RCW Battle Tactics?

[Alexander Kutepov]

a 1970's recreation of the assault on Ekatarinodar during the 1st Kuban campaign with General Markov and his squad of officers and volunteers, based on The Path of Agony by Alex Tolstoy a relative of the famous Leo Tolstoy.

[Mark Plant]

Well I have finished the Eikhe book on Red Army Tactics in the RCW. It's pretty rough but I'm over it now and it was getting in the way of work. It is at the top of the page here: https://pygmywars.com/rcw/gaming/tactics/tactics.html

Relevant to a previous comment in the thread, there is mention of the Reds forming square quite often out east.

Some of it was very new to me.

[trev]

Another great effort Mark.  Thanks for posting.  I've skimmed through quickly, just reading random passages, and it looks very interesting. 

[PBR Streetgang]

I'd love to hear more about these instances if you're able to share, Cuprum. I assume they'd fly in the face of the contemporary infantry regulations, but it's very interesting to hear about them.

Probably 30 years ago, in Military History Magazine, I remember reading an account from a veteran of the RCW. He was very young when he joined a red cavalry unit and mentioned a Hungarian volunteer unit that formed a square  to fend off a cavalry charge which wasn't successful and the unit was wiped out. I will have to dig up the magazine (still in the shelf somewhere) and look for the details.

[Mark Plant]

I don't think many of the "squares" formed were like Napoleonic ones. That is only possible if the enemy don't have artillery. They were much larger I suspect.

At 13:00 on 1 May [1918] the Special Army left Ozinki station to attack Semiglaviy-Mar station. To guard communications, two squadrons of the Saratov Cavalry Regiment remained at Altata station and the Khvalyn Infantry Company at Chalykla and Dem'yas stations,. The other detachments moved in a long line along the railway line, in the following order: on the right flank went Sapozhkov's detachment, followed by Shevelev's and Demidkin's detachments; on the left flank moved Chapaev's detachment; in reserve at a distance of 4 - 6 kilometres, also spread in a chain, were the Saratov and Tambov detachments. The artillery and machine guns moved in the centre.

This formation was like a square and was caused by the tactics of the Cossack cavalry, who were able to manoeuvre quickly on the battlefield, to appear suddenly where it was not expected, and to attack the flanks and rear. This forced the Red Guard commanders to adopt that order of march immediately from leaving the staging point.

The convenience of the square was that it made it possible to engage enemy cavalry without delay, without rearrangement. But it had to move off the roads, which slowed down the march considerably, and the speed of the square was no more than two or three kilometres per hour.

The Poles would sometimes form up against the Konarmiya in what they called a "hedgehog", which was basically a massive circular formation.

[cuprum]

It seems to me that it looked not like one large dense formation, but a chain of “hedgehogs”, dense groups of soldiers. Orderly movement in several dense groups will be much easier than in a huge mass.

And I think in order for a Civil War game to be realistic, it needs to limit the number of shots for infantry and cavalry. This will change the whole picture of the battlefield...
With rare exceptions, all sides always had difficulties with ammunition, which forced them to conduct shooting and artillery combat very sparingly.

[Mark Plant]

I always limit the amount of fire my batteries have. It does make the game rather different.

[Rogerc]

Limiting the ammount of ammo for artillery should be simple enough and effective for controlling its effectiveness. Would the Poles operating on interior lines likely have more available ammo than the Reds or Whites? I assume some campaigns were potentially more limited than others with distances from stocks impacting?

Less sure how easy it is to control the number of rounds of ammo infantry have.

 

[Mark Plant]

The Poles always had more ammunition, but they also had more artillery in general. It was only around Warsaw that they could really build up stocks, but they evacuated a lot of it and didn't get to return it in time, so even then they sometimes ran out. Elsewhere they had more, but not a lot more because the supply chains were still long and their army was much newer than the Red Army (plus their artillery methods were outdated, so they couldn't always apply the advantage).

My rules (Red Actions) have such a wide range of effectiveness for shooting that I don't bother with infantry supplies. I just assume it is built in to the variation.

[cuprum]

It all depends on the specific rules you play by. But you can, for example, give the opportunity to an infantry unit or a machine gun on the gaming table to fire a limited number of times during the entire game. And then you will be forced to play completely differently. Any long-range fire will almost disappear. The game will become more dynamic. Infantry will strive for close/hand to hand combat. Cavalry will become of great importance. If you introduce a “cartridge convoy” into the game, the capture of which will reduce the number of possible shots for one of the opponents and increase for the other... all this promises to look interesting. It will be exactly what war looked like in reality - a combination of modern technology with 19th century warfare methods.
The amount of ammunition the opponents have (the number of volleys that one of the players' units can fire per game) can be determined before the start of the game by rolling dice.
Interventionists most likely should have no restrictions on ammunition at all. Poles - the value of a game die with a positive coefficient.
I see it something like this.

By the way, the meaning of “psychic” attacks in the Civil War immediately becomes clear... You are simply trying to force the enemy to use up the few ammunition they have at a long, ineffective distance. After which the enemy who is weak in spirit will simply run away...

[Rogerc]

Thanks Cuprum, I do get the concept and can see how it would help manage the game, just think it might be cumbersome keeping a track of all the units with their differing ammo levels when I have maybe 30 units per side. Something I may try for smaller games to see how it plays. Much easier for the artillery with smaller numbers of guns on table.