Saturday, September 22, 2018

and the answer is...

My gut usually knows when something is right or wrong but my brain can be slow to get from wrong to right. I understood well enough that what worked for a quick game with a handful of units was not working as well for a larger, longer game.

My first guess was that maybe I was after something more traditional and something "more". I just wasn't sure exactly what sort of traditional  or what "more" meant so during the dribs and drabs of time I've had this week I scoured various old favourite rules and scenario books as well as past versions of my own rules and doodled with various drastic changes, none of which made it to the table.

My floor lamp died today so the pictures are even worse than usual.
Today it dawned on me that the rules had been slipping back into focusing the Tabletop General's attention on unit details. They were also allowing too many opportunities to micromanage risk and allowing careful management to assure obedience to orders subject only to combat results and carelessness.

So, the first main step was to remove the various ways that had crept in to keep units in the game. Now, to be fair, in most of the sorts of small wars engagements in the era that my Toy Soldier games are set in, during most battles, most units survived the day  despite heavy losses. Battles like Little Big Horn,  Isandlwana, and Maiwand, were exceptions which is what made them so famous as catastrophes. However, removing units is much more dramatic and fun and simpler in a game than any of the alternative ways of tracking an army's capability to keep fighting.

Somewhere around turn 10 of 15. A flanking counterattack by Rebel cavalry has shattered the  Highlanders and nearly turned the tables but the Queen's gunners had their range. 
So, for the umpteenth time, I removed the various overt rules designed to reflect the tactical value of close support etc in favour of removing units after a standard number of hits which in turn increases the value of local supports and reserves to react to flanking moves and to plug gaps.

Then I reinstated my old Orders Dice system inspired by DBA's pips system.  This works by rolling 1d6 to determine how many formed Brigades and detached units may move this turn. Unused orders may be stored to top up the next die roll. I kept the turn tracking and chance card deck but only for those two tasks.

I also once again replaced any rally rules with upping the number of hits each unit can take and allowing 2 battered units to merge at the cost of taking a step closer to army morale collapse.

The combat and other rules remain very close to  what I have been using for the last few years.

Calling the resulting rules "The Square Brigadier" didn't feel right since the player is obviously intended to normally be a Divisional Commander or equivalent and I want to still have a small, quick game for the war of 1812 so I'll leave that be. There is proof reading and expanding of explanations to be done but I am happy to finally have a set of rules to carry the name:   The Model Major General which I've been wanting to use.

A trial, medium sized, game was needed, it was a rainy day and the table was still set up so I reset, swapping sides. The result was a squeaker of a two hour game with a dramatic finish with my attention focused on overall tactics.
Turn 15, the setting sun casts long shadows as the Rebel's finally break.

It looks like a busy couple of weeks ahead with some away games in view but hopefully I can get some more toy soldiers painted up before I get sidetracked into the 16thC again.

5 comments:

  1. All good moves I think for getting the game where you want it to be. I am a firm believer in showing the deterioration of troops from fresh, so that action and the rigours of war relatively quickly knock the edges off a unit and that failed rally tests etc do lead to further decline.

    With these sort if rules, you don't really need rules for reserves, because the need for reserves and fresh troops to replace spent troops to plug gaps or carry the victory automatically spin out of the set.

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    1. I agree, my hang up had been that in the small historical engagements that were my inspiration, it was rare for any units to be knocked out of action as opposed to be temporarily forced to recoil, at least right up to the time that the whole force collapsed. That's one reason I originally starting changing the rules to reflect that with an eye to small historical engagements.

      Once I moved on to wanting something bigger and more universal, well, I needed to change my focus. Just took a while to realize that.

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  2. Some interesting bits to “appropriate”—I particularly like the concept of merging depleted units, but at a cost at the next echelon. Nice touches that deliver “command” thinking through effect rather than a set of bolt-on command rules.

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    1. Your are welcome to any ideas of interest.

      The Blue army got caught near the end, no fresh units left in reserve and army morale on the point of breaking. Rather than being able to merge any more units (they had already done so twice early on) They had to risk trying to hold the line with units that were ready to run and hope luck was with them. Red on the other hand had just pulled badly battered units out of the line until they ran out so made the final attack with very few fresh units and a number of pretty shaky ones thrown in when things got desperate but only a very small chance of army morale cracking.

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