New Model Army ratios

[mmcv]

What's the general thinking on the ratio of pike to shot for the New Model Army?

On paper they were intended to be 2:1 but reading through the Naseby campaign book from osprey it suggests it might be closer to 4:1.

It goes through the Royalists at Naseby giving a fairly good breakdown of the ratios for each part of the army but is a bit more vague on the NMA.

I'd originally done a few units as 2:1 but thinking they should all be musket heavy at that point in the war. (I'm rebasing at the moment).

[Scrubber]

Refit of a company of Colonel Waltons 1650’s.
66 muskets, 6 fire locks, 30 pikes, 2 drums, 2 halberds, 1 partisan and 100 swords.

[mmcv]

Close enough to 2:1 then give or take. Discussing this with a few others elsewhere I'm reasonably happy that around the start of the NMA 2:1 was generally to goal and the osprey suggestions that it might have been different don't have too much to recommend them.

Gives a nice balance as the NMA in my lists will be all standard while the Royalists a mix of standard, shot heavy and commanded shot.

[Scrubber]

Royalist strength is different. By 1644 the desertion rate of the common soldier was very high.
From the Reading muster in 1644, the strongest regiment present was Pennymans with 119 officers and 360 soldiers. The weakest being Blackwells with 30 officers and 56 soldiers.

[Digits]

Crikey Brian....with that ratio of officers to men....sounds like an SK muster! Lol

[mmcv]

Yeah, it seems to be a lot more variable, but from what I read there were a lot more shot than pike in their numbers (I corrected my previous post where I'd typed pike heavy instead of shot heavy). So have a few "standard" units (Ruperts, Kings, Yorks) then a few shot heavy ones (various regiments brigaded together) then some commanded shot (e.g. the Shrewsbury foot).

Means the Royalists can lay down a bit more fire but are likely to not be as good in melee. My NMA are mostly "untried" as well so variable based on whether they perform well or not (at least for FK&P, other rules will use slightly different stat lines).

Should hopefully give a nice balanced game between ragtag veterans of the Royalists and the professional but inexperienced NMA.

[Friends of General Haig]

It is interesting to look at the ratios, as we do tend to just assume the ‘ideal’ 2 musket to 1 pikemen. 

Naseby is also interesting in looking at the apparent poor to average  performance of the NMA foot / good performance of the Royalist foot, when you consider the NMA numerical advantage. 

The NMA foot seem to have become a lot more effective by the time your get to the Commonwealth army in 1650/1.

I had a quick skim through ‘Better Begging than Fighting’ as I remembered this having something in about the Commonwealth forces at the Dunes.  It says that the ratio was 1:1 for this campaign as it was feared that the foot that there would be a greater danger from cavalry. Also interesting to note that the French requested that the Commonwealth pikemen be armoured.  Once again the Commonwealth infantry performance was good.

[mmcv]

Interesting thanks, I had read somewhere that they'd requested more pike for the continent but couldn't find the reference again when I went looking. Wasn't sure if that was a reference to them being shot heavy 'by default', or just shifting them to pike heavy for particular purpose. 1:1 would imply standard probably was 2:1.

Yes for naseby I'm rating my foot as untried to give variable performance (i.e. roll for quality during battle).