow us to represent the continuous firefight and casualties from a skirmish fight – even at the divisional level. But most rules will make it beneficial to deploy a lot of skirmishers nd overwhelm the enemy quickly, wheras a gradual reinforcement was usuallt the case.

I am not sure that this is what happened:
1) Fight for skirmish supremacy by gradual reinforcement of the skirmish line – as opposed to just overwhelming the enemy
2) Dissolving of spend units into the skirmish line
3) Slow attrition of the enemy line before the attack after having gained supremacy
I think in your Clauswitzian model linear firepower (and artillery) is the destructive element – the decisive element would be provided by overwhelming attacks and pursuit (preformed mostly by the cavalry arm). Skirmishing is a preliminary a warm up, a means of preventing the enemy from observing your deployments whilst disrupting his…

Green tiger: I would agree for SYW and early Napoleonic combat. But especially for the later period deplyment into line becomes rarer – just look at 1813, and it would seem that skirmishing and artillery takes over. But that is off course a subject of discussion. However the long stand up firefights seem to disappear, and attacks that does not come home often dissolves into skirmishing – something that is very har to represent. I urge enyone with interest to read Arnolds Napoleon at Bautzen to get an idea of the disintergation of combat.

Hello Sparta!

"The problem is more one of representing the integral dynamics of a skirmish fight."

"However the long stand up firefights seem to disappear, and attacks that does not come home often dissolves into skirmishing – something that is very har to represent."

The very, very "old school rules" that I played over 40 years ago did break down firefights into two minute turns. So you could reinforce the line, change its formation, move it, charge the enemy, run out of ammunition, etc. The problem was to justify this the rest of the game had to also be "two minute turns". Otherwise your entire abstraction/scale/timing, etc. was out of whack. So it was simply impossible to play "big Napoleonic" games. An hour would take 30 turns!

Most "new school rules" have come to terms with abstraction/scale/timing and understand that in order to play "big Napoleonic" games like yours you have to forget about minor tactics, including formation changes, etc. at the battalion level. You also have to have turns that represent a longer period of time. Which means you have to summarize situations. A single dice roll gives you the results without having to break everything down. They focus on the issues that faced the senior commanders like the formations of brigades, Divisions, Corps, and the problems of moving them, committing them, reinforcing them etc. So your actually doing similar things that you did at the battalion level, just at a higher level.

I don't think that any major Napoleonic battle was decided on the success or failure of a single battalion so I don't spend too much time dwelling on their issues. A simple system of modifiers and dice rolls resolves those issues just fine for me.

I believe that for most of the Napoleonic wars the French/British skirmishers should be considered as elites/veterans, etc. As you know other nations also have some that are just as good and some that are not. That modifier alone gives them an edge in most situations. I simply see trying to confirm that by going through a number of steps/turns for every encounter as a huge waste of time.

I clearly understand your desire to dig down to deal with every possible situation in a Napoleonic battle. My experience with this level of tactical detail proved to be too tedious and only had any impact when my entire game was focused on only one or two battalions. However, was there any real difference in rolling ten times vs once? As I mentioned earlier were playing games with dice/cards/etc., and using small figures on a table, how realistic is that?

Best regards,

Glenn

Hi Sparta,

I do find this an interesting topic and, in accordance with your original post, would like to focus the importance of skirmish combat and how to represent the various aspect in rules and not on the details of doctrine or relative national effectiveness.

I have some sympathy for your perspective and disagree with the idea that skirmish combat is too detailed or hard to model. I've been re-reading Oman's Peninsular War this year and I'm currently on volume VI, but the importance of skirmish combat is more than a battalion commander's concern. That is true when the skirmishers are employed in support of their parent battalion. However, with Bressonnet's tactical study open before me, what does that mean about skirmishers employed in support of all the battalions within a higher-level formation – regiments, brigades and divisions? Surely the decision to detach companies from battalions, group them under a field commander to support all the battalions in a formation are the responsibility of the formation commander – perhaps under the order of a superior. You mention Quatre Bras. One should read Prelude to Waterloo: Quatre Bras: French Perspective, at one stage the French are effectively engaging the Anglo-Allied infantry with a heavy skirmisher line supported by close order infantry in columns. Later when Ney gets Napoleon's order to urgently capture the crossroads the columns charge through the skirmish line and are repulsed; after which the II Corps infantry revert to skirmish combat as the primary means of engagement. The decisions are above battalion commander. If I had to simplify Napoleonic combat rules, I would keep skirmisher combat and combine volley fire and melee into a single close order combat result. The heavy casualties for the Battle of Albuera shows why exchanging volleys wasn't that common for even a most period (as noted by Oman).

