Intermission

The repulse of the Dominion column in April, due largely to the intervention of an Oerberg column, has stirred the nascent rebellion in Kapelle. In addition to the local defense forces which are being formed in many a village, the insurgent government has begun raising regular units, relying largely on contributions of arms, uniforms and instructors from Oerberg.

Fresh off the painting desk this morning.

I have a feeling that the question of a free and independant Republic of Kapelle is a long way from decided. 

_______________

Meanwhile, I took advantage of being home alone (human-wise) to spend a little extra hobby time this week. The OHW hadn't taken long to play, ending somewhere around turn 9 out of 15.  It was a little too quick with too few decisions to make for the game to be satisfying so I decided to try again, and again, fiddling with organization and rules in between each round. In the final game, the Oerberg force would have won by getting 2 units off somewhere around turn 9 out of 15, if they'd gone first on the next turn, but....... 

The final game,  just before Tin Lizzie's MG cuts down the remnant of the Oerberg Mounted Police by rolling 3x6's on 3!!!! dice, followed by the Lancers overrunning the Railway company and the Commander. 
Oh well. 

Like many One Hour Wargames, it only took about 20 minutes of actual playing time to play. As much time was spent taking pictures and at least that much again trying to figure out if a new or revised set of rules were working and why or why not.  For example,  which is better, more smaller units vs fewer larger ones, or the same number of larger units for that matter, die modifiers for cover vs Old School 1/2 casualties vs dropping dice ala Battlecry, and so on and on, orders dice vs command radius + activation roll vs....etc etc.  Then I thought about the scenario and wondered how it could possibly last more than 20 minutes. I'll have to try the rules with a different scenario, preferably not another OHW one, as handy as they are.

Now however, it's time to move on to the 1790's. I want to paint up at least one new unit, two if things go well, and then it'll be game time on Tuesday!  

Solo Miniature Wargaming (Part 3)

I hope the last post gave the general idea of how I handle the games. Obviously with a larger game and more complex set of rules and or scenario, the play will be more complex and take longer but the general idea is the same.  (Don't worry, the pictures and captions will follow this game to its end.)

Turn 8: British reinforcements (104th New Brunswick Regt and Canadian Fencibles) and the rallied 89th Foot counterattacked and retook the ridge. 

There may be some though who are wondering what more is there, if anything? What happens when the game is over? How long can you maintain interest by playing small, random, scenarios against yourself?

Well the short answer is "Longer than you would think" but luckily its not the only option.

Turn 9 saw both sides regrouping on one flank while  the long range firefight continued on the other.

"Play it again Sam".  How often have you finished a game with a friend and sat chatting about the game and musing on various "what if's"?  The moves you thought about but didn't make, the ones that chance stopped whether command control, random event, variable length moves, morale tests etc or that you thought about too late? How many 'sure thing' combats have you lost when the all the dice liked your opponent better than you? With a solo game, instead of talking about a refight, you can do it and try Plan B or retry the surefire Plan A to see if it was just bad  luck or if there were unseen flaws in the plan.

Turn 10: The British left starts to crumble while the American left rallies and starts to prepare for a renewed assault.

There is also the chance to try a scenario in various periods while the table is set,
that is, if you are one of us who play in multiple periods. Would this scenario work in WWII? What about in Medieval Europe or in Zululand?

Historical battles with a twist are an interesting option. Just played a game based on Waterloo? Got a choice of other periods on hand? Instead of clearing the table completely what about resetting it, maybe 300 years earlier with the King Henry VIII's English bills and bows on the ridge awaiting the French onslaught while watching for the Emperor's Landsknechts to arrive? Will the different weapons and tactics make it a wholly different battle or might it still resemble the later one if the same over all plan is adopted? Since you are controlling both sides you can give it a go without focusing on beating your friend and opponent.

Turn 12. The British left has crumpled after heavy casualties and the British no longer have enough infantry for a solid line. The artillery is cut off and fights to the last, pouring grape into the flank of a rash American attempt to bypass it.

 Rule vs Rule. Solo games are also a good way to test out new rule sets, especially if you don't have a regular weekly opponent.  What I particularly like to do is to play a test game of a new set of rules using a familiar, reliable, scenario such as Sawmill Village or Blastof Bridge, one I know from experience works well with multiple rules in multiple periods.  (eg see Ma-theyre-at-it-agin)

I have also been known to play the same scenario a couple of times in a row with different rules to get a feel for how they compare with each other whether for playability, historical feel, fun or anything else. (eg  Wargames Digest Battle Station - 5 posts, 3 rules )

Turn 14. The light is fading as a last ditch American assault goes in. Both sides are teetering on the edge of army morale collapse.  The British General was shot while trying to steady the 104th and the British are praying for a 2nd Joker to rob the enemy of their last chance.

 Actually, before starting this post I played this scenario with an updated, partially tested, version of my Square Brigadier, found myself modifying it as I went and finally ended up rolling back most of the changes and that was what I used for this game. The replay of the same scenario confirmed my feeling that the rules had wandered off course and had needed to be brought back.

Turn 15. The British get the next best thing, some free rally rolls and first move. Their shooting nearly does it but the American General rallies the Lafayette County Volunteers and leads them onto the ridge and their bravery is rewarded with favourable dice. A tied melee sees night fall with the hill still in contention.  It could SO easily have gone to either side at various points but no, it ended in a draw, much like the battle the "Melee" scenario was inspired by.

However, there is more! In the next post I'll look at various sorts of quick and easy solo campaign options.

Solo Miniature Wargaming (Part 1)

Solo wargaming did not come naturally to me. I don't like to think of myself as competitive, it goes against my upbringing but I will confess that there was a time when facing an opponent across a table full of miniatures brought out a powerful urge to win in a younger me. When I retired early to the country with most of my gaming opponents living anywhere from 100 to 2,000 km away  I decided that I needed to learn to play solo.

Stuart Asquith and Don Featherstone were my main guides, helped somewhat by CS Grant's Programmed Scenarios and a slough of other incidental sources. The result is recorded in my 2008/9  Game a Week blog   where 39 of the 52 games were played solo as I taught myself how to do it and have fun. The battle reports are very brief and say little about how I did it, but those games laid the foundation for my enjoyment of the solo aspects of the hobby since then.

A face to face game with friends still trumps a solo game, and I enjoy the occasional game via internet video chat though I could really use better equipment and better lighting for hosting, ( See Posts about miniature wargames via the internet .) but solo wargaming is now a leisurely joy to me in its own right rather than a desperate last resort.

