"Horse and musket period, why is it your favourite?" Topic

When i started wargaming 30+ years ago, I came to the hobby via fantasy, I played medieval and ancients but quickly started to get into Napoleonics. Now it is my preferred era to wargame. Something about the combined arms with none really dominating the field. Also I dont know why but I love the idea of officers on horseback giving orders and directing the battle from their equine perch.
Napoleonics is probably still my fave but i really love the mid to late 19th century as well and of course ACW.
Why is it your favourite era to game?

FM

No tanks.
No planes.

Books by Charles Grant Sr and Brigadier Peter Young.

No super weapons or super units.

Games can fit on to a table in a plausible manner/visual.

martin

Martin Goddard's right: it's the last time I can (plausibly) see an entire big famous historical battle on my tabletop. It's also pretty much the first and last time I can look at uniforms and flags and say "THOSE are the Queens Rangers/the Pavlov Grenadiers/the Dutch Lancers of the Guard."

"Once war was glorious, and men wore uniforms which would shame a peacock. Now, war was only necessary, and men wore uniforms the color of mud."--Flynn, "The Forest of Time."

You can make arguments for a lot of periods in terms of tactical balance, but horse and musket is classic "toy soldier" tabletop gaming, and you can't beat it for spectacle.

It's also an era in which, generally speaking, every army stands a chance. No one's out of contention because we have got the Maxim gun/the Tiger tank/the MLRS and they have not. And all the units are on the table. No one's being crushed by heavy artillery I keep out in the garage or B-17's 20 feet above my wargame room.

And I need to go grass the 2nd Berg Lancers and the fusilier battalions of the Prussian Guard.

Years ago I was reading an article in Architectural Digest about a guy in New York city who decorated his place with 19th century militaria (he even owned one of Prince Eugene's swords). He told the reporter, "History ended in 1914. Since then it's been current events."

Yup, uniforms, no vehicles, they provide a context where national prode, glory and honour mattered.

I think it is the overall spectacle, wildly painted Indians from the French & Indian war, to the Imperial Guard or Dutch lancers in all of their glory. A friend of mine once said, it was the height of the military tailor, and he was right. I love that you can do small battles like the AWI, or grand battles with SYW European armies. Napoleonics!
I love the Musket Period, when you see the table and all the troops ready for battle, there's nothing like it.
I remember being a little kid and playing with my plastic Marx and Airfix figures and picturing them in all their colorful splendor. I now have thousands of painted figures and terrain and buildings, I can build whatever scenario is called for, all in color, a feast for the eyes……spectacular.

My Favourite period is, and always will be Napoleonic's because to me it is the sweet spot in military history where tactical manoeuvre is at it's height. Earlier and troops lack the skills and later firepower renders it insignificant. It is also a period of similar forces in all armies. Now that's a massive high intensity warfare, generalisation, but I think it holds up fairly well. That the uniforms are also quite striking is an added bonus.

Generally speaking: the glory of combined arms all being on the table.

Specifically on top of that: all the colour of Napoleonics.

I gave my answer in the intro to the "Bloody Big BATTLES!" rules:

"Why is this [late 19th-century] period so interesting? To answer that, consider the Napoleonic era which precedes it. By 1815, after 25 years of continuous continental warfare, broadly the same weapons and tactics are common to all European armies (albeit some are better at using them than others). The ‘holy trinity' of protection, mobility, and firepower, as embodied by the three arms of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, is in perfect balance, making battle a kind of complex exercise of rock-scissors-paper between very similar forces.

But as the century wears on, disruptive technologies appear: breech-loading rifles in the 1840s, breech-loading rifled artillery in the 1850s, machine-guns and repeating rifles in the 1860s. And not only weaponry, but also railroads, steamships, ironclads, the telegraph, observation balloons …

And while technology develops apace, most nations spend most of the time at peace. Consequently, each time a war breaks out, the protection-mobility-firepower equation has been modified, and each time, the armies engaged have to learn new lessons the hard way – in some cases, the wrong lessons, which then cost them dearly in their next conflict.

