Multiple Cavalry Melees - some observations

[Eckerslyke]

Good point - our chosen medium for battle does not use a pure 'action point' metric for what a unit may or may not do during a phase. But in the JTS wargaming environment, charging cavalry, however far they must travel before making contact, still may melee a first time, then move (up to) a further two hexes before meleeing a second time.

I am comfortable with the idea that a cavalry unit which has already had to charge its full movement distance before engaging the enemy would experience a sufficiently strong adrenalin rush that once the fighting began, there would be no stopping them (even perhaps commands to withdraw from their own officers) until they were physically incapable of moving further. For me, two more hexes and one more melee after an initial melee is a realistic allowance for a charging cavalry unit.

(Reality check - I cannot ride a horse or wield a sabre. The extent of my equine experience is riding donkeys on Blackpool beach, some 60 years ago.

http://www.attractionsblackpool.co.uk/Bl...onkeys.htm

I was too young to have a sabre at the time, but I did have "a stick with an 'orses 'ead 'andle, the best that Woolworths could sell."

(A cultural reference for the cognoscenti!)
)

Once again, I sense that we are being distracted into regarding 'Multiple Cavalry Melees' as having an effect on the attackers. It does not. It only affects the number of melees a cavalry unit (or an infantry unit being charged and melee'd) may be expected to have to face during one turn.

So if we explicitly identify one target unit and consider the effect on that unit (regardless of type), then a static limit may not actually be such a bad idea. A target unit whose attackers were nearby (or even adjacent) when the melee began, might expect to have to face an attack from fresher, less fatigued assailants. On the other hand, however, a charging cavalry unit which was required to travel further before engaging might have the advantage of having built up a 'head of steam' when contact was made, which might go a long way to making the two types of encounter broadly equivalent in terms of their effect on the target.

I am conscious that some battlers do not like house rules very much, so I hesitate to suggest complex formulae based on how far a cavalry unit has travelled when they make contact. While it might make the battling more historically accurate, it would be unwieldy and would detract from the fun of battling while at the same time leading to disagreement and discord between members.

I would be comfortable negotiating an upper limit to the number of melees a unit might have to endure in one phase. The number finally agreed upon would probably be based on each opponent's battle experience and style, so would not be entirely unrealistic.

Turning to the other point you raised, and the section of the manual you quoted, the cossacks have different constraints on the way they may benefit from charging, and I inferred from this that they either (1) are less disciplined in being able to resist seizing an opportunity to take advantage of a target unit which is in flight, or (2) have a much stronger 'tribal' affinity due to being drawn from communities having common roots (in the same way that the 'Pals' units were put together one hundred years later).

http://www.pals.org.uk/pals_e.htm

The 'Pals' units were sometimes drawn from a particular locality, (as, judging by their names, were the cossack units), or in some cases were manned by employees from a certain industry.

This would tend to lead to a very high (possibly suicidally high) level of morale, perhaps sufficient to bring them close to the level of 'berserkers'. The history of the Accrington Pals in the above link would suggest that this was indeed the case.

Might a formed cossack unit, possibly led by a local squire or head of a family, be tempted to break ranks from the other units and go for glory by pursuing what they perceived to be an easy victory, though it might actually be at best a mistake, at worst a trap?

So, might we expect formed cossack units to behave, in some respects, like squadrons, having a strong sense of their entitlement to independent thought and action?

I find it fascinating to speculate on the internal motivations of the troops, but it comes down, eventually, to how their individual or group psychology affected their conduct on the field. And how (and even whether) we need to conduct our wargaming differently to enhance the realism of our own experience in re-fighting these battles.