Classification of infantry - the return of the revenge of the extra medium foot!

[Justin Swanton]

Stepping back a bit, I think everyone but Justin agrees that there is such a thing as Medium Infantry, even though we don't agree exactly who qualifies?

The more I think about it, the less I like the tripartite LI, MI, HI classification. Neat and tidy but not real, as it is difficult (this thread for evidence) to fit many historical troop types into it. In wargame terms we are looking at subdivisions that reflect combat effectiveness against other troop types.

How about this:

Melee Infantry

All fight in intermediate order (+/- 3' per file) except pikes who sometimes fight in close order.

1. Opponents cannot come into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Pikemen
2. Opponents come with difficulty into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Hoplites
3. Opponents come with difficulty into bodily contact. Lightly armoured - Spearmen

4. Opponents come easily into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Legionaries
5. Opponents come easily into bodily contact. Lightly armoured - Celtic irregulars, Spanish Scutarii

Missile Infantry

6. Will melee infantry and cavalry. Lightly armoured - Massed Archers
7. Will melee cavalry only. Lightly armoured - Peltasts
8. Will not melee. No armour - Psiloi


A sliding scale of combat effectiveness in melee would go as follows:
1 - 4 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8

For ranged combat:
6 - 7 - 8 (peltasts outshoot psiloi as they have more protection against missiles).

[RichT]

Well the original question at the head of this topic was whether there should be some intermediate class of MI, and the answer does seem to be (from everyone but Justin) yes there should, so that is some progress. We could discuss for years which types fall into this class and what their exact factors should be, but that's just an implementation issue (and depends on rules) - the basic principle seems agreed.

MI would seem to include thureophoroi, Hellenistic peltasts (when not in pike mode), lots of barbarian types (perhaps all of the 'warbands', all those who don't, like Germans, form phalanx-like formations), Medieval 'Irregulars', Republican Roman legionaries (maybe), massed archers (maybe). And probably lots of others (there are plenty of candidates though we could argue over the particulars).

[Erpingham]

Reading Richard's post collided with a memory of an earlier post from Andreas about book reviews to open before the idea of the Second Punic War as an affair of different sorts of MI.  Would be an interesting way of looking at it (and playing it).  I shall withdraw, though, into my medieval fastness and contemplate gens de trait as MI with ranged weapons

[Andreas Johansson]

How about this:

Melee Infantry

All fight in intermediate order (+/- 3' per file) except pikes who sometimes fight in close order.

1. Opponents cannot come into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Pikemen
2. Opponents come with difficulty into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Hoplites
3. Opponents come with difficulty into bodily contact. Lightly armoured - Spearmen

4. Opponents come easily into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Legionaries
5. Opponents come easily into bodily contact. Lightly armoured - Celtic irregulars, Spanish Scutarii

Missile Infantry

6. Will melee infantry and cavalry. Lightly armoured - Massed Archers
7. Will melee cavalry only. Lightly armoured - Peltasts
8. Will not melee. No armour - Psiloi

It seems unhelpful to me to tie in the level of protection into the classifications. What will you then do with unarmoured pikemen, say, or unarmoured massed archers?

Also, given that your exemplars of classes 4 and 5 are noted for chucking stuff, aren't they really MI sensu Ricardi by another name? If not, what's the difference?

[Mark G]

Where are sparabara in your classification, Justin?
Or  Jannissaries?
Or skutatoi even?
Vikings carry a lot of missile weapons.
And you have opened up the argument that legionaries are either melee with support javelin or javelinmen with backup swords.

It's a very north western notion that melee and missile must be separated.

And making one the primary is either going to mess up you rating values for the other, or produce a super warrior who is highly rated for both (a bit like old WRG where you added on extras to all your units).

[PMBardunias]

I will admit to being fascinated by this topic, if only because I am not much of a wargamer sadly. Just some random thoughts.

Out of games rules context, I think much of this does not matter. Archaic hoplites were much more like a Germanic Warband than anything classical Greeks put on the field. What I am reading would have them jump from MI to HI after the Persian Wars. Hoplites were surely missile troops as well for most of the Archaic period, and even in the classical could throw rocks to good effect close range. Did the Hastatii who were passed the spears of the Triarii to face the Insubres become HI? (Are the Triarii HI?)

Macedonians are HI, but Cherusci with long spears are not. Unarmored romans with scutii are HI that form a fulcum and at least two ranks of heavies throw things, as Maurice describes, but Gallic warbands, who formed close enough to have their shields pinned together are MI? All that really differs in the way these two groups formed what was essentially the same formation- one through systematic drill and one through less formal, and more simple banding of men. What really differed was their ability to stay in formation or regroup, which would be covered by some morale modifier.

We could look at the fact that Romans only beat sarissaphoroi when they could flank them as a reason to make the former MI and the latter HI, but HI hoplites did not do any better. In fact Spartan hoplites generally won their most famous battles by flanking (cyclosis), and often got their asses handed to them in stand up fights. So maybe the tactics are already baked into the troop strength.

Then we have other issues, like what would the Spartan outrunners which broke formation to scatter peltasts be classed as? Also, Hoplites in Orthoi lochoi could race up hills with the best of them.

