Skirmishers.

[andym]

Excuse stupidity here,but what exactly happens when you deploy "skirmishers"?I cant find any mention of them in the manual.What benefits and hinderances do they confer when deployed?Can they be recalled?

[ant1815]

well, the second question is easier to answer. Yes, they can be recalled, provided that both the skirmishing unit and the parent unit are at full strength. If either have suffered casualties then you're out of luck.

As to what use they are. Well, that's pretty much dependant upon the situation. They are generally used as a screening formation in front of the main force. They can be used as a sort of short range recon. in situations of limited visibility, but usually their best employment is to fire at enemy formations to try and cause a few casualties and, hopefully increase fatigue before sending in your main force. They are generally a harassment unit. Several units of skirmishers can also be quite effective at holding positions like buildings and villages.

They must however, be used with some amount of awareness as they are very vulnerable to regular infantry formations in melee and extremely vulnerable to cavalry. They are a little less vulnerble to enemy fire due to their small size and dispersed nature, but you definitely want to keep them out of melee range.

I'm not sure if you're talking about Napoleonic or ACW but if Napoleonic then rifle armed troops are far better at skirmishing than musket armed.

[Ashantai]

I think he means ACW game. In that case only Chickamauga has the ability to deploy and recall skirmishers. They don't give you an extra unit, they just give you an extra hex in front of you where you can 'see' things...but it comes at the cost of 1 extra move point.

[andym]

Ahhhhh,cheers Ashanti,that explains a lot as i am playing Antietam.I understand the raison d'etre of skirmishers but didnt see how they functioned in the ACW games.

[Ashantai]

Since Matrix did not actually change the games, just rereleased them, this is why it is so. Chickamauga was the last game to be released originally, so the skirmishers were put in then.
However, they were never introduced across the other games when Matrix redid them. I know Shiloh could have benefited from them!

[andym]

Something for the next patch possibly?

[Kingmaker]

HiHi

Ashantai/andym, the Matrix BG ACW games all have the Deploy/recall Skirmisher option, it can be found in the Units dropdown menu.

For those with the older Talonsoft games they can be patched up to include skirmishers from the JT site, sorry I don’t have the link on this puter.

Just to round off Ashantais bit you can only deploy skirmishers with units over 100 strong and they are essential in battles like Chickamauga & Shiloh where there is very restricted line of sight.

All the Best
Peter

[Valkyrie]

In the original Talonsoft games, Chickamauga was the only one to have skirmishers, but Tiller's 32 Bit upgrade patches transferred all of those Chickamauga features to the rest of the line. The Matrix version includes these upgrades and all the games do have Skirmishers, not just Chickamauga.

I just fired up Antietam to verify.

When skirmishers are active the tiny little icon that shows that you are "in line" has an extra little bracket added to indicate that skirmishers have been deployed. With them deployed, you will see a red "?" indicating an enemy unit ahead of you in dense cover that doesn't allow direct observation. You don't know what is there, only that there is an enemy unit. Thus, you can avoid blindly stumbling into an enemy line and taking heavy casualties at one hex range when you suddenly trigger defensive fire from units that you didn't know were there.

[John 3rd]

I wasn't aware of this.  I'll look in Nemo and I's battle and see what I can do at Gettysburg.