FOCUS ON..........Horse and Musket (H&M)

[bob48]

There we are then. No doubt we can expect another 'annual' with a lot more scenarios.

Hollandspiele sell it for $50 whereas the selling price at SCG (the exclusive outlet in the UK) is £70.00 before postage cost ($75) which means that its not something I will buy.

[bbmike]

You just cost me $50!

[bob48]

Excluding postage.

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the period, so I doubt I would have brought it anyway. :-)

[bayonetbrant]

To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the period, so I doubt I would have brought it anyway. :-)

You mentioned above that you'd played most of V1 and some of V2 & 3 online w/ some other folks.

What was it about those that grabbed your attention that this one doesn't?  Short Corsican Burnout Syndrome™?

[bob48]

Although I have read about / played Napoleon period, it just does not interest me as much as the periods covered by Vol I, II and III. I would also get Vol IV if I could since again, the period it covers, AWI, is of some interest, although not a period that I have much studied, but I would very much like to get Horse and matchlock since the ECW and TYW are of great interest to me..

The other point is that I'm not convinced at how well the H&M system will handle the Napoleonic period.

The reason I say that is that the system is very clever at being able to cover a lot of historical ground by the use of three different battle CRT's. However, in order to achieve this, you have to accept some abstractions in terms of unit size, ground and time scale, and I think that these aspects assume a greater importance in this later conflict.

I also have to admit that, as much as I like the system, I do find the art style to be pretty bland and boring and could have been presented in a much more interesting way. As ever, I stress that this is just my personal opinion and others may not agree.

[bbmike]

I'm in agreement with you, Bob, on the artwork being a bit subpar. As far as handling the Napoleonic period, if Command & Colors can do it, so can Horse and Musket! 

[bob48]

I've not ever played any C&C games as I will admit to not liking block games one little bit.

[besilarius]

Just out of curiousity, because I don't have any gamers that play this, how well do you feel the system handles the age of Marlborough?
The reason I ask, is the difference between the French and English horse.  The French had a more rough and tumble system.  Think it was Marshal Boufflers who said each trooper of the Madison EU Roi should take out three enemy troopets.
One by shooting his pistol, a second by throwing his empty pistol at an enemy troopet, and a third by drawing his sabre.  Basically a big rugby scrum.
Whereas Marlborough forbade his troopers to use their pistols in attack.  The fast trot and ordered, disciplined ranks.

Most game systems I've looked at, seem to make no differentiation between the national cavalries.
Also, how the harsher discipline did allow units to fall back behind the second line and reform.  I have read that at Ramilles, one of the Dutch cavalry attacked, fell back to reform, and attacked again four times.

[bob48]

Its actually quite simple how this is done, but by the same token, quite effective given the overall simplicity of the system. In fact, the interaction between the different types of 'horseman' is maybe the most (relatively) complex part of they system.

There are three 'flavours'; Cavalry (heavy stuff such as Cuirassiers) Hussars and Dragoons and each have specific abilities. In terms of national differences, this is handled in a scenario's special rules whereby a nations cavalry may be classed a 'inferior' or 'superior' or even 'superior charging' and this in turn effects how many combat dice and/or DRM's a unit will get. It all actually works quite well and does give some satisfying results.

As I noted above, you can actually download the latest version of the rules and judge for yourself.

I gather that the rules work quite well with mini's if that be your preference.

[bob48]

One of the other unfortunate aspects of the system is the difficulty, when playing or trying to do an AAR, of getting a decent narrative going. This I attribute to the generic and anonymous nature of the units and the map whereby you cannot refer to the action of a named unit or a specific named geographical location, although some leaders are represented by a named counter. I've even, after comparing actual battlefield maps with those of the map set-ups for the appropriate scenario, began to actually question the accuracy of some of the maps, even allowing the limited number of terrain types available.

As I have said before, these, together with the rather dull artwork do tend to detract from the game, despite the fact that it is undoubtedly a good system with a huge scope. We just have to accept the trade-off, and whatever, I continually get drawn back into playing it.

[bob48]

Since I'm reading Dennis Showalter's book about Frederick II and Prussia, and having just reach the point where the battle of Mollwitz is about to take place, I thought it would be interesting to see how this looks in H&M. I'm using the Vassal mod here since I don't actually have H&M Vol II.

The book tells us that the Prussian deployment was as follows: 36 squadrons on the left, although it does not define if they are hussars or dragoons.
A further 35 squadrons on the right, but again, no details as to the composition of this force.

In the centre was 23 battalions of infantry in the front line with a further 12 battalions in the second line.

The game has one unit of Hussars and one unit of Dragoons deployed on the left and just one unit of cavalry on the right.
The front rank consists of two units of Elite Line and 2 units of Line, with a further two Line units in the second line.

My aim was to try and see how the scenario designers translate historical forces into those depicted in the game. Given the generic unit size, this is not all that clear, to me at least.

Just crunching some figures, then each of the horse units would be an average of 24 squadrons, although this does not equate well with the actual number of squadrons that we are told were present. Again, I have no detail of the actual number of horses that constituted a squadron, or a breakdown of the the number of men there was in each arm. We are told that the total Prussian force was around 21,600 men.

Using the same principle, then each of the infantry units represent approximately 6 battalions. From what I can find out, the 'normal' organisation at that period was that a brigade consisted of 2 regiments each of 2 battalions, and therefore that would indicate that each infantry unit in the scenario is equal to 3 brigades.

[bbmike]

An interesting experiment. I've always thought that games like this (H&M, C&C, HtL) are 'zoomed out' a bit too far for their scenarios. They do a good job of providing the feel/atmosphere of the battle but not so much the detail and strategy really involved.

[bayonetbrant]

I wonder if the scaling isn't "elastic" in that those representative units might be 6 battalions in this scenario, but 9 battalions in another one.  But so long as everyone in the same scenario has the the same scaling, the play balance still works out.

I'm just spitballing here, though.  I don't know if that's actually how they are balanced.

[bob48]

Oh, no question of that. Its really the basis of how the system works, allowing flexible unit size to accommodate disparate battle size. Bear in mind that a scenario may be one of three different sizes, and you then use the appropriate CRT. (small, normal or large).

I suspect that the designer will be using some sort of algorithm that turns raw data, in terms of known historical army size, and translates that into appropriate units for a given scenario.

Maybe with the aid of a bit of tinkering and perhaps in some cases, educated guess-work 

[Barthheart]

Along with that will be "balancing" the scenario in terms of number of unit counters that make the scenario interesting and fun to play.