In my own games, I've started to wonder if some troop types are consistently misrepresented.
For example, in my English Civil War games, I tend to field fairly substantial artillery—impressive-looking gun lines that ought to dominate the battlefield. Yet in practice they often achieve very little. My gun-heavy Royalist armies are regularly beaten by a friend's Parliamentarians with little or no artillery.
That's made me question whether some troop types look more important on the table than they actually play.Or vice versa.
It also got me thinking about other examples:
Skirmishers and light infantry, for instance, are often very free-moving. In rules like 'Black Powder', the Marauder rule lets them operate well beyond normal command constraints. Yet historically they were usually closely tied to formed units and didn't operate independently for long &, to be honest, were rather ineffectual IMO.
Cavalry, too, often feel very decisive—delivering repeated, powerful charges and remaining effective in combat. But at Battle of Waterloo, massed cavalry struggled to break steady infantry, suggesting their real strength was often in disruption, threat and pursuit rather than outright destruction. And does cavalry fatigue carry enough weight in your rules?
Elite units are another case. Many rules give them strong combat and morale advantages, but historically "elite" often meant more reliable rather than dramatically more lethal. Even formations like the Waffen-SS divisions showed very mixed battlefield performance.
And then there are levy or irregular troops—frequently dismissed as brittle or ineffective in rules such as Hail Caesar. Yet forces like the fyrd at Battle of Hastings could hold their ground for long periods and in many armies these troops formed the bulk of the fighting force.
Across all this, I do wonder if we tend to:
overstate killing power
understate disorder, hesitation and command friction
So, what troop type do you think is most misrepresented in wargames—and why?
(Any period or rules set.)