Sep 2013: Rob's view of a Rough Wooing game on my table 2,000 km away.

There are a lot of ways to go about solo gaming but for now I'm just going to write about how I go about it. Feel free to leave questions in a comment, or if shy by sending me an email (address at top of blog). No questions are "dumb" or offensive, all are welcome.

OK, this intro is getting  a bit long so I'll have a quick look at how I get started once the decision to play is made  and the next post will get into a play by play account of a game including how and why decisions were made and so on.

The first thing I do is pick a period and scenario and adapt it to my troops, rules and setup. I find published scenarios invaluable for putting some exterior limits on myself though if push comes to shove, there is always the option of writing up a new scenario when none of the 300 or so published ones I have seem to fit my mood. That includes scenarios found in scenario books, magazines, and rulebooks even if not using those rules that day (Blastoff Bridge anyone?).

If the scenario includes a programmed option such as in CS Grant's Programmed Scenarios then sometimes I will pick a side and follow the instructions for the other side but normally I just "change hats" during the game, doing my best as the "Blue" player and then as the "Red" player but I always pick one side as "me" and make all the choices and accept all the responsibility for decisions good or bad.

For the "other" side, I will usually make the obvious decisions but where there is more than one good option I will use an old technique of setting out a couple of valid choices, weighting them if appropriate, then choosing one with a die roll. We will see examples of this as we do the play-through. Everything else goes as normal with me rolling for both sides with utter, ruthless, honesty and the courage to accept that my favourite unit just rolled three 1's!  In the end, it is my decisions about battle plans and tactical choices that make or break the game for me. Did a gamble work? Did I have that reserve in hand? Did the "enemy" and the decision tree die pull a manoeuvre that I hadn't thought of when I made my last move and can I recover? This is where identifying with one side helps inject some emotion so it is more than an intellectual exercise. For me that aspect is crucial to the depth of my enjoyment.

40mm Scruby War of 1812 US and British infantry with an Irregular General and my own original homecast Riflemen and Infantry officers.

OK the table is set, tomorrow we will look at the chosen scenario and get the game rolling.

Of Form and Function

"Form follows Function" and "Function follows Form", two duelling design maxims and like most such bitter fights, both sides of the debate are right to some degree. This weekend I belatedly realized that this debate was at the heart of my seesaw problems without it having been consciously considered in that light.   Worse than that, solving the issues was going to require deciding on priorities, making careful, informed, choices and sticking with them. Oh NO!

"Sawmill Village" is an encounter scenario with victory resting on control of the crossroads town. Blue won the race to the town but wasn't aggressive enough to  take the whole thing before Red grabbed a foothold.

One of the advantages of writing a blog is that I have a decade of posts not only recounting games and showing pictures but snatches of design discussions of varying merit. Somethings come and go, some things get invented and reinvented and too often forgotten, and somethings just keep coming back if one looks.  One thing I seem to periodically take a run at is designing a game which has it all, large armies of big figures in big units which has all the detail of the most complex games but which fits easily on a small table and can be played in an hour or two even when tired or all day with a crowd of players.

I blame my Old School introduction and fondness for reading low level memoirs when I can find them but if I were ever to achieve that contrary goal, turning lead to gold should be easy as my next trick.

The armies are both up and battle plans have been decided on.

When I played the game I was going to write up on Saturday, I enjoyed it but something niggled so I played it again then again focusing more on how the game played rather than on enjoying the story that was unfolding on the table. I like the look of the slightly larger units in the 6" squares but when paying careful attention I soon realized that the table wasn't big enough (functionally) to give sufficient manoeuvre  room to make an interesting game and that while units were wide enough to fill a square, they were thin enough in line that several times I discovered that I had moved a unit adjacent to an enemy unit without seeing it and that the units that should have been resolving close combat were either ignoring each other or planning to open fire at range 2 when they were already at 1.

The use of multi-stand figures and large squares also gave me an irresistible urge to play with formations and other of the things that were supposed to be below the level of the game and as a result I was not really focusing on my intended role as "General" but rather on being Brigadier and Colonel focused on the various details more than on the over all battle. The practice belied the stated intent that the player was General not every officer on the table.

That was  when I decided to go back and review more than a hundred Square Brigadier posts and as expected I found certain themes, issues and debates cropping up again and again with every major deviation from the original game eventually failing and forcing a  reboot or a turn to Old School rules for a simple but lengthy, tiring, game of tactics which I soon tire of.

Blue has stuck to their plan in a passive sort of way, but Red has flip flopped with the usual result.

At least I understand now that my urge to mount units on a single base is not really driven by aesthetics or  convenience but as a way to remove the urge to fiddle with formations which despite my best intentions, always leads me to increased attention to all of those tactical details that the rules are supposed to "factor in" so that player must focus on being the general.  `

I also stumbled on a post from late 2017 when I was working on my Great War centennial game that expresses my conclusion that the six inch grid was a failure because the squares there were too few squares for manoeuvre, even after expanding my table enough to hamper movement through my room and for all the same reasons I mentioned above as well as a few others and that I needed to go back to smaller grid squares when I got back from Huzzah! Oops.

Thus it was that I got out my 5" grid cloth and laid out this game and with my Oerburg games in mind, reorganized my 54's to simulate old Square Brigadier style units with 4 infantry or 3 cavalry on a single base.

Having repulsed all of Red's attacks, Blue sits back contentedly as the sun sets and contemplates his report on how he boldly seized the important crossroad, throwing the Red forces back until an aide reminds him that actually, Red still holds a corner of the town. The Blue army had been too busy repelling attacks to ever launch one of their own. Oh........oh dear.

The 5" grid that Sunday's game was played on worked better and the troops gamely pretended to be fixed to a single base per unit with rules adjusted back to something very like the old Square Brigadier.  The corner markers for the four inch grid on the main table have mysteriously reappeared though and I plan to give them a go today, a tight fit for 54's and some terrain items but an expansive field with than twice as many squares as the six inch grid and room for more units as well as more manoeuvre. 

Seeking Contrast

Part of me likes the idea of a basic universal framework for miniatures games. Systems like the Command and Colours series of games. The upside is that it becomes easy to remember how things work and common base sizes and mechanisms allow easy sharing of a tabletop and terrain. especially if you are using a grid and building armies from scratch.

The major downside is that the rules can start to get too vanilla and lacking in flavour if one isn't clever enough and the incentive to do multiple periods declines if all the games are similar in overall feel. There can also be issues with getting old armies to conform.

