Shield Wall Fighting - how would you model it?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

I wonder if GURPS Tactical Shooting will have rules for situational awareness and tunnel vision which could be adapted to a gritty game?

Certainly, it will.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Rules for individuals in mass combat would make an interesting PDF.

Such rules, while interesting, would not fill a whole e23 product on their own. What do you reckon the minimum size for one of those is?

[Polydamas]

Collegio Januari is only 13 pages including the title page, ToC, and index. I think a product on PCs in low-tech armies could be that long easily. More, if you include some historical material to help GMs imagine plausible armies for their campaigns.

In my current campaign, the heroes are barbarian skirmishers in King Tagi's army, so the regular rules are sufficient. Even if they got into a large battle, they aren't powerful enough to take on a whole phalanx of decadent lowlanders by themselves!

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Collegio Januari is only 13 pages including the title page, ToC, and index. I think a product on PCs in low-tech armies could be that long easily. More, if you include some historical material to help GMs imagine plausible armies for their campaigns.

What would one call such a product?

Originally Posted by Polydamas

In my current campaign, the heroes are barbarian skirmishers in King Tagi's army, so the regular rules are sufficient. Even if they got into a large battle, they aren't powerful enough to take on a whole phalanx of decadent lowlanders by themselves!

My bunch both employ thousands of troops (most of them mercenaries) and are personally powerful enough to break a shield wall of orcs. So I often have to run encounters where they fight enemies who use the tactics of large battles and not typical small unit tactics.

Shield wall against shield wall seems to be largely about shoving until one formation breaks. The current rules don't support that*. And the lack of rules for using long weapons in enclosed spaces and the press of bodies is also annoying. Not to mention that a closely packed shield wall doesn't really allow for Blocks, it mostly creates a cover that benefits all the men in it while somewhat restricting their own offensive options.

Ideally, swings should be penalised, while those with the right training should be able to poke long weapons over their comrades and use short stabbing swords from the front lines. Locking the shields together should give a cover bonus while preventing their use for Blocks. And, of course, it ought to be possible to add ST and HP of many men together for making and resisting shoves and slams.

*The Teamwork Perk only works for tiny forces like adventuring parties. For one thing, a line two deep is enough to gain the maximum benefit from bracing.

[Jabani]

What would one call such a product?

GURPS Tactical Combat? Less than mass, greater than half-squads.

Shield wall against shield wall seems to be largely about shoving until one formation breaks.

What sources suggest that? I haven't read anything specifically on shield wall combat, but I've been poring over [IThe Face of Battle[/I] again and am once again struck by John Keegan's suggestion that physical "shock" (in the sense of collision of cavalry, heavy infantry, etc. into defending troops) is an extremely uncommon occurrence, and that true "shock" expresses itself primarily psychologically (in the sense that infantry sees huge horses bearing down on them and thus break and run or whatever).

From a GURPSian standpoint, that book is particularly notable since it analyzes battles from three distinct time periods (Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme, of which the lack of physical shock theory is applied to the first two), and because trying to visualize very small portions of those battles in GURPS terms is difficult. Which is to say, yes, I agree: if you want to get into it under the resolution of Mass Combat but above the resolution of groups of 10 or 15, you're stuck ruleswise.

Instead of further derailing this thread, I'll start a new one to see if we can't at least start building an approach to cover these situations.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Jabani

GURPS Tactical Combat? Less than mass, greater than half-squads.



What sources suggest that? I haven't read anything specifically on shield wall combat, but I've been poring over [IThe Face of Battle[/I] again and am once again struck by John Keegan's suggestion that physical "shock" (in the sense of collision of cavalry, heavy infantry, etc. into defending troops) is an extremely uncommon occurrence, and that true "shock" expresses itself primarily psychologically (in the sense that infantry sees huge horses bearing down on them and thus break and run or whatever).

From a GURPSian standpoint, that book is particularly notable since it analyzes battles from three distinct time periods (Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme, of which the lack of physical shock theory is applied to the first two), and because trying to visualize very small portions of those battles in GURPS terms is difficult. Which is to say, yes, I agree: if you want to get into it under the resolution of Mass Combat but above the resolution of groups of 10 or 15, you're stuck ruleswise.

Instead of further derailing this thread, I'll start a new one to see if we can't at least start building an approach to cover these situations.

Heavy infantry are a bit different as far as that goes. Men are braver then horses. But Keegan does have a point.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Heavy infantry are a bit different as far as that goes. Men are braver then horses. But Keegan does have a point.