Dave Brown, the author gives his views here:

link

Quoting the important bit in the post:

"Secondly and more importantly, is that General d'Armee rules consider skirmishers to be a distinct and significant brigade formation that played an integral part in Napoleonic combat. Skirmishers are not treated as some throw away formation consisting of a few hundred men running around who don't really matter. Skirmishers and skirmish lines do matter! Napoleonic brigades usually deployed in two or three distinct lines of battle, the first being the skirmish line, the second being your columns or lines and potentially the third being your reserves. The importance of skirmish combat in the Napoleonic Wars has perhaps not been given its due significance by many existing wargames rules. E.g. Some rules state that skirmishers are abstracted and not included, well that to me IMHO, is likely saying squares are abstracted and not included!"

When it comes to rules, I would look at three types of skirmisher employment:

1) Skirmishers employed in support of their parent battalion
2) Skirmishers employed in support of any battalion in their higher-level formation
3) Skirmishers employed as an independent body

It will depend on the level of resolution of the rules (whether it's battalions with each company represented, battalions where bases reflect only formations and size or higher-level formations such as brigades), the decision perspective of the player (i.e., what's the player's command level – I'm believer in the orders to the next level down with representation of the 2nd level down as that gives a player enough units to worry about), and the overall level of abstraction (consider the rules, The Twilight of Sun King which dispense with combat entirely and replace it with a single ‘morale' outcome roll – see the review at the link):

link

You mentioned you studied the rules mention and I presume that means General d'Armee. I do think there's a difference between studying rules and playing them, especially against an experience, clever opponent. The ‘trick' of using battalions that have suffered casualties to reinforce the skirmish line has been discussed on the GdA forum as it annoyed opponents who thought it an unfair way to avoid those battalions being destroyed. Too bad but it does reflect the employment of D'Erlon's infantry later in the battle of Waterloo. Of course, such a ‘trick' isn't without its disadvantages. If it's of interest I could illustrate how GdA does do most of what you want – assuming I understand what you want.

Cheers

Paul

Somebody once wrote on here that Napoleonic battles seem to be non-stop, all day skirmishing with a few sharp mass infantry actions here and there.

I'm inclined to agree.

'However the long stand up firefights seem to disappear, and attacks that does not come home often dissolves into skirmishing – something that is very hard to represent'
I wouldn't say firefights or bayonet attacks disappear and I would agree that attacks would disintegrate into skirmishing – that is largely down to the poor training and morale of those involved (mostly the French) – it is hard to model – I would suggest it be a response to morale failure and be largely ineffectual.

Playing Empire rules, we often have contracted skirmishing. We screen, engage other skirmishers, and if able to reduce the opponent's screen, engage their formed units. One effective tactic is to aggressively engage a weakened formed unit with skirmishers to try to degrade their morale further.

Also, depending upon the capabilities of the units, whole individual battalions or larger formations like brigades can be ordered into skirmish formations. Lights and other similarly trained units armed with rifles are particularly effective, and Empire accommodates musket/rifle ratios.

Interesting topic.

The problem I've seen is no one wants to spend 10-15 turns doing this. Gamers seem to want to get to grips in one or two turns and can't sit back and wait for this part of the battle to develop.

Condotta – It is an interesting topic because it gets to the heart of rules design and the trade-offs made by the designer.

thomalley – if the rules take 10-15 turns then it's a problem with the rules design. It's as if a sound system designer focussed on high-fidelity sound quality by clipping the low frequency sound. The skirmisher problem is somewhat similar to the artillery bombardment problem. Both take a long time relative to infantry / cavalry assaults and spend a lot of ammunition but are critical to disrupting an enemy for a successful attack. Any set of rules that is purely focussed on the details an assault/defensive will do poorly with skirmishers and bombardment. The old WRG 1685-1845 is a classic example. Activities in a turn were designed around 80 seconds of activity (yes, that's right – 80 sec; I've got the rules in front of me)! Then they hand-waved and said 1 turn represents 30 minutes. Poor D'Erlon's Corps has to march a mile to reach the ridge which is 14 turns in the WRG rules – 18 minutes at 80 sec per turn but 7 hours in the stated time scale and well after all players have gone home. To me those are OLD SCHOOL rules. Newer rules do better by representing a battle in significant phases versus constant time intervals.

