Cavalry in Warlord's Black Powder Rules

[Conquistador]

This came up several times on the Warlord Games forum a few years back when the rules came out and were played a few times outside the playtesting arena.

It must be said, opinion was divided as to the realism or justification for what more than a few people saw as the under-powered nature of cavalry, focussing around the Napoleonic era type units.

From what I recall the arguments went something like this -

- supporters of the rule thought that trained infantry in this genre would automatically form square when faced with cavalry, and be drilled in such formation changes to the extent that they could adopt the square pretty much automatically and be safe (in fact so few accounts of squares being broken by cavalry make it a statistically negligible possibility).

- also, supporters point out that cavalry was at a distinct disadvantage facing even infantry in line if they held their ground, since a bristling hedge of bayonets, combined with each cavalryman being faced by multiple muskets at once (cavalry regiments being much smaller than infantry ones and attacking in waves) didn't often end well. Frontal assaults by cavalry most often led to a lot of dead cavalry if the infantry stood their ground.

HOWEVER!!

- critics argued that infantry that were caught by surprise/disordered or in a formation other than square and charged from the flank/rear were in big trouble, especially if caught by heavy cavalry or lancers.

- also, they felt it was unfair on cavalry to give infantry what amounts to an automatic square formation when charged by cavalry, since very often infantry who were less well drilled or caught on the hop (see above) did not have time. Certainly a marching column caught by cavalry should be all but guaranteed to be routed.

From memory the argument went back and forth in true internet style with a few choice insults and accusations regarding expertise, knowledge and possibly parentage. For one such as myself, who loves a good cabaret, it was time to put my feet up, crack open a cold one and enjoy the show for a while.

Sadly it did shake itself out some sort of sensible solution. I believe a suggestion was made to house-rule infantry caught out of square, such that a successful roll had to be made in order to form square (I forget the mechanics, but better drilled infantry had an almost automatic chance, whereas untrained or raw or disordered troops had a cumulative penalty to roll and a decent chance to fail). Troops unable to form square were then automatically counted as disordered and then suffered a further combat penalty. If they chose not to adopt square they had to fight it out - line vs cavalry front-on were still fairly strong if not disordered, but other cases where a line was charged in the flank, or in column (assault or marching) there were further combat penalties.

Also, if I recall correctly, cavalry making a multiple move into contact (ie. haring across the battlefield excitedly) gave the defender a better chance to change formation, so long as they were visible to the defender at the start of their move, compared to cavalry who only made a single move into contact. This represents making the opponent decide whether to take the prudent option when cavalry is around, and get into square early, or risk getting 'bounced'.

I have no idea how these house rules played out, but it's the way I remember the discussion back then, but I may have gotten them a bit wrong. Hope they help! Or at least entertain, which might even be better.    

This discussions sounds one I have heard in every ruleset for historical games between introduction of the socket bayonet and the wide spread use of machine guns.

Strangely, this never come up in reference to pikes...

[JamesValentine]

They might have added this to the newer edition of the rules then, since it was a bone of contention in the old rules.

last I checked forming square does require a roll. as you can be strung out and left disordered if it all goes very wrong. something like rolling a 1
2-5 formed square
and I think 6 formed square with a shoot?
been a while since I last checked though. but I know its never been automatic