Bearing in mind that the Scots were trained in Swiss Pike tactics by the French captains, I was wondering if the size of TUGs should be changed to 12 bases. At the end of the day the Scottish Pike unit's were rather large at Flodden and this would bring them in line with the changes to other predominantly Pike armies.
I think only those pikes which have the keil characteristic get to be 12 bases.
Nik, that probably begs another question in that if trained in Swiss tactics should they also have Keil.
Would depend how good at the tactics they had become. Keil seems to be reserved for professionals like the Swiss and Landsknechts, others don't get it and are in 8's despite some of them being reasonably well trained I think.
Looking at it another way, if they were being trained to manoeuvre as Swiss Pike blocks then they would be manouvering in formations that were similar to the Swiss Keils and of a similar size numbers wise. The question then becomes did the training reach a size that allowed them to claim the benefits of the formation.
This gives two possibilities:
Count them as 12 bases but do not give the benefits
Or
Count them as 12 bases and Keil but they are disadvantaged as they already are by being combat shy.
Looking at it from another angle, if the Scots were being trained by French Captains - how good were French pike blocks?
Lance.
Lance not sure that is totally relevant nor does it answer the points raised. Not sure where the French captains came from but Swiss in French service would seem logical and I suspect they did know there business.
Well the relevance that I was alluding to was the relationship between those being trained and the trainers.
It would make a big difference if the `French` captains were experienced Swiss. If they were French then they probably were adequate to conduct basic levels of instruction but little more, hence my reference to French pike blocks being fairly unimpressive.
The bigger the formation the more dedicated and repeated training is required to maintain it, not least in the heat of battle. Also Kiels frequently have the inbuilt doppelhander/velorenhaufer/lost children (please excuse any spelling abuses!) that allow small bodies of very dynamic close fighting foot to exploit the strengths of the pike block.
My belief was that the Meg characteristic of Kiel was limited to those troops who were extremely well drilled, professional, cohesive and displaying scary levels of aggression. So simply put did James` pikemen have any of those attributes?
I dont know enough about them to judge.
Lance.
Lance, as you will see that I am not making a strong case for the Scots to be given Keil formation. For one thing one of their failings was a lack of the very thing you mention which was guys with two handed weapons etc. I do think however that the large unwieldy Pike formations of James' army is better reflected in twelves. This actually probably makes them weaker in MEG terms as they have less drilled units they can use to pin opponents etc and takes less TUGs to break them.
I would agree. Keil is a caracteristic that neeed to be 12 bases strongh, but being 12 strongh does not mean you should have keil . But it shows the cumbersome unit and the difficulties to use it, to manoeuver . I would also have suggested it for greek pike armies but that would mean too many changes, so just an idea ...