Common misconceptions

[Justin Swanton]

If you have troops who arrive on your flank - or late arrivals to a battle, the odds on them being exactly 90 degrees or 180 or 270 to your orientation is vanishingly small.

My take is that two lines of infantry or cavalry wanted to engage each other pretty much head on, or front straight to flank, or front straight to rear. A few degrees out didn't matter as the attacking formation would still remain in order. But 30 degrees or 45 degrees out did matter as that would result in the attacking formation losing its file structure. I mentioned this in another post - can rehash it if you like. So something like 10 degrees out works, but not much more than that.

At what angle do you think the Prussians arrived in Plancenoit?

I don't know and I'm not too concerned about Prussians as that's a different style of fighting.

Or the Persians at Thermopylae?

Frontally, along a narrow pass.

Even Marathon is supposed to have the successful wings wheeling onto the flanks.

How was flanking done? Citizen hoplites would just turn and attack the edge of the enemy line (the manuals describe this tactic) or perhaps break formation and swarm around to the rear. Trained professionals like Spartans would get round to the rear in order, but I posit they did it by their rightmost mora forming column, marching to the rear, and forming line again.

And I don't think I have ever suggested wheeling a whole battle line was practical other than by unit markers and reforming on a new line. In the ancients rules I prefer, you can't wheel a longer line.

My point is that contemporary parade ground drill with relatively small units, done in peaceful conditions, is no guide to what an infantry line in Antiquity, composed of thousands or tens of thousands of men, could do with the enemy in close proximity.

[Erpingham]

I'm trying to work out the misconception here.  Is it Justin underestimating the capabilities of drilled troops in ancient periods?  If troops in 18th and early 19th centuries could be trained to carry out drill moves on a battlefield, and they were for the main part illiterate farm boys, why can we not entertain the idea that ancient period troops could do likewise?

The way , incidentally, that 19th century manuals deal with wheels of less than 90 degree increments is to set the unit wheeling, then when the officers perceive it has reached the required facing, they order it to halt or advance as appropriate.  It does require a bit of practice (the men on the inside of the wheel need to use a different pace length to those on the outside and those in between adjust accordingly, but that was probably harder for cadence marching troops than ancient ones) but if Doug says he could give the rudiments in an hour, I believe him.

[RichT]

Does every thread have to become Justin's Pet Theory? Maybe reorganise the forum - one thread for Justin's Pet Theory, to keep him happy. One for Of Course Gridded Boards Are Better You Fools - I'll keep that one going (Dave can help me). The rest of you can then have a thread all to yourselves.

Concerning wheels - if this isn't adding anything to what we went over at length last time, why do it?

http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=4794.0

and many earlier threads I can't be bothered to search for.

Justin - you have the crazy I mean novel and interesting new idea, it's up to you to convince us. You can't just demand we provide evidence that disproves your theory (good luck doing that with practically anything in the ancient world), and the straw man of wheeling a 1.5 km line is a straw man, has been pointed out to be a straw man, and I'm sure you know is a straw man. Please, stop it.

[Erpingham]

I am going to chuck the grenade in the room and say I dont like ZOCs in general

Perhaps we need a new topic "10 things I hate about rules" as these don't seem to be misconceptions per se.  Unless we say that ZoC is an abstraction of a misconception about how units behaved in close proximity to the enemy?

that's what I meant Anthony sorry. ZOC's to me give artificial 'control' over other units with an invisible but tangible force emanating from each unit

Perhaps that's something to develop - what do we think ZoC represents?  Do ZoC rule capture this Ok?  We've had a couple of examples of what ZoCs represent at different scales from Richard and Doug.  In battlefield terms, I tend to see them as an abstraction of the caution units in real life show in close proximity to the enemy, unless they are set on closing and fighting.  A wargamer might calculate angles and move rates and reckon, in a IGO-UGO situation, he could move through a gap or across a front without interference but in real life, a commander wouldn't take those risks - hence the need for a ZoC.  Sounds like some rulesmanship comes into play in some games (probably those which encourage people to worry about millimetres of movement and degrees of angle) though.

[RichT]

So ZoCs can (among other things)
- allow fixed size playing pieces to represent larger units
- avoid some artificialities of IGU-UGO by giving a piece influence outside its turn
- abstractly represent the fact that units in close proximity would be constrained in their choices and actions

Literally, ZoCs do "give artificial 'control' over other units with an invisible but tangible force emanating from each unit" as Dave says - but it's an abstraction of the above (and especially the third). Either that or ancient armies all really did use the Force.

As an abstraction I think it works fine - so are ZoC problems really due to ZoCs or are they due to millimetre finagling and geometric ploys? (In which case we all know the solution, don't we children?)

[Justin Swanton]

Does every thread have to become Justin's Pet Theory?

No, no, no! I promise to leave Currently Reading and Currently Painting alone.

Maybe reorganise the forum - one thread for Justin's Pet Theory, to keep him happy. One for Of Course Gridded Boards Are Better You Fools - I'll keep that one going (Dave can help me). The rest of you can then have a thread all to yourselves.

Count me in for gridded boards.

Concerning wheels - if this isn't adding anything to what we went over at length last time, why do it?

'Cause it's fun?

