Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

Continuing on with our club wide research of tactics during the AWI, I picked up, through Inter-Library Loan, <u>That Loose Flimsy Order: The Little War Meets British Military Discipline in America 1755-1781</u> a thesis paper by David E. Parker.

It is a good overview of the subject. I will not quote extensively from it but give some answers to questions I had concerning the subject.

Q: Did the Germans fight in 2 or 3 ranks?
A: Yes. hehehe... Turns out the Brunswickers who served under GM Riedesel did. These troops accompanied General Burgoyne in the North. GM Riedesel served with a Hussar unit druing the SYW in Europe and was very comfortable fighting 'the Little War.' So he had his command adopted the British 2-rank open style. The Hessians from Hesse Hanau and Hesse Cassel did not and retained thier Prussian 3 rank drill.

Q: How "open" was 'that loose flimsy order'?
A: Apparently it had two basic versions, one with a 4 foot interval between files and one with a 10 foot interval between files. These distances allowed officers to maintain control over thier men, and allowed the men to move over obstacles and practice aimed fire better than the 'closed order', with only 22" per file. Incidentally, light companies were pulled together in England in 1771 to learn these new instructions at Salisbury under William Howe the then army "Drill Instructor". These same tactics were then taught to the entire battalion, at least upon arrival to North America if not sooner.

Q: How would or could this impact our playing of 1776?
A: Strong evidence is made that ALL British and Brunswick troops should be rated as (L), light troops. This would allow them to use close order 22", open order 4' and extended order 10'. If you do not add the interval between companies (which you should), this would give 68 files per hex at 22", 31 files at 4', and 12 files at 10'.

So the British player would need to exercise self-discipline if they use a 'universally' trained army of light troops. That discipine would mean not stacking more than 96 men per hex for closed order (company intervals taken into consideration), 48 men in open order and only 24 men in extended order.

Now a question arises how to best reflect the difference between closed, open and extended orders. The easiest is extended order, just put the sub-units in X order in the game with the single line. The open order was used to facilitate movement over the less than clear ground of North America. In game terms the best way would be to keep the sub-units in line formation, and play with Line Disruption ON. But this does not go far enough. The PDT file needs to be modified so the Brits have only a 3% chance of disrupting instead of the current 10, BTW the Colonial percentage needs to be dropped to 5%, and British units need to be rated as B class. These two things will help them from disrupting much even in woods, and it will help thier fire which reflects the move to individual aimed fire.

To be fair, if a Brit player is going to use the above then he must keep his stacks limited to the 4' interval spacing, so only 48 men is good to reflect company intervals. This also means you try to keep 48 men per hex as well! So you initially deploy the unit into line at 48 men per hex and then as casualties start and strenght drops, you shorten your line. (Colonials should do so as well.) Unless you are defending a linear obstacle such as entrenchments, fieldworks or a stone wall.

Also, he should discipline himself as to how he moves his battalions. Keep the unit in line, and if the line is going to change facing the wheel the outside flank around. Move the battalions forward, and backward in line. Lines can be "crocheted" (not straight), flanks can be facing out at an angle to the rest of the line, or it can follow a tree or fence line, etc, but the unit needs to move together. So if one sub-unit routs the bn stops and waits for it to close up again, or it moves at disrupted speed if any of it is disupted, etc. etc.

Now William Howe has helped you guys out again, he trained the boys to change formations at a run, so when massing into a column, or when executing a wheel, I would say the individual sub-units could change into column to get to their new postions quicker then change back to line.

Well that's it for now, just more thougts over ground that's been covered.

Lt. Col. Al Amos
1st U.S. Dragoons 1812-R

Edited by - Al Amos on 06/22/2002 00:55:10

Excellent stuff Al!

I don't think that open order is really the same in game terms as X order though. (And I think we may have rambled over this territory before).

What this means in terms of the minimum requirement would be that a hex containing only 40 men would be considered "open order" (4').

The other thing is that units in X order (as the game currently defines it) should be severely limited to 24 men OR 1 company. (The 10' being a guideline.)

So to keep it simple:

100 men max in a hex (melees could still involve 200 max). Close order

Minimum of 40 men in a hex. Open order

X order units, 24 (or 1 company.)

For Hessians (or a three rank unit) increase to 150, 60, 24.

Your points on wheeling, line and forest, etc are all well noted.





Lt. Colonel Mike Cox
New Jersey Militia
(1st Hunterdon Cty)
AdC American Army

Mike,

Yeah that could work, and you are right open order is not the games' X order, that is the extended order with 10' interval, but all Brit units would need to be coded as Lights since they had been trained, and in practice did, use the 10' interval.

As for the stacking you could still stack over 100 men in a hex with 2 rank troops, PROVIDING ...

you realize you are forming a column (sub units were in line formation within columns) so...

you disciplined yourself to fire ONLY the top sub-unit, since all the others are behind the first and the DOUBLE WIDE* column had not come into practice yet.

(Yeah I know ADF will fire any and all, so you could play MDF if you wished to be pure on the issue.)

*Column of divisions refered to here - 2 company frontage, not mobile homes <img src=icon_smile_wink.gif border=0 align=middle>.

Lt. Col. Al Amos
1st U.S. Dragoons 1812-R


Edited by - Al Amos on 06/22/2002 01:24:44

Extended formation in game terms is not just a question of how many men in each hex. Since the game, unlike for instance Tiller's squad battles games, has no density modifier, we still need the extended line formation in order to reflect the fact that in extended order troops are much less susceptible to ranged fire. Now <b>if</b> we had this density modifier ...

