Italian Wars Unit Characterisation for Pike & Shotte

James has recently tweaked his master table for characterising units for Pike & Shotte games set in the earlier part of Italian Wars - between Charles VIII's 1494 invasion of Italy and the Sack of Rome in 1527.

He writes:

"It [the table] only provides a rule of thumb list for my games and is by no means exhaustive. It has several similarities with the classifications in the master rules but I have added and changed several definitions and statistics; I have even altered one or two master rules.

This will be especially noticeable in the following:

• My creation of the colunela as a single combined unit - mine being two stands of pike (12 figs), two stands of Sword and Bucklermen (6 - 8 figs) and four stands of shot (16 figs).
• The downgrading of light horse melee factors.
• The increase [in] movement rates and ranges.
• The change in the master rule for crossbows and javelins - they get closing fire but do not get the close range to hit bonus.
• Artillery is far less mobile than in the master rules.

I'm posting it here because I think it might be of use, especially for newcomers to the period.

Though it only reflects my personal opinion about unit ability I think I can argue the case for the entries."

The original post contained the tables and an offer to email people Word documents. To make things easier the tables have been converted to a pdf which you can download and print more easily. You can also compare them to the previous version.