Friday, February 14, 2014

Troop Dispositions

Today I was reading Malcolm Wanklyn's "Decisive Battles of the English Civil War" and he made a reference to a primary source that showed the planned deployment of troops a couple of days before the battle took place . . . with a comment that that didn't mean that was how the troops actually got deployed for the battle.

Anyway this made me think of all of the times . . . even with a "helicopter" view of the terrain . . . that my deployment sketch had to be adjusted because when I put the figures onto the table there wasn't room to fit the troops in "as sketched".

I can only surmise that this often happened in real life as well . . . particularly when commanders lacked our view/knowledge of the terrain.

Surely I am not the only wargamer that this has happened to . . . am I?

-- Jeff

3 comments:

Prince Lupus said...

Apparently one should be able to play Waterloo on a five by four table using Volley and Bayonet - not possible:(

Ross Mac rmacfa@gmail.com said...

Not to mention occasionally forgetting to put a unit on the table......

MurdocK said...

Watched it with Pete in a game you were the official of.

Pete laid out his brigadiers, then we had to put troops within range of the brigadier's command zone. He ended up putting the troops packed into one mass column as there was no room for them all!