Newer rules do better by representing a battle in significant phases versus constant time intervals.

But have their own problems (e.g. when it comes to reinforcements coming on to the board)

But have their own problems (e.g. when it comes to reinforcements coming on to the board)

Absolutely, but that's been a problem for almost all sets of rules. The WRG, "we'll call 80 seconds of activity 30 minutes" isn't better. For that I think you would need some type of map game with a simple means of deciding engagement results. Otherwise, you'd need to do something like:

Determine what stage or phase of a battle would a reinforcement be able to intervene in the combat. (For example, after the attacker's first assault if the attacker doesn't dawdle or during the assault.) One can pretty much figure out how approximately many turns would be needed for an attack to succeed or fail. Then calculate how many turns a reinforcement would need to get from the entry point to the action. Then that's your arrival turn depending on randomization of the rules use for entry.

What doesn't work is using supposed time scale of most rules. Either reinforcements arrive far too early or far too late compared to arrivals in historical battles.

On the other hand, it's just a game. So whatever's fun.

Trying Empire 3 skirmish rules but tossing the semi skirmishers part out on next battle.

"Shade01" Very interesting comments from you. We seem to be completely in line with what we want fro our games. The problem in rule design is matching prolonged destructive phases that takes hours with qucik decisive action that takes minutes. Most of the times units didi nothing, bombareded or skirmished. Only a fraction of the time in the battle did they advance or attack and sometimes they were in a prolonged firefight between close combat elements.

I find that GdA has many of the elements I myself had thought out for our own rules, which are based on a combination of order points and activation rolls modified by disorder, fatigue and engagemnet status. There are however some points that I disagree on/think could be presented better:

1) Not all troops dissolved into skirmishing when the unit faltered. I actually think that this is one of the main differences between the nationalistic armies that we see in prussia from 1813 and the french from the start of the revolution as opposed to the ancien regime armies. The troops often fought on even when unit cohesion broke down. This is a thing you do not see in the SYW.

2) Skirmish combat was something where troops where comitted piecemeal. In all rules I have studied the mechanism almost always favour agressive early deployment of as many troops as possible. It seems to me that a skirmsih fight slowly sucked batllions in. The woods at Borodino is a great example – also some sources claims that Poniatowskys entire corps eneded up as skimrishers at Utitsa.

3) Skirmish combat was back and forth. In fighting in woods it was seldom just on the edge. The two sides pushed each other back and forth prombting reinforcmenets to be send.

These mechanisms are to me perfectly reasonable to represent in a game where a player has several division, the turns are 15-30 minutes, and he must decide whether to commit several more batallions into a skirmish fight to keep the position of a firing line i the woods.

But with wargame rules it is like wine, some people like it complex and somebody likes Zinfandel :-)

Sparta,

I totally agree with you about the impact of skirmish fighting in Rev-Napoleonic battles. And I'm sure playing long lines of skirmishers in battle is not only a "chef de bataillon" task.

Our group play quite big battles (20 to 25 units for each player, battalion-size game) with a home-made set of rules and it's very usual we have many skirmishers around our formed units.

Generals (i.e. players) generally chose how they want to use them, if they want to reinforce the skirmish line with troops from the reserve (usually battalions in column)or not, etc.
Very often, skirmishers are very active at the beginning of the fightings. Then they tend to disappear and then lines, columns and cavalry see more and more actions. But you always can use them on the field even at the end of the battle.

I totally agree with Dave Brown quote by Shadoe01. Skirmish line is a real Napoleonic formation as square, attack column, etc, are. And it seems my rule set has lot in common with General d'Armee(wich I didn't know).

But I also think battalion lines of fire are the main "destructive" weapon to weaken ennemy troops.
You said "for the later period deplyment into line becomes rarer"

One must not forget about a very important point : in 1813-14, most of the French infantry was so poorly trained it just couldn't fight in line ! Same for Prussian Landwehr and maybe for some other infantry with short training period. So skirmish lines were an increasing present formation.

Great topic.

"The woods at Borodino is a great example – also some sources claims that Poniatowskys entire corps eneded up as skimrishers at Utitsa."

I think we have to be very careful with the sources that state "entire corps" fight in such way or another.
It must be quite a rare situation where a general engage all of his troops with keeping no reserve at all. I agree that some situations must have been desperate enough to see whole troops send to the fire line but very often I suspect the "entire corps" notion has to be discussed.