I'm pondering the question again for all my collections, looking for the best way to differentiate them and give each one a distinct feel and a reason to exist. A toy soldier game, a quick, easy to set up in a small space, play and take down game, an all day game, a wargame to refight historical battles, maybe a low level skirmish game and so on.

Early stages of testing revived rules and scenario.

In the meantime, or perhaps in the spirit, I am spending much time at the moment working on the 16th Century Anglo-French wargame that Rob and I will be co-hosting at Huzzah in May. but that will be covered on my Gathering of Hosts blog.

Don Featherstone: A Muse of Fire!

By now surely most of the wargaming world has heard the sad news of the passing of Don Featherstone, one of the greatest modern pioneers and proponents of the hobby.

I still remember the thrill when I found his book, Battles For Model Soldiers, in W H Smith's on St Catherine's St. in Montreal on my way home from cadets during the winter of 1970/71. Already I had an interest in military history, knew that somewhere grown men were playing wargames with soldiers and spent my time converting  toy soldiers into detailed models and painting Airfix figures and wondering just how one went fighting battles in adult fashion. Here was my salvation!

(from Battles With Model Soldiers by Don Featherstone)

When I look inside the cover of that book more than 40 years later, the figure 7.25 has been penciled in, doubtless the price. It seems awfully cheap now but was certainly more money than I usually carried in my pocket at 15, more than my month's allowance anyway. I'm not sure how I survived the agonizing fear that someone else would find the book and buy it but when I finally got back to Montreal the next Saturday, there it was, and here it is beside me now.

(from Battles With Model Soldiers by Don Featherstone)

There is little doubt that I would have found my way into the hobby with in a year or two anyway but Don's spirit, enthusiasm,attitude and advice has had a lasting effect. I think this short quote from that book sums up probably his greatest influence on me, and not just as far as my hobby goes:

"Nothing in these pages is a dictate, no word says you must or you shall do it this way. On the contrary, the book sets out from the very beginning to stimulate the reader to think for himself, and to use what he has read merely as a foundation for efforts and ideas which reflect his own temperament and character. " Don Featherstone 1918-2013

This Week's Fox

The weekend approaches, the continuing unusually hot temperatures seem to be relenting a little, the old sub floor in the kitchen of this old farmhouse has been stripped off and Kathy is off to a dogshow. In other words conditions are just right for another solo game.

Red and Blue armies clash at Long Hill, Victoria Farm on the far hill, Cross Church on the near hill.

Last week's game coupled with a recent post on the  http://thepennywhistle.blogspot.ca/ blog disturbed sleeping  memories of past Morschauser/V&B like games where a stand of 40mm or 54mm figures is a unit, even if its just 2 or 3 figures as well as bringing back to the fore my pondering about how many figures/units I can field without overcrowding the table, preventing maneuver and securing flanks on the table edges. In an effort to stifle the thoughts a little, I decided to throw a small game of either MacDuff or Rattle of Dice on to the table  using small 12 and 6 man units.

I was a bit tired with a long non-wargaming to-do list  so rather than spend time and energy coming up with either an historical action or an interesting scenario I just plumped for a quick encounter game such as one might find in an old wargaming book.

Red's right wing advances towards the Sugar Shack and Rose Cottage.

Depending on how things go, the game will be played either Saturday or Sunday. Next weekend will see the return of Prince Michael. 

Picking a fight

The translation of thought from the subconscious to the conscious can be a murky process at times. I will be Duty Caretaker Spouse for 3 days this weekend and 4 the next. This means I can't wander off for more that a few hours but doesn't stop me from enjoying several hours of leisure time packed around my responsibilities and the weather has finally relented making my games room once again a pleasant place to paint and play. So, a game is in order. But what to play?

An archive shot of a NQSYW battle on a similar weekend last fall.

The games I've played over the last few month have been enjoyable but were either what I consider skirmishes or petit guerre,  or they have been short games with simple scenarios and limited player options. My subconscious passed the message "I want the wargame to be a real battle this time". But, what did it mean??

Archive footage of last November's Cobb's Farm a full fledged battle game. 

At first I thought it might be about fielding masses of units and figures without being crowded.  The spectre of me interrupting things to order and paint a thousand 10mm French Revolutionary soldiers loomed large causing me in near panic to set out some 1/72nd ACW to remind myself that compared to my 40's they fit well into the scenery and I can fit quite a few onto the table without being crowded. (whew! bullet dodged). But while the 500 or so figures I had put on the table for the Not Really Pickett's Charge game a few weeks ago don't constitute a big game by hobby standards, it was most of the painted ACW figures I have and considerably more figures and units that the various small games I've played since, however, it didn't have the "feel" I was looking for since it was just a slice of something bigger and mission and deployment were pre-ordained.

So, I thought a bit about planning and generalship and the to and fro of decisions and the test of minds and wills between opposing generals.  A battle where the general/player  develops a battle plan, where to attack and with how much, where to defend, where to place reserves, followed by the see-saw of attack and counter attack, phase after phase through a whole day until one side collapses and is chased from the field.

So I went looking for an historical battle to base the game on but it didn't take long to realize that relatively few historical battles offer the sort of sweeping manouvers, chess like control by the commander and give and take that I was thinking of. No, it seems what I really wanted to do was fight a wargame like in the good 'ol days when a game involving a few hundred miniatures felt like the clash of mighty armies deciding the fate of nations.

The Seleucid Menagerie of Perry Grey faces the Persian Horde of Rossius the Younger in Jeff Lauzon's basement some time in 1980's. 

OK then it seems I just need to lighten up, stop thinking  about the man behind the curtain and whether or not that group of soldiers should be a brigade or a battelion, and pick the right sort of scenario. I think  Grant's Broken Ground Scenario from Programmed Scenarios will do as a start thus saving my brain from further strain but what about armies? ACW? Oberhilse & Faraway? NQSYW? or maybe the long idle 16thC English vs French & Scots? hmmm choices, choices......

Archive footage of a 16thC battle from December 2010. Its been nearly 18 months since these lads were out, the longest idle period of any of my major collections.

