Saturday, August 8, 2015

Regimental Gun for Scanian War


The 3pdr regimental guns were used during the Scanian War as well as during G II A's time with infantry regiments and was placed in the gaps between the battalions in groups of two or three pieces. Each regimental gun had a crew of 4-5 men and 3 horses.

Re-deployment forward or backward occurred in connection to the infantry movements during the battle, At regroupings during battle they took the help of the infantry to move the pieces as the horses was to difficult to handle in the battle situation. They neededn the help of about 15-16 extra men to regroup a 3pdr regimental gun. 

The regimental guns opened fire on the 600 m distance from the enemy soldiers and would then reload during the march forward. After firing the shot, they would be advancing forward in steps so they came about 50 m in front of the infantryline. At approximately 200 m would stay and proceed to give fire with grape shots. The infantry then went beyond the regimental guns for theirs attack.

The regimental guns was expected to continue to fire during the battle, even after the infantry had passed them at the 200m point. They usually followed the infantry that was advancing to charge the enemy. As they had friendly infantry on both sides of their firelane they had to return to shooting with solid cannonballs. 

During the Carolingian period the Swedes leave the custom to place the heavy artillery in front of the main infantry line. The started to place the heavy artillery on the wings or between the different combat units (Left wing, Center and Right wing), if they even bothered to bring it during their swift marches. They took into account the terrain and tried to place the heavy artillery on heights in groups of one or two batteries with a variable number of guns. The batteries were their own fighting units with their own commander but some collaboration between the batteries.

I felt that my swedeish troops in Scanian war needed a Regimental gun so I built me some Dalregiment crew from Wargames Factory minis, found me a nice Perry AWI 3pdr and some other stuff to make me a Regimental gun unit for The Pikeman´s Lament rules.


In conjunktion with the other troops in the rules that are 12 or 6 minis we, at least for the moment, decided to let all guns have 6 crewmen, playtest will show if we alter it or not.

As most guns aren´t sold with 6 crew you can use other stuff as "crew men" just to keep track of how many hits they have taken and to see if they are at full or half strenght, it dosen´t really matter if it is 6 actual men with the gun,

So for my Regimental gun I have 1 single crewmen (1), one powdermonkey (1), one horse with civilian horseholder (2), and one more crewman with barrels and powder (2) to get the full crew (6). I hope you got it :)  and of course if you are luckey to have spare gun crew, please use 6 of them to each gun.




10 comments:

  1. Nice! I like the idea of a crew of six. Very clever the way you did it. I guess it would also work to add some ordinary soldier figures to a standard sized gun crew as soldiers helped out to move the gun on the field.
    /Mattias

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  2. Very clever Michael. I like your thinking!

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  3. You can never,ever have enough Guns. Great work on the Perry Brothers Gun,and the figures too. Beano Boy

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  4. Lovely stuff and nice to see an artillery unit possibly being included in Pikemens' Lament:)

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  5. Works for me, and artillery pieces are so often under crewed on the table :-)

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  6. Very nice Michael, I like your basing. Seems like the Danes will have to be ready to duck tomorrow ... ;)

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  7. Excellent focus on the innovative Swedish artillery tactics. It's so often the cavalry or even more often the infantry that gets all the credit. Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII were real innovators and their tactical mindset would be studied later by Frederick the Great and even Napoleon. Great read!

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  8. Great work and a magnificent description of the use of the Swedish artillery
    Was Lennart Torstensson this cannon developer.

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  9. Really well thought through. The battalion guns must have been really effective, firing close, in enfilade, easily repositioned. They were, by all accounts, fairly murderous at Culloden and in Flanders with Marlborough. Good idea to keep the crew realistically large. I also agree with Stephen (above comments) that often artillery is depicted as occupying a lesser size and needing fewer crew (and hangers-on) in a lot of rules than seemed to be the case on the battlefield.

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