Thx for the comments Franck. Are you willing to share your ruleset?

I agree with your reservation about the comment on Ponitowskis corps. We can only guess at the real meaning of such comments. but perhaps it means that so many were dispersed that the formed elemnt could not take any action by themselves except support the skirmishers. This is a situation often seen in the smaller battles in 1866, were the prussians dissolved completely into skirmish lines with only a company from some regiments being held in reserve- this was effective due to the neddlegun for defensive purposes, but precluded any menaningfull offensive action which had to be done by closed columnns.

I actually believe that for a full undertstanding of the napoleonic wars and the development during the long period of conflict, we have to look a lot on the wars before and after ie SYW and 1848-70.

Hi Sparta,

I think we're very nearly on the same page. To give you some background so that you now where I'm ‘coming from', I've been wargaming since I was about 9 or 10 years old. In the coming year I will be retiring after nearly 35 years of operational research – most of it military and the last bit applied to emergency management & community resilience – after a long, misspent, but unregretted, time as a young adult. I will let you do the fuzzy math around that. None of that means that I know the answers at all, but I am familiar with the problems. One way or another, whether as a hobby or professionally, it's about how to get combat power to the critical points and the resolution of the resulting engagement. The logic can be broken into a number of sequential steps or combined into one overall result (i.e., you can roll a few dice a bunch times, a bunch of dice a few times or a few dice a few times – and, if your mad, a bunch of dice a bunch of times). There are pros and cons to each approach. I've never seen a perfect set of rules and I won't for two reasons – (1) there many things we really don't know how to model and (2) people are looking for different things. There are, however, better and worse, rules if you agree on criteria. In my hobby games I look for rules that will tell an interesting story at the end of the game. Those are the ones I remember from years gone by. That means the rules should produce a mix of an overarching theme for the game, surprises and enough detail to provide colour.

Obviously a battles that's consists of side A has combat power X and side B combat power Y with a bunch of modifiers and appropriate randomization (or not) that gives a result of which side wins and how decisively won't do. However, that may be a very appropriate for resolving many battles in a game that's a campaign. I'm remembering a board game for Napoleon's Northern Italian campaign with battles that weren't much more than that. It was fun and interesting game.

With respect to GdA, it's not perfect but with some thought it can provide more than you think. First off it's intended to be a division or division plus game. By the way, I'm unconvinced that one can play a corps or multi-corps game with divisional rules as a reasonable combat simulation but they can be fun and spectacular to look at. To your points for GdA:

1) It's up to the player if the player will send battalions to reinforce the brigade skirmish line. It requires a commander tasking to do so which means if the commander is under stress the commander will have a tough decision. Tend to skirmish line or tend to something else. Plus every time a battalion reinforces the skirmish line it's lost for the purposes of close order combat which provide the decisive ‘punch'. This doesn't apply for light infantry which can disperse into skirmish formation and try to reform into close order as the player wishes.

2) The brigade skirmish line has a maximum size, so a player can't put as much as they want into the skirmish line. It will be a question of watching the skirmish battle to determine when it's right to launch an assault, when to reinforce the skirmish line or if one should leave it fight it out as best it can.

3) Probably the back and forth over a period doesn't apply to GdA simply because it's a divisional game. It should be focussed around a divisional tasking from the corps or army commander. The game should end when the division succeeds or fails. Regardless of succeeding or failing, the division will need to rest, recover, reorganize, etc. During this time the skirmish fighting could go on but I think it's beyond the scope of what the rules are intended. One could add in a pause of so much time with a more condensed-in-time resolution of the on-going skirmishing and the amount of time for the division to reorganize for the next order from the corps commander. (You might see why I think re-fighting Borodino or some other large battle isn't completely satisfactory but, oh my, it is spectacular to see and I bet all participants have great fun.)

FYI – I am planning to replay the Battle of Bailen three times with three different set of rules, GdA, Empire (because of its interesting time concept) and Field of Glory Napoleonics (because it does do a good job a Napoleonic battle with units = brigades). Naturally the scale of the battle will change for each game. It will be one wing for GdA, both wings for Empire and both wings plus off-board reinforcements for Field of Glory.

Paul

This is a really interesting and constructive thread.
Many of these concepts are things I too have been pondering. Especially with coming up with workable game mechanics for corps-sized battles that don't either (a) abstract skirmishing off the table, or (b) add fiddly and time consuming steps to the turn sequence.

It's a difficult period to talk in absolutes. Yet we need to assume certain things to model how we think skirmishing worked.