I think you either need these designations to be rather abstract or reduced to ridiculous detail and multiple tactical options for each troop type.

[Justin Swanton]

How about this:

Melee Infantry

All fight in intermediate order (+/- 3' per file) except pikes who sometimes fight in close order.

1. Opponents cannot come into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Pikemen
2. Opponents come with difficulty into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Hoplites
3. Opponents come with difficulty into bodily contact. Lightly armoured - Spearmen

4. Opponents come easily into bodily contact. Heavily armoured - Legionaries
5. Opponents come easily into bodily contact. Lightly armoured - Celtic irregulars, Spanish Scutarii

Missile Infantry

6. Will melee infantry and cavalry. Lightly armoured - Massed Archers
7. Will melee cavalry only. Lightly armoured - Peltasts
8. Will not melee. No armour - Psiloi

It seems unhelpful to me to tie in the level of protection into the classifications. What will you then do with unarmoured pikemen, say, or unarmoured massed archers?

I would posit that massed archers had some sort of protection, at least the front ranks. Unarmoured pikemen - are you thinking of the Scottish schiltrom? In that case I suppose whether pikemen are armoured or not doesn't make a difference since their principal protection are their pikes (except against arrows).

Also, given that your exemplars of classes 4 and 5 are noted for chucking stuff, aren't they really MI sensu Ricardi by another name? If not, what's the difference?

My take is that a troop type is classified by whether it is predominantly melee or missile. Class 4 and 5 can chuck stuff but their principal contribution is melee. Rulesets seem to abstract shooting ability out of troops that relied largely on melee.

This of course is all offered on the fly. I'd have to take every known troop type in Antiquity/Mediaeval era and see if they fit these classifications well enough to not substantially differ in mode of combat and efficacity from other  troop types in the same classification (except for quality grading) whilst substantially differing from troop types in the other classifications.

[Justin Swanton]

Where are sparabara in your classification, Justin?

Massed archers who can melee (front rank spearmen)

Or  Janissaries?

Are they predominantly archers or melee troops?

Or skutatoi even?

Spearmen?

Vikings carry a lot of missile weapons.

But are predominantly melee troops.

And you have opened up the argument that legionaries are either melee with support javelin or javelinmen with backup swords.

Their principal contribution in combat is melee, so the former.

It's a very north western notion that melee and missile must be separated.

Most rulesets seem to factor out missile capability with troops that were predominantly melee types. I'm just following that.

And making one the primary is either going to mess up you rating values for the other, or produce a super warrior who is highly rated for both (a bit like old WRG where you added on extras to all your units).

Not sure I follow this.

[Mark G]

Look, if you have good melee infantry, and you can justify a missile addition, (such as adding darts )you create a super troop.

If you acknowledge the risk and downgrade the melee component, players will start arguments about leaving the javelins behind (as romans did in some civil war battles) or it being day two so the arrows were used yesterday.

Players will start fiddling with troops to emphasise a plan based on rule mechanisms, because it will soon become clear whether it is better to have melee or missile.

And your rules become an exercise on gaming the system .

And put simply, it's all based on a very abstract notion that doesn't make sense in many historical cases.

[Patrick Waterson]

I think you either need these designations to be rather abstract or reduced to ridiculous detail and multiple tactical options for each troop type.

This essentially represents the two trends in wargaming thought; the latter (detail and troop types) characterised rules sets of the 1970s while abstraction seems to rule today.

The problems are, of course, that detail is only good if it is actually correct, while abstraction is ultimately only good for argument as it does not actually solve the fundamental problem of which troop type goes in which category (again, this is partly on account of our not knowing exactly what each troop type did, or how).

Ignorance, unfortunately, is not bliss: not knowing how, for example, Achaeans of Aratus' period fought means that if they are hopefully assigned to a speculative category, they could end up being much more - or much less - effective than in real life (in real life they were excellent at raids and rapid entry into cities but lost every major battle they fought against Spartans and Macedonians).  The question of archer effectiveness has long dogged wargaming: some settle for just casualties, some disruption, some try to combine the two.  Few if any rules give archery what our source accounts give as their historical impact (and this varies with weather and target type).

Regarding wargame infantry classification, we have a continuum between on the one hand dispersed formation missile users and on the other close or dense formation melee infantry who may or may not have a missile or two to help out.  The two ends of the continuum are easy enough to define, but everything in between is a matter of mixture and degree.

Or is it?

Is there in fact a 'Z axis', a third branch of soldiery exemplified by the massed archer, and all three meet in the middle?  Is the continuum in fact more like a triangle?  (In such a case, the three axes would not meet int he middle, and it is challenging to think of a historical troop type which would represent the union of all three.)

The triangle would conceptually give us three continua:
1) between dispersed formation skirmishers and close formation melee infantry,
2) between dispersed formation missilemen and massed archers (call them massed missilemen but it was rare for any weapons system other than archery) and
3) between close formation melee infantry and massed archers.  The third continuum would be the home for Achaemenid infantry (and perhaps most other Bibilcal infantry types) and Late Imperial Roman mixed missile and melee formations (notably the late legion).

