"Designing a P&S army in a fantasy world" Topic

What issues would there be in taking a pike and shot army up against medieval knights who like to charge?

I'm in a low-fantasy, pseudo historical (circa ~1300 AD Hungary), RPG with the usual Dwarven advanced mechanical tech, a few mages, and few clerics. My character is a military officer who travelled from Korea and studied warfare from childhood and crossing the lands. That's my excuse to let him experiment with advanced formations and concepts like Pike and Shot, totally glossing over my desire to do Pike and Shot and my one real tournament win being with 16th century Spanish. :)

Would there be any particular challenges the Pike and Shotters would face when they were up against knights? The P&S would have lighter armor (breast plate and helm) so they could move faster than heavy foot but not as fast as a mounted rider. The "Shot" elements would be a mix of heavy crossbow and early black powder arms. While there's a potential for larger armies in the "several hundreds to a couple of thousand" size, a lot of the battles will be skirmish between dozens.

How would you design an army for this, and just as important, for skirmish battles on a budget using something akin to "Dragon Rampant", what figures would you suggest for heavy dwarf foot, sniviling orcs, goblin wolfriders, knights a-mounted and militia in groups? I'm thinking 25/28mm for skirmishes, not sure how many large battles we'll get to.

For Heavy Foot Dwarves, I would recommend EM4 Dwarves, Spearmen, Heavy Axemen, or Crossbowmen. I took a bunch of Spearmmen (not these, I just wanted to show what the original figures look like with a basic paint job), I cut off their spears and drilled out their hands to replace their weapons: Pikes and Halberds.

The EM$ Dwarves are suitable for large armies: low priced, easy to prime and paint, and decent enough sculpting; made of plastic, they are easy to modify. The Pikes and Halberds were ordered separately, then inserted and glued into the Dwarve's hands. By adding some banners to the leader figures (Pikemen with flags attached, actually), they dress up really nice. Cheers!

Would there be any particular challenges the Pike and Shotters would face when they were up against knights?

In historical terms, charging cavalry would have a lot of trouble in breaking steady pike blocks. As long as the pikemen have time to brace their long pikes, and keep their nerve, the cavalry will have trouble. This assumes that the pikemen are also properly drilled and led. And it works best in big blocks, in small skirmishes the pikes are not particularly handy.

The shot element will be able to put some hurt to the knights at range, but will be in trouble in close combat, so will either need to be able to shelter behind the pikemen or some sort of defensive obstacles.

As for figure suggestions, if you like the eM4 plastic dwarves, you might want to look at their their plastic orcs, armed with sword, spear or bow.

For more modern fantasy plastics, the Northstar range of Oathmark figures is quite popular. Some examples of the range include Dwarf heavy infantry:

link

Goblin wolfriders:

link

Orc infantry:

link

Human light infantry (for militia):

link

For human knights and militia, there are a number of historical plastic kits that you might want to consider. How would you like to see them equipped?

Perhaps follow the example of Lord Kalvan? The author H Beam Piper started the series, but others have carried it on since. There was even a rule set "Down Styphon". Even if it's not 100% what you're looking for the books are interesting reads in their own right.

Someone made/makes a line of "Three Musketeer" Dwarves, including pikes. Might be worth considering. (I usually try to avoid Dwarven pikes. Balance point is too low. But that's just me.)

There are great dwarves, goblins etc in plastic for Oathmark and other systems. Wargames Atlantic have goblins as well i think. For Dragon Rampant you won't need more than 70 or so figures

Pike were putting the hurt on knights at the end of the 15th century, look at Fornovo and other battles of that era. They were confident enough to chase them down

John