Has Someone Blundered? Revisiting Command Control.

I seem to have hit a snag that will have to be cleared before my early 20thC gaming moves on, and an old snag at that: Command Control Wargame Mechanics. Plenty of ink and pixels have been dedicated to this topic by wargamers over the years, including by myself in this blog and elsewhere. In case anyone has managed to avoid the topic, the trite version is that real command systems are designed to get troops to do what you want while game versions are designed to do the opposite.

Rather than launch into a 5,000 word essay on the historical case for and against various sorts of command control roles, let me just say that modern games that present a player with difficulties can be fun or frustrating or both all at once.  Of all the various systems I've played, the oldest, that of simultaneous moves to written turn orders is still probably the best at capturing Generalship, especially if there is limited time for order writing as under pressures many players will misjudge their opponents intentions, forget minor but important rules, estimate distances incorrectly or just plain forget units. Enemy actions and combat results are then what add friction and prevent a player's tidy plans from coming to fruition. I've never been able to properly capture this in solo play though.

The current Orders (or PIP) dice  system I use (inspired by DBA) where you roll a die to indicate how many groups of units you can move has a nice "boardgame" feel to it and it has worked well with the Square Brigadier where each unit was a battalion. Now that I am using companies as units, grouped in battalions based on historical OB's, no matter how I tweak it, I am having trouble getting it to work seamlessly with scenarios that might range from 6 individual companies up to 8 or more battalions of 4 companies each plus a number of supporting units. I could probably solve it by ignoring historical organizations or having various systems depending on the size of the game but its not really doing a good job of "feeling right" at the company level anyway.

An Oberhilse cavalry patrol approaches a Rebel held town c 1904

So, for my next game, I am going to experiment with an older method, allowing the player as General to give orders to his direct reports at the start of a game, be they a battalion commander with 4 companies or a battery commander with 1 gun etc. Orders will last until changed or no longer relevant.. When orders are issued there will be a roll to see if they were received and understood, delayed, or lost  with penalties for being engaged or too far away without communications etc.  Normally orders to a battalion commander will apply to all of his units but if an individual company is "out of command"  then it will have to dice each turn to move. In all other cases, dice and combat reaction rules will indicate determine how well units are doing in carrying out orders. So if a battery misses, perhaps they off target or perhaps  the battery commander decided not to fire or there was a problem in the battery site. Obviously in a solo game both sides will know the others orders but it will usually be fairly plain for example, if an enemy battalion is dug in around a village then they are probably planning to hold it at least initially.

To test the upper limits a bit and add a dash of colour, I think I will head back to Atlantica and break out some red and blue coats. I should jot down some actual rules to back up the concept while I am at it, especially since I've realized that I need to tweak the unstated ground scale to accommodate the .4 man companies. The goal is to play either on Sunday or the next cold rainy day.