Of Battles and Skirmishes

Its a beautiful HOT summer weekend and I'm Officer of the Watch and Duty Watch rolled into one while Kathy is off to dog show. This means I can't wander far and its hard to grab more than an hour at time to myself but a lot can be done with an hour here or there. It seemed like a good time to take some troops outside but scouting around for just the right spot just reminded me that the lawn needs cutting,  the gardens need weeding, that it was hot out and that I was tired. Suddenly, a cold drink and a book in the shade seemed more inviting than preparing a battlefield, dragging troops downstairs and coming up with a scenario. I retreated upstairs, turned on another fan and looked around for something easy to set up and play.

A column of Faraway troops under attack by Brethren and their Atlantican allies c 1845.

The table was still set for Picket's Charge but lately I find that fighting battles tends to feel like work. Work to set them up, work to come up with plans, in the case of historical battles work to research them, work to fight through them. Worse than that, battles tend to have consequences.  At least in life, in campaigns and in continuing imagi-nation story lines. I started to think about Petit Guerre settings and scenarios.

I'm not sure that I've ever thought about the difference between battles and skirmishes in quite this way before. It may be due to a lack of context for so many of my games over the years or that many of the various rule sets I've played tended to produce one level of game and so there was no clear  distinction even if a given scenario was more plausible as one or the other. I have tended to think of size as the difference between a battle and a skirmish but now I am thinking it is more a matter of intent and consequence. It is not that skirmishes cannot have consequences but they are usually either cumulative such as in a prolonged guerilla campaign, or else accidental  as in the death of Lord Howe shortly before the battle at Ticonderoga.

Battles are serious affairs not usually under taken lightly or without reason. Much of the writing about generalship over the centuries is about how to conduct a campaign so that you can force a decisive battle that will destroy the enemy's capability or will to continue the fight and about how to avoid having the enemy do the same to you. Once battle is joined, the aim is usually to destroy the enemy's army not to seize some minor terrain feature except as a means to an end. A skirmish on the other hand is usually between two detachments whose loss would be regrettable rather than decisive and the goal is usually some smaller, limited but specific objective such as the destruction or protection of property or capture of a strategical terrain objective such as Ruffin's night attack before Talavera. These sorts of limited engagements are typical of Grant's Tabletop scenarios and form ideal scenarios  because the gamer is assigned troops and assigned a mission much like an intermediate general without having to concern himself as much with preliminary off table manoeuvring and the campaign situation.

Having decided to do a skirmish on the existing terrain, a variation on the ambush of a convoy seemed like an easy and always good scenario, especially for solo play with programmed ambushers randomly placed. Prince Valiant has been on my mind but I've tried to avoid doing any of those without a story line. The 16th Century was also a valid choice but I'm unsure about the rules and anyway, I didn't have a  printed copy to hand. So Atlantica beckoned.

The "plan" calls for a long period of border warfare with occasional major expeditions so no explanation is needed. Due to a combination of distractions and indecision, my Atlanticans can only muster a handful of figures in "modern" dress so their ranks were filled out with 18th Century ones and reinforced with Brethren of the Coast and rebellious settlers to make up to 36 ambushers. I still need to work out the details of the backstory but the rebel settlements were founded by European hunters and boatmen who inter married with the Atlantican tribes in the 18th Century and were later reinforced by rebels fleeing the Blue River district after the failed rebellion. The convoy consisted of a single supply wagon escorted by 6 of Larsen's Lancers and 2 companies of infantry each 12 strong.

This is the sort of game that MacDuff was written for but I had never actually played Rattle of Dice as published on the blog. The sole test game before I decided to just roll it into Hearts of Tin was using some rough notes. I decided to give it a go.

It didn't take long to realize that I had made some omissions and at least one typo as well as another mistake that probably reflected a mental blip after thinking about Charge!.  Given the low numbers of figures I was severely tempted to add a MacDuff style figure to figure melee  system, and to add the after melee  test I used when I migrated the system to HofT but I decided to just go with what I had written, the only change being the addition of a 1/2 move penalty for formation changes as proposed on War Diaries of a Little Englander.

The typo was in melee where I wrote count 1/2 of the 2nd & 3rd rank instead of 1/2 the 3rd & 4th rank. The 2nd rank was already covered by including figures in contact and those in contact with them. The quasi typo was by writing count remainders of more than 1/2 when what I usually do is count remainders of 1/2 or more. The main omissions were that the shooting dice listed were for muzzle loading rifles, breech loaders rolling 1 per 2 instead, and that I hadn't included ordinary wagons, something I needed!  Anyway I have updated the original Rattle of Dice post with the corrections in red and added an evade rule for cavalry and skirmishers which I did not use today.

Tomorrow, we'll see how it went.

Finding your ground

Its actually a coincidence that the 150th anniversary of the battle I'm not fighting is coming up on Wednesday. The reasons I am laying this particular battle out are that the terrain and situation/mission are simple, it could be made to fit on my table with out going to the cm scale, I had enough troops even if they are still a bit motley,  and especially that someone else had already done the hard work of maps, OB and victory conditions and all I had to do was translate from original F&F to Hearts of Tin.

As the Confederate artillery falls silent, their infantry emerges from the trees and forms for the assault.

But why do an historically inspired game at all? Basically, I find no better way of getting a feel for a period or of testing a set of rules than to base a game on a real battle, preferably more than one battle done more than once.

It helps that in this case I've walked the real battle field so when I look at the simplified, artificial  terrain, stepped hills and all, I can picture what the real thing looks like and my mind can see some of the unspoken generalizations, compromises and assumptions that are behind the model battlefield, the rules and how troops are manoeuvred.   Last year I did a table top based on the area around my house and that also helped in the same way. This in turn helps me interpret a generic scenario layout and adjust to suit scale and place assuming I have a feel for both.

The real point being that this is my issue with my 40mm mid 19thC games, I don't have a feel for the ground yet or the compromises made because of the heightened conflict between figure size and ground scale and because the periods being considered include one (post ACW)  that I haven't delved into very deeply beyond colonial type skirmish and another Crimean/Mutiny/ACW that I have read about but not translated onto the table beyond the ACW and I havn't pinned down the fictional background properly yet. Interestingly I laid out a 40mm unit behind one of the 1/72nd ones. If I used 20mm troops in 2 ranks I could squeeze twice as many men into the same space but since most of my own 20's are based in a ragged 1 deep line, the units have the same frontage with the same number of figures and thanks to the base depth on my 1/72nd stands, almost the same depth. in other words, a very similar unit foot print. The small guys just look less crowded and the hills, trees and houses take up less room.