The bad news for the troops is that constant improvements in weaponry mean that maneuver under fire becomes more and more difficult, and battle gradually reduces to a contest between firepower and protection. This eventually reaches its apex in the static trench warfare of the First World War, with mobility squeezed out almost entirely.

But the good news for wargamers is that, for the few decades we are interested in, tactical maneuver persists. War continues to be decided not by long weeks or months of attrition across hundreds of miles, but by decisive clashes between whole armies lasting usually no more than a day or two. These are fought on battlefields just a few miles across, making it possible to capture an entire battle in one tabletop miniatures game.

Furthermore, the evolution of weapons and tactics means that many of these conflicts pit opponents of very different character against each other, making for some fascinating interactions at the tactical level."

Balance of arms is what most attracted me and the general's ability to maneuver large numbers of soldiers around the countryside and battlefield to win (hopefully) battles and/or other objectives.

In game design and playtesting, the balance of the combat arms is significant.
I do also like the color and variety of the uniforms of the era.

In a way been a Napoleonic era fan since childhood after seeing Waterloo and War and Peace.

+1 Tom Molon. Grant, Young and (let's not forget) Featherstone introduced me to the hobby and the H&M era. The uniforms, the different combat arms, the flags and just the impressive sight of massed troops in column and line on the table. It was just as much fun researching the armies, uniforms and flags as it was playing with the figures.

Its Pwiddy!

Rock, scissor, paper aspect of Cavalry, Infantry, Artillery!

Plus the colors can be so vibrant!

The C in C and army makeup differs quite a bit.

18th century: AWI & FIW

Everyone has the same weapons and all the artillery is on the table. Whole battalions can be on the table at the same time. I wish I had never went beyond horse and musket. If I had to do it all over again I would have went with the SYW which IMO is the ultimate horse and musket era. I am tired of individually based skirmish games. Give me the big battalion battles.

It isn't my favourite period, but it is one I enjoy, and was my second set of armies (after WW2) when I first started wargaming.

It is the last era when you can realistically fit an entire Battle onto the tabletop and fight it to a conclusion.

Once battles started taking weeks or months, as in WW1, then you are only ever doing bits of engagements.

On peut rejouer toute une vraie bataille sur notre table de jeu.

Napoléon, c'est une masse d'hommes contre une autre masse d'hommes. J'aime les MASSES !
Mais, tout ceci dans le respect d'un ordre parfait.

Contrairement au film sur Napoléon, les batailles ne sont pas une masse d'Orks contre une autre masse d'Orks…

There are more periods to wargame than the horse and musket period??

All of the above.

johannes55, I've heard rumors of people playing WWII in miniature, but I don't see how it would work. You'd need a board depth of miles to get the artillery on the table, and a frontage of scores of miles to get a whole battle. And both uniforms and equipment colors are intended not to be visible against the terrain at any serious distance.

"You'd need a board depth of miles to get the artillery on the table, and a frontage of scores of miles to get a whole battle."

LOL. I regard fighting entire battles in WW2 as a gaming challenge. Perhaps not entire campaigns, but certainly major engagements. Once your manouvre units are divisions, it all gets quite Napoleonic as although sub elements might be dispersed, divisions tend to fight shoulder to shoulder, as gaps are quite bad in the presence of enemy armoured formations. I managed to cram all of Operation Goodwood onto a 2'x3' table, including the Canadian Corps, but it was quite a high density battle. Kasserine Pass was a 3x4.

I might have been smiling as I typed that last, Martin. I do a little WWII--mostly brigade actions in 2mm or 6mm on 2x2 or 3x3 boards. I'm actually working on a "2mm Big Battle" project with 3" wide 2mm stands representing companies or battalions. But I have known WWII people to put supporting artillery in the garage to get it the scale distance from their tables.

As you say, a gaming challenge. Horse & Musket is much more straightforward--and more colorful.