tayg, skirmishers and combat formations

tayg, skirmishers and combat formations
I would like to discuss a bit a about the commonly used combat formations in the period. As far as my reading and understanding is that the main battle formations depicted in tayg: the line or dispersed line wasnt used by the austrian and prussian type armies. The austrians in 1848-49, 59 and 66 mainly used the divisional column, that is the battallion was divided in three columns, placed side by side, supported by a limited amount of skirmishers. (In 1866 they used also the masse formation for part of the war.) The prussians mainly used divisional colums, which in this case is half battallion columns, but sometime thrue company columns, supported by 1/4 to 1/2 of the battallion in skirmish. In all the wars from 1848 to 71. The piemontese, hungarians used mainly napoleonic type columns, but ther battallion size was smaller. The Danish army used thrue company columns, mainly used in a checkerboard formations. So for a ruleset whith use a scale of 1:20 to 1:40 should, at least for my visual expectations!!, somehow depict these formations. I know that you have to make decisions, and some times hard ones, in making a ruleset. Perhaps i could have your thougths about this. Mads

You are right about the hard choices. Although I understand that TAYG is oneof the longest rulebooks produced by Caliver, still some material had to be left out. Given the period of time covered by the rules then only a simple guide can be given regarding the armies of the main nations. As far as I am aware, there is nothing in the rules to stop you and your opponent, when recreating a particular action, from agreeing formation and organisation restrictions to reflect the characteristics of the forces involved. I expect the intended supplements will include more detail and rules on the deployment and structure of specific forces during a particular war. Your info is most welcome. Yours etc etc

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