Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

One facet of John's EAW series that has up until now disappointed me was the lack of offensive combat power, the ability to charge, for mounted cavalry. It has been explained to me that this is because there wasn't any real charges conducted nor any real cavalry committed by any of the participants, ie only light cavalry used not the heavy battle cavalry.

My stance has been that all cavalry was trained to conduct mounted charges, their quality of training, the training of their officers and the terrain would be the limiting factors as to how successful the charge ability may be.

With the addition of F&I War an opportunity to give cavalry a charge capability was introduced. For this title John gave weapon type D 'Small Arms' a melee enhancement characteristic. Units so equipped would receive a 50% bonus for melees. In one of my scenarios in the game, I gave that weapon type to cavalry (066.Special_a.scn - Special Battles - #1: A Battle Royale!)

Cavalry armed with Small Arms in the EAW system can enjoy up to a 70% bonus in melee strength, if employed properly and even more if they correctly exploit their manuevrability. This result is obtained from a +50% for weapon class (D), +10% for not firing prior to meleeing, and +10% for cavalry conducting a melee in the open, if applicable. A wily player can futher enhance that by adding a leader (+10%), and striking a flank or rear (+20)! Cavalry in the open armed with Small Arms and properly used can be quite useful and worth the extra victory points.

**UPDATED** After a quick test at Brandywine I discovered the melee strength only went up 50% with Small Arms, the other bonuses appear as modifiers.

Those players who are used to John's Napoleonic engine may desire the breakthrough melee feature in the EAW engine. I feel that is not appropriate given the time and ground scale differences. Players can achieve 'breakthrough' like results with a regiment of cavalry by sending in troops or squadrons into combat during a turn and condutcing the melee then exploiting the results with the rest of the regiment during the turn. In essence conducting an actual cavalry charge in the manner, by squadrons, historical commanders did, and not having to have it abstractly modeled as it needs to be modeled in the Napoleonic engine.

All that is left now is for the War of 1812 and Campaign 1776 oobs to be modified so as to rearm the cavalry with Small Arms, D weapon class, and for the pdt files to be modified to include the D weapon class as it is in F&I War. I think this should be done officially. I'd be glad to do the labor. [:)]

The only drawback to the above would be dismounted cavalry would also get the 50% bonus in melee, offensively and defensively. To offset this side-effect would be the shorter range of Small Arms, and the existing engine feature that reduces dimounted cavalry by 25% to reflect horse holders.

What do you all think? Would you like to see cavalry have its natural capabilty? How do you think the above proposal would affect Campaign 1776 or War of 1812? Please post comments here.

Absolutely agree, 100%. [:0] <font size="1">(apparently hell is experienceing a severe cold front)</font id="size1">

Hope you can convince HPS to do t his officially, even if you do all the leg work.

Col Cox
CiC American

"(apparently hell is experienceing a severe cold front)" - Mike

Yes, and if Phil comes on board it will be 'official'ly frozen over. hehehehehe.... [;)][:p]

This certainly sounds a good idea, but perhaps this should depend on the cavalry type? I certainly wouldn't want to see militia cavalry treated in this way, while some other cavalry might be better kept as they are - ie. armed with muskets. Ideally, it would be preferable to see what sort of role cavalry played in each individual battle and encounter and then decide how they should be armed. Even within the context of a single battle, it might well make good sense to arm some cavalry with muskets & bayonets, others without bayonets, some with rifles and others with small arms depending on their equipment, training and battlefield performance.

Major Rich White
28th North Glos Rgt
Right Wing, British Army 1776

Rich,

That's where player made scenarios can play a vital role in exploiting the posibilities of a flexible system. in any given battle the British 16th Lt. Dragoons may very well be given Small Arms to show their 'European battlefield role', and next to them could be some Tory legion cavalry armed with muskets minus the bayonet. When throwing in the quality differences involved we can produce two units that on paper seem the same, both cavalry, but in reality end up having two very different roles (or capabilities) on the day of battle.

The idea could even be expanded upon by tracing a regiment through out the war or a campaign. Where, especially for the US, a cav unit would evolve from a group of mounted farmers to a battle hardened regiment of light cavalry capable of delivering a deadly charge or performing other duties as required.

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Mike it appears Phil is in disagreement. [:p]

Nah, I don't really disagree. I'm so stingy and protective with the meager cavalry I'm used to getting that it doesn't matter to me a helluva lot. [:p] But I'm all for any authenticity we can get though, so pump up the cav!

Phil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Al Amos</i>
<br />Mike it appears Phil is in disagreement. [:p]
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I was too busy laughing and wiping away the tears to notice the difference! [:p] The Natty one's hair was still quite impressive!

Cox
American

I agree with Richard. Although just adjusting the morale level may take care of things. Definitely, militia cavalry should be armed differently than say British dragoons. Cavalry did not have much of a combat role in the AWI, oftentimes they were only used for scouting, courier work or as lifeguards for the commanding generals. One battle where the American dragoons played an active role was as skirmishers at Germantown. (It would probably be better to build them as Lights in the oob in that one.) The other area where enhanced cavalry would make more sense would be many of the southern battles, where units on both sides were dragoons but used as mounted infantry.
So I would like to see the enhancement for some games and not others. As long as there was some way to pick and choose.

Great Al - I hope that this goes retrograde to the other games so that Bloody Tarleton's men can ride down some colonial scum now and then.

"Peasant, bring me more beef now!"

(written from the palace of course)