Justin - you have the crazy I mean novel and interesting new idea, it's up to you to convince us. You can't just demand we provide evidence that disproves your theory (good luck doing that with practically anything in the ancient world), and the straw man of wheeling a 1.5 km line is a straw man, has been pointed out to be a straw man, and I'm sure you know is a straw man. Please, stop it.

SQ: hard primary source evidence indicates infantry subunits in Antiquity wheeled, no argument. But what is the evidence - not popular contemporary consensus but evidence - that an entire line wheeled as a line, even by subunit, and not into column? I'm mooting the theory that infantry changed orientation on the battlefield only by column. Thus far I haven't seen any evidence that they didn't.

Re the Napoleonic period: I'm not very familiar with it, but did line infantry change orientation by line, and if so how long were the lines that did so? I believe infantry were generally broken up into separate brigades that moved and manoeuvred separately on the battlefield, with gaps between them. How wide were those brigades and could be they be considered as equivalent to the subunits of the manuals? If so then of course they could wheel. Since combat was all about muskets I imagine the necessity of facing an enemy head on wasn't so important, what was important was to get all your men into shooting range, hence a need for wheels at various angles.

Edit:  yes, this is way off-topic. I'll leave it there.

[Duncan Head]

So ZoCs can (among other things)
...
- abstractly represent the fact that units in close proximity would be constrained in their choices and actions

Literally, ZoCs do "give artificial 'control' over other units with an invisible but tangible force emanating from each unit" as Dave says - but it's an abstraction of the above (and especially the third).

Which is why I prefer the DBMM term "threat zone": the TZ reflects that troops' actions are constrained by the threat of enemy troops very close to them.

[Justin Swanton]

Should units faster than the ZOCing units be constrained in the same way slower units are? In DBM terms, the ZOC extends about 100 yards in front of the unit. But what would stop LH, say moving across the front of an infantry line to shoot the infantry at close range? That could backfire of course. Venditius' legionaries took out several Parthian horse archer lines who ventured too close to shoot them.

[Duncan Head]

Should units faster than the ZOCing units be constrained in the same way slower units are? In DBM terms, the ZOC extends about 100 yards in front of the unit. But what would stop LH, say moving across the front of an infantry line to shoot the infantry at close range?

In DBM/MM/A terms, of course, that would be moving into contact, as short-range shooting is subsumed into combat. Rules where LH can shoot at a distance would no doubt handle things differently.

[Justin Swanton]

Should units faster than the ZOCing units be constrained in the same way slower units are? In DBM terms, the ZOC extends about 100 yards in front of the unit. But what would stop LH, say moving across the front of an infantry line to shoot the infantry at close range?

In DBM/MM/A terms, of course, that would be moving into contact, as short-range shooting is subsumed into combat. Rules where LH can shoot at a distance would no doubt handle things differently.

Would you see it as a problem if LH or regular cavalry could move across the front of an infantry line within their ZOC in order to avoid getting sandwiched against an impassible obstacle?

[Imperial Dave]

One for Of Course Gridded Boards Are Better You Fools - I'll keep that one going (Dave can help me).

happy to oblige...they are better

[Erpingham]

One for Of Course Gridded Boards Are Better You Fools - I'll keep that one going (Dave can help me).

happy to oblige...they are better

Just checking but is "Of course gridded boards are better you fools" a popular misconception, an uncommon misconception or not a misconception at all?

[Justin Swanton]

One for Of Course Gridded Boards Are Better You Fools - I'll keep that one going (Dave can help me).

happy to oblige...they are better

Just checking but is "Of course gridded boards are better you fools" a popular misconception, an uncommon misconception or not a misconception at all?

Surely you mean metaphysically certain, scientifically certain, or morally certain?

[Erpingham]

I'm mooting the theory that infantry changed orientation on the battlefield only by column. Thus far I haven't seen any evidence that they didn't.

Do you have any hard evidence that they did?  Just from the point of view of trying to envisage it, you are talking of lines 1.5km long made up of sub-units.  They then wheel out forwards so they form a column facing presumably toward the flank and march flank wards until each reaches a turn point at what was the end of the line, then turns 90 degrees and advances in the new direction - this forms a column.  Eventually, the column is 1.5km long at right angles to the battlefield.  All units then wheel 90 degrees to form a line.  The line then advances the 1.5km back to the battlefield.  So, all units have moved 3km, taking 45 minutes?  Or are the units turning toward the centre, exposing their flanks in sequence at short range to the enemy?  It seems to me, from what we might call an IMP position (other people abuse Occam so I will abuse Burne ) , that wheeling toward the centre by sub-units will bring the first units into a position quickly and they will cover the flank of the line as it redeploys.  This seems to be the way it was done in the 19th century and the basic principle of covering your own deployment seems a fundamental that your average Roman would have easily understood.

[Erpingham]

One for Of Course Gridded Boards Are Better You Fools - I'll keep that one going (Dave can help me).

happy to oblige...they are better

Just checking but is "Of course gridded boards are better you fools" a popular misconception, an uncommon misconception or not a misconception at all?

Surely you mean metaphysically certain, scientifically certain, or morally certain?

Thought it better to try and tie it into the title of the topic