Presented below are some interesting thoughts of ARMATI's author, Arty Conliffe, on the ability, or, perhaps, the inability of ancient warfare formations to wheel. ARMATI keeps unit wheeling capabilities to a bare minimum, as I found out when, in my introduction to the rules, I discovered my troops weren't as free to pivot and face as I had imagined. Some time ago, on a television program depicting the history of warfare, I saw an English Civil War pike unit of re-enactors, marching along with their 18-foot pikes on high in vertical position. Their formation was a square, about 15 men wide and 15 men deep as they came forward. I was impressed with their facile use of the pikes... from the vertical, at the command, the pikes came rapidly down to face in the forward direction. Another command, they halted, the pikes went up, the men did a left face, the pikes came down, and the entire formation now faced to the left, bristling in that direction. A third command, and the pikes went up, the outer ranks of the square on all four sides turned outward, the pikes went down, and a hedgehog appeared. Perhaps I got the wrong impression from this display of pikemanship, which, I realize, didn't display "wheeling" as much as it did the ability to face. Back to PW Review October 1994 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1994 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