""assault engineers"" Topic

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Many rules have engineers giving a +1 to attacking villages.
I suspect it comes from "research", the type of most universities: you take 3 books and you make a fourth one.
All forgot the "original"finding that generated this. Or was it an extension of WW2 Sturmpionnnier?
Or that they mix the term sappers for those few guys in bearskins with an ax and sappers of today who are really engineers?
Nowhere in my readings, whether memoirs or manuals for training officers, did I ever see anything about attaching companies from the engineer units to assaults of villages. Never.
Anyone found an historical basis for it?
(yes once, 2 coys of them to the last attack of La Haie Sainte as Ney was picking up anything that could still operate and these blue coated musket men 100-150 be welcome).

Many rules have engineers giving a +1 to attacking villages.
I suspect it comes from "research", the type of most universities: you take 3 books and you make a fourth one.
All forgot the "original"finding that generated this. Or was it an extension of WW2 Sturmpionnnier?
Or that they mix the term sappers for those few guys in bearskins with an ax and sappers of today who are really engineers?
Nowhere in my readings, whether memoirs or manuals for training officers, did I ever see anything about attaching companies from the engineer units to assaults of villages. Never.
Anyone found an historical basis for it?
(yes once, 2 coys of them to the last attack of La Haie Sainte as Ney was picking up anything that could still operate and these blue coated musket men 100-150 be welcome).

Empire III rules have these +1 for engineers.

I believe it is a ploy to give French armies an anachronistic advantage.

All armies had axes and ground-breaking tools in their supply waggons. In English armies there are pioneers who are used to open up the countryside for a marching army; _not_ storm-pioneers during village assaults.

Sous lieutenant Legros with his trusty axe smashing the north gate at Hougoumont sets a good tone.

but sous lieutenant Legros, a former Engineer NCO's, belonged as officer to the 1st Light Infantry Regiment having carabiniers voltigeurs and chasseurs companies had nothing to do with Engineers/Génie – Sappers and Miners Battalions and companies in the French Army – the famous regimental sappers with axes had nothing to do with Sappers of the Engineers/Génie either
even if there were really true Sappers in la Haie Sainte
A few companies of the 1st Light Infantry and a handful of engineers had reached the north gate of the castle; and, despite the grapeshot and the fusillade from the plateau, they had broken through…"
to see in them assault engineers troops doesn't really match with the History and culture of the French Engineers arm since its creation in 1793…

You have to remember that wargamers--and maybe especially miniature wargamers--tend to want more tactical complexity than real life. So we get more subtly different troop types, tactical plusses and minuses and (in moderns especially) more variation in weapons and ammunition, than actual commanders take into account.

A friend once told me that adolescent minds needed long complex rules the way growing bodies needed to run. Some of them do, certainly.

Da bug!

I use General de Brigade rules. Old school by today's rules, but suit me fine. Regardless of any realism, an attached pioneer/engineer figure to an assault on a built up area adds +1 to the melee. However, this figure will be the first to fall when casualties are incurred on the assaulting unit. Real or not, its fun to add.

I have Engineers in my Prussians and Russians, play EIII and never used them in a assault. Mostly they do what Engineers do, build stuff.

Emperor of the Battlefield also allows you to add some engineers and pioneers to your assault. Otherwise their use is more useful in campaigns and the odd scenario.

You have to let them play. It's the uniforms!