Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

I'm in the middle of a game right now where my opponent is stacking groups of Skirmishers in front of his units to obviously blanket his advancement of forces. Understandable, but in retaliation, my forces are doing absolutely MINIMAL damage to his Skirmishers. Artillery doesn't touch them (Which I would think is grossly miscalculated in these games) and Infantry doesn't do much when firing at them either, forget trying to melee skirmishers with infantry. Though you most likely gain the ground, you lose more men than the skirmishers do??? How does this make sense??? Can someone please explain to me why skirmishers are so "invincible" in these titles? Is this historically accurate? It seems to me, Cavalry shouldn't be the only unit to defeat them, of course this only applies when charging, otherwise forget it!

Maybe I am the only one with such a thought, but it would seem to me that if you stack Skirmishers like you stack infantry and your using Column Pass Through Fire, the Skirmishers should take multiple hits as well. I understand Skirmishers are smaller group than infantry units, but when I fire a total of 16 12lbs. er's at a stack of 4 or even 5 100+ per unit Skirmishers, I should get more than 2 or 3 men dying. I mean Come on!!! It's a waste of artillery to even fire at them if these are going to be my outcomes. In the future, if it's fire on the Skirmishers or not fire at all I think I will take the latter.....

I don't like how skirmishers are so powerful in these games. Of course, I'm open to historical discussion and if you all can prove to me that Skirmishers were pretty much invincible back in the 19th century, then maybe I could take the overpowered and overused "Skirmisher" a bit better, lol!!

Dare I ask:.............Has anyone tried or happens to be currently playing using NO Skirmishers??? ...I think I might try that in the future depending on how people respond. Lastly, of course, all my bickering might be because I am a below par player and am still fairly new to these titles hahaha!!

Nothing more fun than charging down stacks of skirmishers. Might lose some cavalry upfront but you can take lots of skirms and infantry this way. Then move in with infantry in line and fire away. Never waste arty fire on skirms. Ever notice how auto arty defensive always fires at skirmishers when there are perfectly good battalions in the same hex?

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FM Sir 'Muddy' Jones, KG
2nd Life Guards, 1st Squadron, Household Cavalry
1st Duke of Uxbridge & Anglesey K.G.

gary,
sir muddy is correct, use cavalry to overun the skirmishers. put the cavalry into charging mode and you can mow down large numbers of skirmishers. i try to use skirmishers as little as possible, too much to keep track of. my pet peeve is that column pass through fire doesn't effect cavalry, even though in my opinion if you include the horses there are twice as many targets as a stack of infantry.

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I am a moderate user of skirmishers and when I have an opponent who like them a lot I always use charging cavalry on them...

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Général David Guegan

3ème Régiment de Grenadiers - Bataillon d'élite du 3ème Légère
2ème Brigade
Grenadiers de la Réserve
Réserve
La Grande Armée
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"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."
Napoléon Bonaparte

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
Groucho Marx

You can also eliminate skirmishers by surrounding them even if NME is ticked.
I think they are quite vulnerable.

Another thing to take into account is they have a 1 lower morale than normal. This means as they are usually not supported by officers if you push forward infantry in line, fire at them and then melee they must take a morale test after losing the melee. The resulting routs will then disorder his advancing units behind them. Thus leaving your infantry in line to pour fire on the columns or force a withdrawal for reorder. This is a good tactic as your units will often not disorder when meleeing the skirmishers. With this method you can make a skirmish line a liability for an attacker.

As for their historical role it was pretty important so I think their strength in the games is about right given the weakness to cavalry and isolation. At Waterloo for example both sides had extensive skirmish lines who fought all day and only took cover as the cavalry went back and forth.

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Marechal Knox

Prince d'Austerlitz et Comte d'Argentan
Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur

"What is history but a fable agreed upon"

Gary,
Another thing to do is to make maximum use of your own skirmishers. Make him melee your line out of the way. Or mostly ignore them too-shooting against units in line they often do not cause much damage. If there are more than 250 of them in a hex, they lose their skirmsher advantage and are vulnerable to fire... But yes, if they are not backed up by infantry (who would use ZOC to stop overruns), run them down with a few squadrons of light cavalry. If they are backed up by infantry in column, you can still charge forward with a regiment broken down into platoons/squadrons and overrun the fornt line of skirmishers, it will just take more cavalry this way. But make sure that your own cavalry, after the charge, does not have infantry behind it in case it is meleed by enemy cavalry on the next turn. You would not want them thrown back into your lines in disorder...

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Gary is in 1812 at the battle of Smolensk, Gary it's always bon to let them know what battle you are fighting . Like we been asking for and FM Hall asked also when will they up grade these games. The last was five years ago I believe on NRC. It makes no since to many why up grades take so long the excuse is that the guy who up grades is to busy ! That's not bon business, when there are so many better games you can buy and play.