I really like March Attack rules, it ticked most of the boxes for me except for skirmishing. So I've bolted on a set of skirmishing rules that lets me use skirmisher formations in a more active way. From my perspective it comes down to effect. If one side gains "skirmish superiority" this will chip away at the effectiveness of the enemy formation. Players can choose (where possible) to feed more skirmishers into the fray at the expense of weakening the close formations. Still a WIP but gives a much better game, to my tastes.

Sparta,

no problem to share our rule set… except it's in French.

But if you can read French, just give me an email adress.
I just need some time to add diagrams to clarify movements, formations, etc.

Sparta wrote:

1) Fight for skirmish supremacy by gradual reinforcement of the skirmish line – as opposed to just owerwhelming the enemy
2) Dissolving of spend units into the skirmish line
3) Slow attrition of the enmy line before the attack after having gained supremacy

I'm late to this discussion, but it's been an interesting one. I'm in Northern California… so I've had no power for some time.

Sparta, I *think* I agree with the 3 points of your question, but I'm not sure about

2) Dissolving of spend units into the skirmish line

"Spend units"? Do you mean spent units… if so, why just them? It would all depend. If you mean spending units into the skirmish line, weakening the formed troops, I do agree with that.

Extra Crispy wrote:

The problem is, as much as anything, one of game scale. If I have to deploy and then reinforce or withdraw the skirmish line, then I am acting as a battalion commander. So that limits my ability to command units. I can maybe command a division, but nothing larger. And if I am making that many decisions for each battalion, probably a brigade or two is more reasonable. So this is a purely tactical game.

Extra Crispy:
I think your comment is a missunderstanding in how skirmishing worked in an army command. Because of it's integral part of any offensive or defensive action requiring coordination, because of the terrain and the vital relationship between the number of skirmishers and retaining enough formed troops for decisive action… it was a higher command issue. You see army level commanders involving themselves in such issues all the time.

First of all, unless the battalion was acting independently, such as Wallace's at Bussaco, battalion commanders as part of a brigade did not decide when to send out skirmishers or how many… obviously there was a convention in deployment in the absence of higher orders, but generally, ordering out skirmishers and deciding what they would do were divisional and corps level decisions. Read Napier's description of his actions as a battalion commander at Corunna. He went to Moore to ask if he could deploy his grenadiers as skirmisher. Look at the day-of-battle orders from Napoleon before Jena or Massena at Bussaco: Specific orders about skirmish deployments.

All of these mechanism seems extremely hard to model, but without them we do not have a historical representation of Quatre Bras, where all most all french infantry action was skirmishing or Lutzen where almost all of the comitted prussian enden up skirmishing between the villages."

Glenn:
I don't think it is all the difficult apart from three issues:

1. Just like the contemporary officers, many gamers find skirmishing too 'fiddly' and not decisive enough [read dramatic] within a game turn.
2. That fiddly aspect has to do with how to represent the gradual breakdown of a unit into waves of skirmishers, as well as representing discrete numbers of skirmishers.
3.A grounded understanding in how skirmish actions worked, particularly how they were controlled at different levels of command.

Just out of interest, the following was written by Major Lebeau describing his attack on Hougoumont; he commanded the 1st de ligne at Waterloo:

'I ordered the 2nd and 3rd Battalions to remain in reserve, and by a normal movement, forgetting that I was closed up, I marched at the head of the first battalion to attack the farm from which I was repulsed with heavy losses, and those mostly among the officers. I returned to the charge with the second battalion, combined with the debris of the first; with the same result as the first, despite supernatural efforts; but, being calmer in my second assault I observed and recognised the cause of the prompt destruction of my officers. Breaking down as skirmishers the remains of these two battalions onto the two flanks of this farm, from where the murderous lead came specifically at my officers, I marched on it with the third battalion…'

In the latter stages of the empire, this was obviously not unusual.

Delort:

It was common for skirmishers [of most nations after the Revolutionary wars] to be instructed to fire on the two ends of company formations and battalions…where the officers and NCOs were stationed.

If it was that common, 'not unusual', it is suprising that a veteran like Major Lebeau only 'recognized the prompt destruction of his officers during his second attack.

Bandolier,
I use March Attack as well. Skirmishing works, but I was also fiddling with improvements including giving up unit strength points to improve the MF skirmish value and adding a d6 roll to each side's skirmish value to add some chance into skirmishing. If you don't mind, what are your ideas?