Artillery (And A Horseman Complete)

My cavalry test piece is complete and he's about as good a figure as I've managed so far. He's painted as a member of KR10, the two sources used for his uniform being Bleckwenn and Dorn&Engelmann. I enjoyed this figure so much that I committed the sin of painting more detail than I'd ever manage on a full regiment: the saddle blanket has 2 and 3 stripes of red and yellow respectively, whereas for mass production 1 and 2 stripes would be all I'd manage.

So, the infantry needed for Blasthof is done, the first two squadrons of cavalry are on order. The final part of the armies to consider is their artillery.

I hate artillery. There's probably not much out there thats hated more (at least when on the receiving end) by the PBI, but I've never been shelled, that's not my excuse, wars are something I see on TV. But I've fought too many wargames where artillery has dominated the battlefield. By the time of the SYW this is not too inaccurate - there are enough descriptions of Frederick's grenadier battalions being blown away by Austrian guns to give it credibility. However, I don't think it gives a good game. Either the side with the most pieces wins a tedious shooting match, or else the side with less artillery is slaughtered when it marches forward into the area swept by the guns

So in my battles I will not allow much artillery to be present, and what there is will be relatively ineffective. If any justification is needed for this then I confess my artillery has been unaffected by the reforms of the mid 18th Century (Valliere, Lichtenstein etc.) that had such a great impact on the size and effectiveness of the of other nations' arsenals.

The action of Blasthof Heath immediately brings the problem of artillery to the fore. The original order of battle had a full battery of two cannons per side, which in my view makes these armies horribly overgunned. It's worth noting that the second battle on my list (Charles Grant's Action!) has only one artillery piece per side despite having more than doubled the numbers of infantry and cavalry present.

My first reaction was to dispense with artillery altogether for Blasthof. However, I've decided to keep one cannon per side. Should both armies prefer to sit down outside of musketry range of each other then the artillery will act as a goad to encourage whoever loses the artillery duel to close. Without this there is the potential for a stalemate to occur. I will however replace the original Charge! artillery effect rules with the following table (NB: ranges would be halved for use in the elementary game)

The choice of which figure range to use for artillery is difficult: manufacturers seem to have the same aversion to artillery as I have, I'd imagine because the volume of figures sold is never going to match the scale of the other arms. Looking at Charge! isn't much help here, it uses Stadden figures that are frankly ahistorical: British Napoleonic horse artillery figures. I love these figures (the brass light dragoon helmet they wear is really elegant), but they represent too great a period shift for my conscience. The Stadden range offers a British SYW officer and a gunner with linstock. There's also a generic artillery piece available under the listings for Napoleonic French, and this looks like the piece used in Charge!.

Willie Figures does offer boxed sets of gunners and cannon, but only for French and British. I think the Willie French will be my choice: the uniforms of all artillery in this period are nearly identical, and the pigtails of Prussian gunners can be added using milliput.