Brian purchased a good looking army of Marlborough-type figures a while back… these were 20mm figures, and excellently painted. He brought them to my house and set up the battle of Ramillies, 1706, wherein Marlborough gave the French a good trouncing. Brian’s setup tickled my funny bone, for as he walked in the door, my bookmark was on page 163 of Brent Nosworthy’s 388-page book THE ANATOMY OF VICTORY, BATTLE TACTICS 1689-1763 (first published in 1990). Since I was almost halfway through the text, this made me an instant expert on Marlboroughian warfare. Now, between us girls, I know no more about Marlboroughian warfare than does the guy at the checkout counter at my local super market. Or, for that matter, the rest of the people in the wargaming hobby. Admittedly, Nosworthy himself was not that helpful. In a chapter titled Cavalry Tactics: 1690-1720, he says that during the 1690’s, the French cavalry embraced the tactic of firing their pistols before closing, but gradually dropped the idea in accordance with the doctrines of Charles XII and Marlborough himself… Marlborough advocated charging enemy cavalry “at á fast trot”, while Charles XII pushed for a charge “at full speed”. Is there a difference? Nosworthy does refer to Marlborough’s cavalry’s “… tactical reliance upon infantry for support.” The thought here was to have an infantry reserve behind the cavalry, and if the cavalry broke, the horsemen would be able to retire through the infantry lines. Nosworthy cites the tactic being employed at Ramillies, and how the French cavalry, pursuing Dutch cavalry which were retreating, were stopped by supporting Allied infantry. And now, having exhausted my entire font of knowledge about warfare at the beginning of the 1700’s, let’s go back to Brian’s rules. Rules Each infantry unit (regiment?) was composed of 5 stands, each cavalry regiment? squadron? composed of 2 stands. The stands were about 2-inches long, and muskets ranged out to 12 inches. There were no range modifiers for musket firing… at a target in the open, each infantry stand contributed 10 Fire Points (FP) and the 5-stand unit thus had a 5x10, or 50 percent probability of hit. Artillery could reach to 48 inches, and here, there were deductions for range. Nosworthy states the Ramillies battle pitted 78 squadrons of French and Bavarian cavalry against 48 Dutch and 24 Danish squadrons at the south end of the battlefield. Churchill’s biography of Marlborough cites 82 French squadrons against 69 Allied squadrons. Who do you believe? And at the north end, according to Churchill, another 39 English squadrons faced off with 50 more French squadrons. Not to worry… all we could see on the table top were two huge masses of cavalry at the flanks of both armies. In the center, another two masses of infantry were faced off, separated by a distance of about 2 feet, which was quickly eaten up by the Allied advance. “Test the melee rules” is the command I always give my troops, regardless of the era. As Allied commander, ol’ Marlborough himself, I gave the orders to all units to advance. I noted the French didn’t seem to budge… they waited and waited. Marlborough’s army consisted of two components… British troops on the right, and Dutch troops on his left. On my left flank, my Dutch cavalry soon contacted the French. After my movement phase, and prior to the melee phase, the rules provide for a response by the non-active side. Each side is given a number of reaction cards, permitting it to reply, in a limited fashion, to the actions of the opposition. There are cards for movement, cards for firing, cards for rallying, etc. The French commander chose a ‘move’ card… he brought up a cavalry unit and placed it directly in back of one that I had attacked. When my own troops made contact, I wasn’t aware that cavalry fought 2-ranks deep… if you got an appropriate card, therefore, you could, in effect, bring up a reinforcement. Now, in the melee phase, both sides added up their Combat Points (CP)… I received 2 CP per stand for my cavalry unit, a total of 4 CP for both stands, while the French got 8 CP (4 stands at 2 CP each). We each multiplied our points by the toss of a 10-sided die, with high result defined as the winner. I lost (outnumbered 2-to-1) and one of my cavalry stands went to the rally zone, to be rallied later on the draw of a ‘rally card’. The chance of rallying back to the field was around 40 percent… few stands that lost in melee ever returned to their units. The French, via their ‘move’ card, had been able to bring up a number of support units, and I lost some 3 cavalry melees in a row. Marlborough’s left flank wasn’t looking too good. Heart of the System The heart of the rules system lies in the card draws. There are 4 action phases for the half-bound: a. Non-Active Side draws cards for his ‘preemptive actions’, actions used even before the Active Side moves. b. Active Side moves or fires all his troops. No card draws are required. c. Non-Active Side again draws cards to respond to the Active Side’s actions. d. Resolve melee. Note that the Active Side’s movement and firing is sandwiched in-between two card-draw phases. It might seem there’s ‘too much’ reaction… but due to the restrictions of the available action cards, the sequence doesn’t get out of hand. In my own reaction games, I restrict the options available to the reacting side by using a point system… just as here, where there are never enough cards available, so in my system, there are never enough points. In mid-field, Marlborough’s infantry were plowing through the French line. Jeff Wiltrout arrived to take over the Allied left flank, where, initially, I had had my cavalry decimated. He managed to pull things together. Back in 1706, in an extraordinary maneuver, Marlborough had taken his right-flank English cavalry and run them way across the field to his left flank to help the Dutch out. We needed no such tactic in our defeat of the French. Ramillies was ours! Back to PW Review May 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com