Today I am using a compressed scale so that 16 figures/4 stands are a small brigade but normally I use 12-16 figures as a small regiment. The difference is purely theoretical since the rules are not being modified to suit, the scale difference is being ignored. It does however my view of how the battle unfolds and what I should be able to do with them or how I should use them, only because of my mind set.

The decision as to what the same size units represents for the 40's is then largely a matter of what I am trying to represent and that, unfortunately, can only be a choice made by myself. So once the Reb's make their big charge across the valley and get cleared away, I'll need to break out some 40's regardless of uniforms and see how they feel. Maybe I'll even run the same scenario. Then I'll need to do some small battles and skirmishes at the other end, based on some real ones and see how they feel. Then'll I'll need to go away and think.

Lukcily while I'm thinking there is lots to do. I just got a used Schildkrot/Zinnbrigade mold of uhlans in plumed lancer cap as well as the parade dress marching Prussian that I have earmarked for the Oberhilse Council Guard. I also found this horse with its head down amongst the Merten figures, if I take one of those British Dragoon officers turn in the saddle and a lancer head and do a bit of work.....

Left Rear a classic Britain's standard size Lancer officer, front a Zinnbrigade Dragoon officer on Merten ACW horse, Right Rear, a previous conversion inspired by the same original. Rear A Zinnbrigade mold in full Uhlan rig.


But first I have a battle to fight.

Friction in Life and on the Table

My planned Winter Campaign Season still seems  to be more like the Winter Construction Season but not only is there progress on the domestic front but I slipped away for a game on Friday. 

Somewhere, in a land long ago and far away, the British are trying to blow a bridge before an advancing force of hostile natives can seize it. 

Yes, it was another Colonial Battlecry Grant Teaser and another fun afternoon full of dice, decisions and desperate moments. Ron is still on a Sudan kick to the point where he caught himself pricing another table full of desert terrain.   I'm quite happy to consider it just another Colonial campaign somewhere.

Our rule variant seems set with our native firearm skirmishers having a factor of 2-2-2-2 while the spearmen are 4--- (Brits are 4-3-2-1 for comparison with that being the number of dice rolled at 1,2,3 and 4 hexes). The natives are allowed to retreat a full move on a flag while British regulars may ignore 1. A random process ended with me being the native and attacker coming in from off table while Ron's troops were asleep in camp apart from some Engineers busy planting charges. There not being any rules for demolition, we allowed an Engineer officer (treated as a General) to plant 1 die each time the unit he was with was ordered and did not move or shoot. The dice could be rolled if ordered to battle with crossed sabers being a hit on the bridge. 3 hits being needed to destroy a section.

The Infamous Camel General has 2 more units shot out from underneath him.

I elected to come on in two columns, cavalry supported by riflemen and shock troops on the right, riflemen, a cannon and spearmen up the center. There were 2 probable options for me,  push troops forward and make a concentrated attack or send troops forward as quickly as possible, hoping to forestall the engineers. Given my lack of firepower, a mad dash seemed the best route and my cavalry almost wiped out the engineering party, thanks in part to a random reinforcement of Fuzzies. For back up though, instead of  more spearmen to keep up the pressure, I had snipers and a very slow artillery piece blocking the road. Oops.

Work resumes while some lancers guard the approach.

It took a while but eventually the sniping did some good and more spearmen were finally in place as the sun went down. They managed to capture the center of the bridge but the far end was blown in their face. The bridge wasn't totally destroyed but it was not completely intact either and in any case, despite  having 9 units of spearmen in reserve, I hadn't  captured it. (Once again we played all the way through the deck with that being a day if neither side breaks).

There were times last week when we had one problem after another, chimney fire, pump problems then a hot water tank leak, and it felt like a bad hand of cards or a series of bad activation rolls. Looking more calmly though each of the problems we had was the outcome of a known issue which we had not dealt with fully yet and were just hoping could be put off a while longer. They weren't really random at all. Many military blunders or misfortunes are similarly related to a failure of commanders to be sufficiently proactive. During the game there were several times when I either didn't have the cards I wanted or couldn't make good use of some really good cards that I had. It might have felt a bit like bad luck but if I had thought more about the capabilities of my troops and what the mission and situation was that I was sending them into then a battle plan which drew on my strengths, not on my weaknesses would have allowed me full use of those same cards and might well have changed the fortunes of the day.

Economy of Force

"The defeats of Xerxes, Darius, Mithridates and other monarchs who brought innumerable multitudes into the field, plainly show that the destruction of such prodigious armies is owing more to their own numbers than to the bravery of their enemies. An army too numerous is subject to many dangers and inconveniences."

from The Military Institutions of the Romans (De Re Militari)
By Flavius Vegetius Renatus Translated from the Latin by Lieutenant John ClarkeV
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Bluebear Jeff has asked my thoughts on the optimum number of units to deploy in a wargame.  This has been on mind as I try to determine what size units to organize in some of the armies that I'm building. Since the table will be filled, the larger the units the fewer the number of units and vice versa.

There is of course no definitive, universal answer to the question  and special circumstances often apply but we are talking in general terms of an average game. One might think that the answer can be found  by looking at historical orders of battle, but really, that only changes the question to "What level of organization should my basic units reflect?, Squads? Platoons? Battalions? Brigades? Divisions?". Management theory about span of control and so forth can provide some guidance but there are military and game factors as well.  

Based more upon my years of experience than any theory, I think that there is a good case to be made for an average of 12 units a side for ordinary games.  Since one often needs unbalanced forces, let me expand that to say between 6 and 18 units per side. Oddly enough, this matches the typical force levels in C.S. Grant's table Top Teasers and Scenarios as well as DBA's 12 element armies amongst other things.  