I'm increasingly becoming doubtful that battles, outside of specific examples, involved massed ranks of soldiers clashing together. It just doesn't mesh well with alot of things. The Polybian legion and it's strange deployment schema, for example. I'm pretty sure that alot of battles consisted of the bravest of men facing off, with the slightly less brave miling about and the cowards hanging in the rear.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

I'm increasingly becoming doubtful that battles, outside of specific examples, involved massed ranks of soldiers clashing together. It just doesn't mesh well with alot of things. The Polybian legion and it's strange deployment schema, for example. I'm pretty sure that alot of battles consisted of the bravest of men facing off, with the slightly less brave miling about and the cowards hanging in the rear.

That's is probably fairly accurate. The point was a comparative one. Horses will not impale themselves to break a formation. A man will if brave enough. More important, even when horses had brestplates, they did not know what they were for. A man with a heavy shield and breastplate and comrades on either side similarly equipped could crash into an enemy formation.

Much of the last experience with wide scale hand-to-hand fighting was from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which there were weapons but no armor. While there is plenty of reportage from that, it is not quite applicable to eras when there was plentiful armor.

Be that as it may it is true that a lot of shock was simply psychological.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

That's is probably fairly accurate. The point was a comparative one. Horses will not impale themselves to break a formation. A man will if brave enough. More important, even when horses had brestplates, they did not know what they were for. A man with a heavy shield and breastplate and comrades on either side similarly equipped could crash into an enemy formation.

Are we accounting for full-bodied stallions of lines that are bred especially for ferocity and truculence?

Much of the last experience with wide scale hand-to-hand fighting was from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in which there were weapons but no armor. While there is plenty of reportage from that, it is not quite applicable to eras when there was plentiful armor.

It's also an era in which lines, squares, and columns are effective because of the equipment. In a setting where the pike and musket are not central themes, I don't think lines and squares are going to happen. I don't think, for example, that a great deal of infantry fought shoulder to shoulder for any degree of time, the risk of asphyxiation is just too great.

Be that as it may it is true that a lot of shock was simply psychological.

Oh yes to this.

Mind you, I'm not sure we're necessarily disagreeing alot here, I'm just saying that I think the "line" of battle was much more intermingled, rather than an actual line. I think most battles involved many widespread small scale combats between the bravest of warriors, perhaps less than 10 men involved in total. As one side of another began to gain an advantage in these small conflicts, I think the less brave individuals of either should would rush forward to "help", which may increase the combat's side, but it'd slack off as the men lacking bravery would scatter back to the wings.

If you've ever been to an SCA event, you've seen what looks like a real battle. No, ignore that first part, where the human waves are crashing into each other, wildly flailing their swords around their heads. Instead, wait for the parts where the line has devolved into the knights going head to head, while all around them you see men halfheartedly walking or waving their weapons around, with small pockets of earnest fights, trailing off to guys who huddle in masses.

That, Imho, is probably more like what warfare and battle was like than the heroic, epic scenes of two great lines of men crashing into each other. Just how many people picture modern war as involving alot of shooting and explosions, when it's really alot of walking, riding, talking and waiting, punctuated by sudden bursts of violence. Almost every combat vet I've talked to expresses the same answer, and I'm starting to wonder if perhaps we've been fed so much hollywood about how thigns were in a simpler, "braver" time...

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Jabani

What sources suggest that?

Primarily, sources on ancient and early medieval combat. Phalanxes. Saxons, of course, and the huscarls of my countrymen (outside the heroic single combat which tends to make it into sagas).

Originally Posted by Jabani

From a GURPSian standpoint, that book is particularly notable since it analyzes battles from three distinct time periods (Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme, of which the lack of physical shock theory is applied to the first two), and because trying to visualize very small portions of those battles in GURPS terms is difficult.

I'll note that all of those battles are too late to have seen the kind of shoving mass that distinguished earlier battles and that due to the increased manueuverability of warfare, these armies would have waltzed cirles around such immobile formations.

And I agree with Keegan in that trying to get men of a culture which has largely moved away from hand-to-hand combat to stand fast against a bayonet charge is all but impossible.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

If you've ever been to an SCA event, you've seen what looks like a real battle. No, ignore that first part, where the human waves are crashing into each other, wildly flailing their swords around their heads. Instead, wait for the parts where the line has devolved into the knights going head to head, while all around them you see men halfheartedly walking or waving their weapons around, with small pockets of earnest fights, trailing off to guys who huddle in masses.

That first part is probably accurate as well.

Most Saxon fights seem to have consisted of two bodies of men drinking and taunting the other side while trying to work themselves up into a charge. They fervently hoped that a charge* by the whole shield wall would panic the other side and cause flight. If not, the two sides would meet and shove, trying to break the formation of the enemy.

Deaths happened mostly once the formation had broken and irregular cavalry or other hangers on gave pursuit.

*Relatively speaking, I'm sure that the actual Move was only 2 at most.