Anyway, Chris Hopper and I are already playing our barroom brawl tourney game quite the way you describe here, Al.

<font color=gold>Lt.Col. D.S. Walter O.S.M.
Commanding 4th Regiment of Foot, "The King's Own"
Aide-de-camp, Royal North American Corps</font id=gold>

Come to think about it, we also introduced a house rule in order to reflect the firing by platoons. We fire the platoons individually, but if they start taking casualties, several of them can be combined, if their total strength doesn't exceed the regulation size (24 in my case). The rule tends to even out the casualties between offensive and defensive fire.

<font color=gold>Lt.Col. D.S. Walter O.S.M.
Commanding 4th Regiment of Foot, "The King's Own"
Aide-de-camp, Royal North American Corps</font id=gold>

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=2 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
Yeah that could work, and you are right open order is not the games' X order, that is the extended order with 10' interval, but all Brit units would need to be coded as Lights since they had been trained, and in practice did, use the 10' interval.
[quote]
But you would likely need a house rule to prevent all troops from deploying to X

[quote]
As for the stacking you could still stack over 100 men in a hex with 2 rank troops, PROVIDING ...

you realize you are forming a column (sub units were in line formation within columns) so...
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I think I was only refering to 3 rank Hessians when I mentioned going to 150.

But what you say makes sense, even if not in column, as the 2nd line would clearly not be able to see/shoot anything.

Lt. Colonel Mike Cox
New Jersey Militia
(1st Hunterdon Cty)
AdC American Army

Mike,

Yeah I understood. The 3 rank Hessians would be the only who should more than 100 men per hex, but as you suggest not over 150.

I threw the column idea out to bring it to other's attention.

al

Lt. Col. Al Amos
1st U.S. Dragoons 1812-R

Good info. Some thoughts. The "B" rating for Brits might make them too powerful. For Bunker Hill and Battle Road, the Brits might have been 3 column as Howe trained the entire army that had been in Boston in the "new" tactics in Halifax. I'm not sure that the Hessians in Burgoyne's army would have been 3 rank, as during the winter of 76-77, he also trained his entire army in the newer tactics according to Pausch who was a Hessian artillery captain. I have several journals from that campaign, I'll see what I can find out. As to the worry about too many units being made "L" in the game, there are costs associated with that mode, such as less effective firepower and melee. So it may not be a major concern. Just as there are costs if one detaches a company or two outside the command area of the regimental commander. One way to minimize that might be to break the regiment up, so that say half the regiment is designated as regulars, and half as lights, with the lights having a major as a regimental sub commander. I re-edited my Harlem oob so that the American detachments are now part of their original regiment, but with their majors as sub commanders. I can send you a copy of the oob to look at. These are historiclly correct too : )
I did not send the re-edit in yet, so don't rely on the version that is in the design center.

Larry Davis
Lt. Col. of
His Royal Majesty's
64th regiment of Foot
on the CCC

Larry according to the source I cited the Hessians with Burgoyne worked within the 'new' British system.

If you work with an altered pdt file where the line disruption percentages are lowered then Brits rated at C would probably not trip over themselves, too often.

Lt. Col. Al Amos
1st U.S. Dragoons 1812-R

(in reply to comments on Extended order) but those in Extended Order should not stand like the Old Guard either. I believe that a lessening of morale for most units in open order would help not only this game but the Napoleonic one as well.
For instance - in a game I am playing with a British member who uses emotes extensively I have his extended line units surrounded. Yet even with overwhelming numbers they are eluding some 500 men! There are about 40 of those Brit lights in the woods. They havent broken yet but are disrupted.
In my book the more a man is seperated from his pards the more suceptible he is to rout. Only really elite units in that period should be able to hold their ground under those circumstances. And this is the third turn of encirclement - 15 mins. but time in this game is rather abstract to say the least - actually you can make more command change decisions in the 1776/1812 games than any other 18th century game as you work with 1/3 the time scale and unless you use an orders system your men can be told to change fronts 3 times as often as those in say Napoleon in Russia!
Now all this was said to prove that 40 Brits in extended order equals 400 Americans!
But certainly NOT 40 members of Morgan's men or those of the French army!

Maj. Bill Peters, Morgan's Rifles, American Army
Commander of French Dept.

Bill -

Just curious what the relative qualities of the units in question. Also, how are the Americans armed? Isolation Rules? Terrain Effects for melees? Etc.


Lt. Colonel Mike Cox
New Jersey Militia
(1st Hunterdon Cty)
AdC American Army

British Lights with morale C or B in extended order. American militia, rifles no bayonets.
Melee odds were 145 to 30 or something like that. Remember that units in extended order are reduced as are my bayonet-less troops. More or less a wash on that regard.
I think that in the Tiller system too many small units are allowed to exert too great of an influence on units. For some of these actions turning ON Weak ZOC might help but not sure that is the answer as you have various sized units. I have suggested having a ZOC unit vs. unit comparison rule tossed in . Til something like that happens we will still see 100 men stopped by 1 man units.
I do remember a famous engagement in the War of 1812 where a handful of Americans held a bridge (non-ZOC issue though - just one hex) near Niagara for quite a while and perhaps there is more to meet the eye about this issue - which is why I am loathe to turn off ZOCs in some cases. I dont think we would ever see 5-10 men stop 120-800 British troops like those guys did (Antique Road Show had the presentation rifles that the guys won from the US Govt - was valued at 20,000 plus USD).
Note - am not whining about this - I thoroughly enjoy this game system. It is one of my favorite periods in history. As is the ECW as well!

Maj. Bill Peters, Morgan's Rifles, American Army
Commander of French Dept.