There are a couple of factors I like to keep in mind:

• Force Mix. This is more of an issue for some periods/armies than others but most (not all ) armies, from ancient Egyptians up to today, usually contained a majority of infantry units of various types,  supported by artillery or other missile/support troops and cavalry/armour both heavy and light. Six units won't allow a natural mix of all unit types but is just barely enough to allow for a balanced force of 2 or 3 types.
• Deployment & Tactics. If you check back with Vegetius, one of my earliest (in every sense) tutors on tactics, he suggests various battle formations for an army to adopt. They all begin with a Left, a Center, a Right and a Reserve and usually end with weighting one or more parts of the formation. Units shouldn't really be left without supports if it can be avoided so if you allocate say, 2 units,  to each sector and then weight one of them, you really need about 9 or 10 units, 12 would be better but 6 will do in a pinch. Any less and your deployment and tactical options are severely limited.
• Longevity and Options. Simply put, the fewer units you have, the easier it is to lose them all and the fewer choices you can make each turn. For me, making choices is a key part of the fun of wargames, as is the ability to take some lumps, haul yourself together and try again.
• Drag and Drudgery. This is the flip side. Decisions take time. If players have to make too many decisions the game will inevitably drag. Many units usually also mean many combat resolutions and many tests of one sort or another. How many is too many depends on the complexity of the rules, how well the players know them, the complexity of the scenario, whether or not units can be grouped, how much time and energy is available and what the players enjoy.  My suggestion of 18 units is based on a wide variety of games over the years but I am comfortable adjusting it upwards for very simple games (rules or scenario) especially if the units can be grouped or if a longer more involved game than normal is involved.
• Storylines. One issue Jeff brought up is the ability to remember who is who and what they did so you can relive or share the battle afterwards. I recently bumped into this with my ACW plans when I realized that I was proposing to field 36 or more regiments a side when I couldn't even remember names and numbers for 12! Given my gaming preferences I would be better off either reorganizing to focus on brigades or fighting smaller battles with larger units if I want more troops on the table.
• Multi-player & Solo. These change things a little but I would suggest that the minimum for a multi-player game becomes 3 to 12 units per player.  For Solo games, I wouldn't change anything  as an average of 12 per side is still best for giving each army options. 

So nothing definitive, just my 2 cents. I guess my other 2 questions will have to wait! 

    

Playing with Toy Soldiers vs Playing a Game

A few days, or maybe a week or so, someone, somewhere, in a comment on another blog possibly, made a comment about wanting to be able to "win" solo games. My mind went "huh?" and moved on.

Around the same time, my friend Ron, in preparation for a summer vacation at the family cottage back in Quebec, started putting a lick of paint onto some Memoir 44  figures since he was just going to pack the games, not all his Hexon terrain and 1/72nd figures. Nothing too fancy, just flesh,  weapons etc, like an old Crescent or Lone Star figure. I couldn't resist and volunteered to do the Japanese in the same style. Something I got to yesterday. (Bear with me)

Memoir 44 Pacific game pieces.

Now, the mechanisms and the whole "game" aspect of Memoir/Battlecry etc have been on my mind recently so it wasn't surprising that they should float through my mind while painting these figures.

This is even more the case because the old question about having both 1812 & 1840's armies of the same size, shape and style have been weighing heavily on me as well as the question of historical vs fictional games. As part of this, I had started to again ponder the possibility of a series of small historical hex based, 1 stand = 1 unit games based on various War of 1812 battles.  Essentially the Battlecry model which meant I had been pondering about stealing mechanisms and playing the system solo. (Aha we're getting closer.)

It was the ambush card which did it. Normally one holds this in one's hand and then at an opportune moment uses it to surprise an enemy who close assaults one of your units. I normally play solo games by alternately placing myself in command of each army and doing my best with it. I use markers and dummy markers (blinds in new speak) for hidden troops, where appropriate, with neither side knowing which are which for sure until they are revealed. For the Battlecry system I was contemplating playing 1 hand  while drawing all or most of the "other side's" hand anew each turn to maintain an element of surprise while still keeping some aspect of hand building. But what to do with an ambush card? Could I trust an impartial mind to pretend not to know that the enemy is going to swat the next unit that makes an assault? Not easily, not with fun, it would become an academic exercise. The joy of surprising and trouncing the foe would be lost. AHA!

Why isn't this an issue  with my normal solo games? Why do I not normally consider winning and losing as an element of my solo games? I do when I play an opposed wargame. When I play Spider solitaire on my computer I want to win, why not when I play a solo wargame? I can't completely answer the question, but it seems to me now that when I play solo games, I have been playing to imagine and observe, to build a story, rather than to "play a game". "Winning" means getting a good story with some drama, some twists and an outcome.  Nothing wrong with that but I can see now that at times I might like to have a choice of approaching it either way.

Something to think about and work on this fall and winter I think.

Cards, Pips and some practical thoughts on Command Control & friction.

When DBA's  PIP's command control system was first introduced via Slingshot, I was quite taken with it then with DBA itself and have tinkered with variations on the PIP idea at different times, even attempting to bolt it onto HofT once or twice. There are some aspects of the idea that don't appeal to me though and I'm not currently using it anywhere.

The Warmaster/BKC etc system of activation was also briefly of interest when I first encountered it but I never warmed to it thoroughly despite having been using some form of activation/command control roll for decades. In fact, BKC & Black Powder together got me re-visiting the whole topic of Command Control & Friction two years ago.

In light of all this, I was expecting to dislike if not outright hate the card activation system used in Memoir 44 and other Battlecry derivatives. The fact that I didn't has increased my respect for the game designer and has led me to do some pondering.

The first thing that comes to mind is that like the Pip system but unlike the Activation system, no matter how  bad your luck is, you can always do SOMETHING. Maybe not exactly what you wanted or needed and maybe you are going to have to more or less waste a card but not only do you have a selection of cards to choose from but the cards are designed in such a way that most allow you to activate one unit if you can't use use the card's prime purpose.

The second thing is that the cards don't just limit your ability to act, they give you bonuses that allow some units special capabilities for that turn. The Warmaster style of activation do this to some extent by allowing repeated activations but I find this just aggravates the jerkiness and rags or riches aspects of the system, two things that don't appeal to me though I can see that they do appeal to others.   PIPs don't usually have this enhancement quality although there some exceptions such as extra moves for some units in some circumstances. I'm not sure what it represents but it adds to the game enjoyment and uncertainty. For example in the last game, on the last turn, the card I played gave my units an extra die each when fighting. Without that, with the best dice in the world my troops could not have clinched the game. Even with slightly average dice they would not have done so, they needed both. 

The third  aspect is that having a hand of cards allows you do some planning, especially if you know the deck and have been paying attention to what has been played. All of the systems do this to some extent because you can maximize various aspects of PIP or Activation rolls but largely by paying attention to the order an formation of your army and the positioning on commanders, things Generals have to attend to. The cards do it in ways that don't relate to any battlefield activity at all except that a General has to be aware of circumstances and his deployment and how the two mesh. This card sharking aspect was what I really expected to hate. Only the well thought out nature of the deck, which seems to usually allow you to make it work with your plan with only minor adjustment, makes it work for me. 

So where is this going?

