One of my problems with the American Civil War is that there is so much information readily available! From modern historians' interpretations and reinterpretations, the experience of reenactors trying things, to official reports, memoirs and so on, not to mention a plethora of wargame rules, the wargamer has a lot of grist for his mental mill.
The trick is to find the right balance between detail, game decisions, chaos, simplicity, available resources of time, space and mental energy, and fluctuating personal preference for the target audience. When there is a committee of 3 making the final decisions (yes that would be the old 'me, myself and I') it can take a lot of time to settle things, especially when test games are a few every couple of years rather than one or two a week!
Anyway, I have a set of rules that I've been reasonably satisfied with but the player is having to deal with too many layers of command with results that don't really reflect the historic failures, never mind the occasional blunders! The larger games also take too much time and energy, due in part to too many repetitive die rolls and fiddly bits, so that larger games often start to drag. So far, every effort to fix these issues have ended with a game that was too simple, too dice driven then "general" driven, wasn't quick after all, or just lacked flavour. But..."Nil desperandum", that's our motto!
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| The new rules at play. |
This time I managed to convince myself to make a few compromises of an Old School fashion to try to keep the general flow that I like while dropping or simplifying some of the game processes, especially some of the command control ones.
I have several times gone the most common route these days of using the brigade as the basic unit but its no good. I like my regiments! Many of mine are still generic but more and more have built a history for themselves over the years and I like the feel of that. So, this time I am dropping the Brigadiers and having the regiments controlled by the Division commanders with the Brigadiers doing their work without being noticed. The regiments are all the same size and the numbers won't match historical orbats but it OS style, its about the over all feel while still aiming for a reasonable 'feel' to the game even if 6 units of set strength turn out to be representing 14 of varying strengths in 3 brigades.
The Corps Commander (or Army commander in some of the smaller Western campaigns) represents the player so I place him on table to represent me, look pretty, and to theoretically decide what he wants his Division commanders to do. From the late '80's on I was a strong proponent of command control rules to limit or affect what a player could do but eventually, comparing the sorts of outcomes and mistakes etc provided by pretty much every command control system I have seen or tried, it seems to me that the extreme errors and omissions that they inflict, usually based more on a die roll than the situation, not only happen far too frequently compared to history, but are almost never as bad as many decisions that the average player inflicts upon himself in a game without command rules! What I am limiting myself to then is a simple "out of command" roll for regiments the player wants to move when they are not within 4 hexes and line of sight of a Commander.
I did think about adding more friction by reviving my old favourite, dicing for move distances, that I've so often used over the last 30 years but in a full ACW game, its not unusual to find 45 to 60 "units" on my table. That's a lot of time spent rolling dice for little impact, so I'm leaving it lie dormant. The hexes make it almost impossible to do fiddly, tricksy stuff anyway.
So, now the troops can move and shoot quickly and efficiently, the player is in charge and able to make his own mistakes and the combat system is old and well worn. Let the game resume!
Looks like good steps forward to me.
ReplyDeleteHopefully! 2 forward for each 1 back.
DeleteI too like my regiments. I also think that you can have a lot of process that may give an impression of rule sophistication and ‘accuracy’, but over the course of a game, when compared to using something say more Old School, that outcomes can be surprisingly similar even with less rules overhead and process.
ReplyDeleteWhen I started playing Charge! 25 years after I bought them I was surprised at how well the rules gave the right feel by exclusion. I was even more impressed when we ran a game at a convention and 2 grognards who'd studied and gamed the SYW for years but had never played Charge! were able to easily beat some younger players who had often played the rules but bew very little of the history.
DeleteInteresting stuff. I tend to agree, command and control 'friction' systems can seem a bit contrived and too dependent on chance, compared to the errors and omissions which players can quite happily inflict on themselves!
ReplyDeleteI have made some bad ones in my time, really annoying when one had planned to avoid that exact bad move
DeleteLooks like a damn fine game to me!
ReplyDeleteBest Regards,
Stokes
Looks count!
DeleteWhen in doubt, opt for abstraction. Assuming you want a game, not a simulation. But I might not be perfectly unbiased in giving that advice ;)
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between simulation of minor tactical detail and the simulation of the results of command decisions and timeless military principles and the highlevel effect of period weapons and tactics. Just a game with some flavour is another matter with its own merit.
DeleteI, too, am currently trying to piece together a reg'tal ACW scenario. (very soon....)
ReplyDeleteA year or two then?
DeleteI love simple rules. But in all my house rules, I always try to put the focus on command and movement. That's where the fun part is, also at the meta-level: handling and pushing toy soldiers around. Combat resolution should be as simple as possible, and I also often try to build "movement effects" (retreats and such) into combat results, to make stuff happening on the table.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all of that. But I like to make the player take the weight of the effect of his decisions on his own shoulders rather than being able to blame the dice.
DeleteAs for command rolls etc.: I still use them in my ACW rules. A unit within command range is activated on a 7+ (some modifiers may apply), outside command range is always 8+ on 2D6.
ReplyDeleteTo mitigate some bad luck, I also use the "Lucky General" meta-rule. One player starts with a token (we use a statuette of Napoleon), an can reroll any die (or composite die roll). But then, you hand over the token to your opponent, who then 'gets lucky'. By using a somewhat heavy statuette, handing over the token bears some psychological weight as well and feels really important.
See my blogpost about this mechanic here: http://wargaming-mechanics.blogspot.com/2020/08/i-know-hes-good-general-but-is-he-lucky.html
I used various command rolls, charts etc for decades. The problem came went I went looking for facts and examples where a general's orders at close hand were not not attempted to be executed as intended as opposed to an order to a subordinate 12 hours away. It was hard to find but easy to find subordinates attempting to follow stupid orders and to find Generals who made a good order when it was too late or too early. I dislike the Charge of the Light Brigade example because the evidence seems to indicate that the mistake was that of the General in command, not the subordinate who executed it. It doesn't matter whether the order was poorly worded and not what he meant or whether he later denied having made a bad decision, the "unit" attempted what the "player" told it to do! Many of my units have done the same while I found myself thinking "I shouldn't have done that".
ReplyDeleteI agree, gotta be regimental level as the lowest unit of manoeuvre/operation for American Civil War. I see that you have stuck to this in your rules (linked in your later post).
ReplyDeleteRegards, James