Fiddling With Points

The last of the French units is slowly being painted, I thought I would make them Young Guard.

And so my mind has turned to the Spanish.

Last night I found myself looking at the points section at the back of the Black Powder rules and pondering on the meaning of them. Regular readers will recall my dismay at the notion of the rules being codified by the production of army lists. They might also note my attempts to avoid using special rules when designing my Spanish army list. Thus my examination of the points system to understand how it is intended to be applied.

It strikes me that there is an obvious relation between the battlion size and the dice. The standard battalion has 3 shooting dice and 6 dice in hand to hand, given that battalions are usually deployed with 6 companies this equates to half a shooting dice per company, and one dice in hand to hand.

For now I am more interested in the relationship between companies and dice than points.

The list I have devised for the first brigade is this.

3 battalions of 24 regular infantry, in 4 companies - 3 shooting, 4 hand to hand, 4+ morale, 3 stamina.
3 battalions of 16 militia, in 4 companies - 2 shooting, 4 hand to hand, 5+ morale, 2 stamina.
2 battalions of 12 light infantry, in 6 companies - 3 shooting, 6 hand to hand, 4+ morale, 2 stamina.

All of the units have the must form square special rule. But other than that none of them have any other special rules.

There is a slight anomoly with regard to the hand to hand quality of the light infantry, which I might look at again. But for the time being I am happy to leave them to follow the apparent formula. I will just assume that they are independent minded chaps with great martial prowess.

But apart from this anomoly, I feel that this forms a good basis for the army. There is the possibility of the brigade fighting well, but it has the potential for brittle morale, and geared more toward fighting with musketry rather than closing to press home the bayonet.

In terms of points this matches up rather well with the French Brigades I have. These have four battalions of 36 men large unit standard infantry, which are 40 points each - thus 160 for the brigade.

The regulars are 34 points, the militia 24, and the lights 32 - giving a total of 238.

Which may seem to be not comparable, but keep in mind the Spanish will be significantly deficient of cavalry and artillery.

peace:)