Well , I've been playing around with ideas for my RCW and Ancients games, both of which are now 1 stand=1 unit at the moment. I'm using the HofT C&C system with the Ancients right now and it works OK but more so for Heavy Infantry armies than ones of light troops who one end up rolling for almost every unit every turn which is tedious.  For that and the RCW game, a PIP system where spending an extra point on a unit/group could be used for special bonuses, 1 pt for a group to move double perhaps (Greeks at Marathon e.g.) or 1 pt to allow a special maneuver or a combat bonus for one stand/unit. 

Needs some thought. It definitely falls under the Game aspect but it could speed some things up while adding a bit more spice. I'm not planning to  reopen HofT to consider re-introducing PIPs by brigade again but having gotten over my snit against the artificial nature of the concept, I'm not opposed to the idea if it might be faster/easier/more fun than the current Order Check which is purely negative or neutral and which some people have trouble remembering.   Or possibly the order check could be modified slightly so that a 6 gave a bonus? hmmm. .

Mixing and Mis-matching

An American landing parting crosses the Neverwaussie River to attack a British battery near Brown Rock Creek. Their mission is to seize the battery, destroy the bridge and hold until reinforced.

One of the first lessons of Rules Tinkering that one learns (or not) is that one has to be careful that ideas or mechanisms from different sources don't clash. When I started back to twiddle with MacDuff, I had in mind various historical situations, various past rule mechanisms that I have used and  a process used by Simon MacDowall in Comitatus. This was developed from an ancient eye witness account of a battle between Romans and Germanic tribesmen.(Ammianus possibly? I'd have to go digging to find the author and paragraph again). Essentially this has units closing, exchanging long range fire then if their morale holds and they wish it, closing and exchanging javelin fire then if their morale holds and they wish it, charging into contact. Which is the sort of Horse & Musket era behaviour I wanted to catch within a single turn rather than in multiple turns as would happen with Charge! 

My first kick at adapting the mechanism assumed that all the units on one side would move then all the units would resolve combat but units would only get to fire once so had to decide whether to shoot early with less effect or shoot later. A quick run through of an attack showed me two things. First the concept worked quite well for what I wanted, given those parameters. Secondly, it might mean moving every figure in a 32 man battalion as many as 4 times in one turn.  (Simon had been using elements, generally 1 to 4 in a unit). Work or not, that wouldn't fly, not for me at least. 

I decided to drop the range and sequence thing and  assume that units that rolled low fired at long range while those that rolled up had held fire. Having also decided to keep the traditional MacDuff thing of card activation system with combat and movement happening when units were activated not in separate phases, I now had to deal with units being involved in more than 1 combat in a turn. I also ran into extended fire combats at long ranges so, forgetting my earlier decision, added a long distance modifier and a decision mechanism to allow choice rather than chance to decide whether the attacker would fire on the move starting at long range like the French at Quebec or at close range like the British. 

This is what I dropped on the table for a small skirmish based on an action at Black Rock in November of 1812. This is about the smallest game that the rules can handle these days.  6 companies vs 7 once all reinforcements were on table. (or 9 vs 7 if the US reinforcements had opted to come. ) This size of game used to take about 3 hours with the original MacDuff which was good except that I wanted to play games 3 or 4 times this size. This game took about an hour to play through to a conclusion which is about right for its size.

The British reinforcements arrive late and both battery and bridge have been taken by the time they arrive.

Its always a bit tricky playing a game with 1/2 written rules but I managed to get a feel for some of the issues and ended up finding several situations where things were too vague and I had trouble deciding what would feel best and be consistent and several where what worked for one tactical option, didn't work right for a different one (in terms of feel not success). I liked the idea of the longer move followed by a mutual firefight and resolution and its not the first time I've tried to tackle it ( the Morschauser inspired 3" melee zone from HofT kept coming to mind). I still think it should be possible to separate  artillery, skirmish and long range musket fire that cause slow attrition on one hand, from decisive firefights and bayonet charges on the other.  In a way the rules originally did this by having the long range fire much less effective, esp if the firer moved, and allowing fire and charge tactics and by allowing units that held fire to react so the answer may well be in the existing and tried ideas rather than revolutionary ones. Just extending the movements, tweaking the reaction and formation change options and the charge sequence might be enough given the new command chart introduced last fall and the revised morale rules, both of which I like. 

I did like the way the cards worked, making it important to take time to form troops up for maximum effect.  For a while I had been playing with certain cards activating certain units but this took that aspect away plus I didn't like the reduction in player decision making that it brought. Oddly, though the system I used was basically how I had done it with the original rules, I had forgotten this aspect of them until reminded by playing Basic Impetus. (no it doesn't use cards but each group finishes its movement and combat before the next starts like original MacDuff where companies needed a Colonel to act together). For bigger battles, the initiative system will probably work better though keeping the "each unit/group does movement and combat before the next starts" concept, in other words status quo with both systems. allowed. 

One last minor thing, the round washers are so superior to the smaller bases in terms of figures not falling over, and the wider frontage which bothers me in between games was of so little note during the game that  I am tempted to tell myself to just stuff it and stay with them. (For those wondering what the issue is, it effects how many real men each toy soldier theoretically represents. Yes, this is the tortured simulationist in me struggling with the Toy Soldier Guy. In the game shown, the numbers present in the historical action suggest each of my figures represents 5 or 10 real ones but the frontage suggests 20-30).  

The remnants of the last company of Americans looks for a way to get to the boats as the British and Canadians close in from both sides.

Oh yes, I was also reminded that if I'm going to play War of 1812 games, I need to make a respectable looking foot wide table edge river terrain piece! (and more trees, LOTS more trees, BIG ones!)

Looking back and thinking ahead

I find this sort of comparative exercise a good way to get things out of my head and on to the table but I have learned that I have to wait for the initial excitement to pass and I have to be wary of decisions made in the heat of the moment. Decisions are better made after the day after.

As well as reviewing these games, I also reviewed some of the earlier test games, esp Plattsburg and Rosa's and reviewed earlier posts on plans and thoughts.  The good news is that despite my meanderings, I am making visible progress and when I look back at the over all strategic plan posted in March, I am back on track. Sometimes I feel that it should bother me that I tend to back into these things by making a decision then doing the opposite, but I have learned to accept it.

There are a couple of key goals that I need to keep in mind:

1. I want as many as possible of my painted figures on display, and the rest need to be stored safely and be easy to access. Since I have limited space, this means limited numbers of troops.