To test this classification system:

Where are sparabara in your classification?

Continuum 3.

Or  Janissaries?

Continuum 3.

Or skutatoi even?

Continuum 1.

Vikings carry a lot of missile weapons.

Continuum 1.

... the argument that legionaries are either melee with support javelin or javelinmen with backup swords.

Continuum 1.

Which is all very well, but brings us no closer to actually rating the troops involved.  Each troop type resists an enemy weapons system differently: it is hard to avoid needing a shooting matrix and a melee matrix, and perhaps abstracting melee infantry's missile weapons into the melee matrix if close combat occurs in a turn (or round or bound).  Combat interactions are the greatest challenge; movement can be relatively clear and simple with a few caveats regarding speed of advance and behaviour just prior to contact: these can usually be handled, or at least addressed, by a charge rule.

Those are my thoughts at present, which have not led us very far but may give us something on which to build.

[Patrick Waterson]

Look, if you have good melee infantry, and you can justify a missile addition, (such as adding darts )you create a super troop.

Are you saying such troops did not exist historically?  They did (I am thinking of WRG Late Roman legionaries, for example), so what exactly is the problem?  Sure, they beat most opponents, but on the tabletop - and often in real life - the rest of their army (notably the cavalry) tended to be be out-pointed and had to box very cleverly to survive.

[RichT]

We seem to be getting most caught up on massed archers, which makes me wonder if these aren't, like 'warband', a wargamer's construct. How do massed archers differ from typical psiloi? If in formation density then psiloi used similar formations if the tacticians are to be believed. If shooting style, do we know that massed barrage was very different in effect from aimed shots (even assuming these are actual differences)? What did massed archers (Persians, Indians, English/Welsh longbows) do if opposing HI marched up to them and tried to engage them in hand to hand combat? Did they evade/fall back? Did they fight it out with melee weapons? If so were they any good? I don't know the answers, though for Indians I think the answer is nobody knows, and for Persians, that there were also spearmen in the unit (perhaps the same men) who fought if they had to. No idea about longbows. Classing these as bow-armed MI seems reasonable to me - it means they can fight hand to hand, but aren't great at it. They are fairly manoeuvrable and capable on terrain, but less so than dedicated skirmishers. Their shooting ability will probably be similar to LI archers - which to me seems reasonable, though individual rules might want for example to upgrade longbows to reflect their effectiveness.

[Erpingham]

Look, if you have good melee infantry, and you can justify a missile addition, (such as adding darts )you create a super troop.

But is this a flaw in the rules (I think I detect an old WRG controversy about Phil Barkers love of late Romans) or in the system of constructing factors bit by bit out of equipment?  Modern holistic approaches to the combatants (i.e. the Late Roman legion fought in a certain way and was organised and equipped accordingly) do set out to overcome this.

That said, I generally approve of the idea of general overarching rules covering broad categories which can then be modified by more type-specific rules.  I think, in fact, it is pretty much essential when dealing with the timescales and geographies ancients rule writers have chosen.  We are, I think, still largely looking at the highest level of the category tree.

The mention of skutatoi caught me eye.  At certain times, these units consisted of both heavy and light infantry components.  How best to deal with this?  I remember way back to the early WRG there were units with integral sub units, which is one approach.  Or you could do as some pike and shot rules do and treat your unit as a whole, having both a melee strength and a distance shooting effect.

[Erpingham]

Classing these as bow-armed MI seems reasonable to me - it means they can fight hand to hand, but aren't great at it. They are fairly manoeuvrable and capable on terrain, but less so than dedicated skirmishers.

As I've said above, its not a bad suggestion.  Like other MI, we might have interesting questions of "transforming" - for example, I suspect a longbow unit might sit at range lobbing harassing shots at an enemy but if attacked could up its shooting rate to create an arrow storm.

Their shooting ability will probably be similar to LI archers - which to me seems reasonable, though individual rules might want for example to upgrade longbows to reflect their effectiveness.

There is also a lot to be said with shooters about trained and untrained.  A Balearic slinger with a lifetime's practice isn't the same as a baggage carrier given a sling and told to make himself useful.

[RichT]

There is also a lot to be said with shooters about trained and untrained.  A Balearic slinger with a lifetime's practice isn't the same as a baggage carrier given a sling and told to make himself useful.

Yes and that's what quality ratings cover. Balearic slingers are Veteran LI (sling), or Ps (S) if you must; baggage carriers are Levy LI (sling), or Ps (I). I think a single 'quality' measure does a fair job of covering such differences (I don't think measuring, say, morale and training/experience separately would add any value).

Apropos of all this I was just looking at Lost Battles to see how Philip Sabin arrived at his AR (massed archer) category and noted footnote 28 to ch. 2:

"One system infamously even rated Indian archers, regarded as the lowest status element of the army, as 'superior' because of their large bows and two-handed swords, thereby placing them in the same category as English medieval longbowmen!"

The reference is to DBM (is this infamous by the way?).

To DBM, Indian archers are 'superior' because of their weapon types. To Phil this is patently absurd because Indians are poor quality. Polybian v. Livian.