2. In order to conserve space, time and money, I want to get multi-use out of terrain especially but also figures where possible. This is behind my push to 1 scale that has stalled out at 2 (40mm + 25mm) ( ok 4 but the handful of old style 54mms will use 40mm terrain and 1/72nd and 25mm will share).

3. I like playing TT Teaser type games as a staple but want the option to do historical games as well. The ability to play "good old" line 'em up and go at, if needed, exists without special effort.

4. I want at least 1 project with glossy, old style figures, based individually on small bases.

and now I am going to add another one:

5. If I am going to have redundant projects from the same broad tactical era and using the same style and size of figure, there should be a reason why that becomes 2 projects rather than 1. In other words, to be allowed to exist, there needs to be a good reason beyond "oooh pretty".

All of which brings me back to THE PLAN and the series of test games. I've been pretty much set on the kind of games I wanted for the Faraway project but as a throw away, in the last post suggested that I had it backwards. I was right! The 1812 and the 1840's projects need to be split but the kind of 20 man battalion, single toy soldier game I had in mind for Faraway is what i need for the 1812 project. Its what I was working towards and what has worked for years. Something where I can do fictional battles, play teasers or do historical actions at 1:10 or 1:20 or even 1:5.  But, I don't really want to be playing 5 or 6 hour games as an average, that sort if thing should be a once a year special event. When I look back at MacDuff and HofT and my trials over the summer, I had a fusion that seemed to work for me, I just haven't been able to decide which to call it. Since I have been reluctant to give up the semi-skirmish idea, as unrealistic as it was, I went with HofT for the new synthesis. That was wrong, as a single figure game it is really a development of MacDuff so that's what it will be.  The attempt to refit and resurrect the old one with tracking every unit leader and so forth, has to end.

There is a handy if non-empirical formula that I try to keep in mind:

length of game = complexity of rules x size of game x complexity of scenario. 

The test game was low complexity and used a medium number of units so if the time was longer than was optimal, then it will not be really feasible to play larger or more complex scenarios. The 2nd game hit all the sweet spots which means that the game could be bigger or smaller and the complexity of the scenario could be increased and the result would be acceptable in the right conditions. The 3rd game was on the short side as an average game for me, although there are times when an hour is perfect, but that means that the complexity of scenario and number of units could be increased substantially before it became unwieldy.

 Looking back at my plans, it can be seen that lingering on for years (and weighing down 1 whole shelf with books) are the wars in India from the Mahrattas to the Mutiny. plans to try to merge this with the low troop density, small scale North American wars have been a constant source of problems, even though such small actions did occur in India as well.

Now that I have entertained having 2 glossy 40mm toy soldier projects and want them to each offer something different. It rapidly becomes clear that this, the 1840's, India/Fictional side of things is where the possibilities of small units, large armies for "real" battles can be entertained. This is also the right place for multi-figure elements. If I am using a similar frontage and similar figure style then I can still loan figures back and forth when needed but eventually there will be no need. This will give me scope for 10 years worth of casting and painting but with basing and organization questions settled, it can proceed apace.

The Mexican-American War Americans, who have been at a loss at what to do with themselves can still pit themselves against the Indian campaign British in Faraway as they have been doing, perhaps calling battalions companies for skirmishes along the Aroostock, but they can also hope for enough Mexicans to fight their own war one day. (Maybe the NQSYW could move to a new cabinet)

Now, what will the Indian/Faraway project use for rules? HofT needs to about face and head back to its Morschauser roots and its early days when a stand was a unit. The result will be armies ready to fight using either HofT or the PW depending on mood.

To summarize:

War of 1812: Glossy 40mm figures, primarily by Scruby or homecast on individual steel 15mm wide oval bases. Opposing armies of a maximum of 8 battalions each about 24 strong but able to fight as 8 or 12 man detachments, plus militia, Indian allies for the British, a little artillery, very little cavalry, and boats. Most games will use around 1/2 the maximum figures  in total with many numerically unbalanced games. Some units in 1830's uniforms will be included. Existing clunky 1812 units will be kept until replaced after the maximums have been reached, (unless I get an offer 1st).

1840s: (India, Am-Mex, Fictional) Glossy 40mm figures primarily by Scruby or homecast, mounted 10 -12 figures per battalion on a single stand with around a 3"-ish frontage.  Substantial quantities of cavalry and artillery will be needed to support the armies but OB's have not yet been worked up. The initial goal is 1 all arms division of British and Indian troops to face a larger Native army, say 6 infantry units, 3-4 cavalry, 3 guns. The hope would be to double this.

Best get at it.

Dramatic Reconstruction

I struggle sometimes to explain why I like the approach of some games that are not "serious" simulations. Its not that its "just" a good "game". I've often said or written that I like my games to be  like a good historical film or novel, but I've never tried to elaborate since I've never really tried to pierce out why. Its certainly not  romance, character development or sub-plots.

There tend to be 2 besetting sins to some of my favorite games..

1st. They don't adhere to one viewpoint. The gamer can feel like a general directing over all strategy, but is also in the midst of the gun smoke and the cut and thrust of every melee. He fiddles with deploying troops from column but can step back and enjoy an over view of the whole battle, a view many Generals would have dearly loved. So, its not realistic.

2nd. They tend to rely on simple, direct mechanisms that in some way evoke real things even though they are just a game mechanics.  Take Charge! you control troops by writing out an order, they are just turn orders and there is no fuss about couriers or misunderstandings and blunders, but evokes all that. (and I've seen some blunders occur under the system, some even in my own handwriting!). Compare that to systems I have used/written where you draw cards or roll dice on a  chart to activate units. They may give a more "realistic" result but they don't  mimic any real process and I have seen too many occasions where the mechanism becomes larger in gamers' minds than what it is supposedly representing. In other words they start weighing odds, counting cards or indulging in similar irrelevant not to say inappropriate and un-general-like behaviors.

So where does the movie part come in? Well, I was thinking about a movie like Gettysburg. It includes us in discussions staged to show the thoughts of the General's and lay out their battle plans, it shows us over views of the battle so we get the feel of something big going on but then zooms in for a closer look at chosen incidents such as Little Round Top. More than that, it does it all without telling us what it is doing. The only background information is in the opening preamble or inserted in character's conversation or shown by the action on screen.

 Is the result an academic examination of the battle, what happened in detail and why? Hardly.  But do those who drop their critical eye, "suspend disbelief" and let them selves flow with the movie feel engaged, like they'd been there beside Chamberlain or that they had watched the battle unfold? Sure, for many of us, we do. For me, that's way the best games play out.