Theory & Practical

Its one of the oldest chestnuts that has needed solving ever since Wargaming turned into Historical Wargaming.  Some battles are very big and some are very small. Without straining I can think of 3 common approaches to handle this dilemma.

a) The constant scale or building block approach. If one designs a game that allows a small affair like Chippewa to be fought out with 50 miniatures on a 2'x2' battlefield in an hour, then one just scales up until you find your self staging Chillianwallah on a 6'x10' table with 3,000 miniatures in a 10 hour game and work upwards from there. Not practical for many of us but within limits it can work well.

b) The "Let the game fit the battle approach". Here one designs a new game for each battle or series of battles. When done as a "game in box" this had certain advantages or if care is taken to allow multiple use of game concepts and physical resources then it can be quite practical and is the easiest way to get a good simulation of the key factors of any given battle, but if allowed to stray into  4 or 5 scales for troops and terrain and different organizations and basing systems with completely different rule systems for each game, it can become a resource hog and a brain drain while lacking any sense of continuity.

c) The "Fudge the battle to fit the game approach".This is the classic approach where one finds a set of rules that one likes and then fudges battles on to the table top by boiling down their essential elements and ignoring such distractions as constant scale and details historical orders of battle.  Rather annoyingly, this seems, in a purely subjective manner based on personal experience, to provide the most enjoyable games. Annoying because it isn't "right". Its basically asking the players to imagine "true things by what their mockeries be". Yes, we're cramming the vasty fields into a  cockpit again.




So what?   Well, sometimes, when I'm working on a set of rules, I forget that I'm not really serious about refighting Chillianwallah or Ferozepore with over a 1,000 40mm figures on a 20 foot table, and it confuses my thinking.  Ok back to my summary of gridded horse and musket rules.

High Above The Fields of France

I never thought I would enjoy a game involving toy airplanes and cards but there we are. I've now played 6 games of Wings of War and enjoyed every one, and enjoyed them more as I gain flight hours. Very clever idea well executed.

These shots are from the 1st game. I figure, you've now seen a burning German wreck (even if technically I didn't down it)  so why would you need to see 2 British wrecks?



More on gridded Horse & Musket rules tomorrow.

Rosters and things

This started as a reply comment to Bob Cordery but sort of turned itself into a post. :)

I was keen on either a roster or a pin/kill result with the gridded game but the RCW & Hook's Farm games went well without it which has given me pause. The roster averages things out, making results more gradual but it does lengthen the game (and affects the activation) and causes issues with the current simple melee rules..

Both of the games mentioned "felt" to me like skirmishes between a handful of companies, which is different than massed close order battalions. I am pondering the possibility of using a version of this to fight battles such as Meani or Lundy's Lane, where a unit=a battalion is a good fit but losing a battalion to skirmish fire won;t feel right and there are other issues, some touched on in the last post.

The mutual destruction melee is also problematic though very Morschauser-ian if I can put it that way.

The effect of losses also changes with the number of units so that instead of 1 unit/1 square = 1 battalion, if I go to 3 units in 3 squares = a battalion then that gets some of the same result as a roster but requires a larger grid (as in more squares vs larger squares) . An added benefit is that armies get more robust and the game more complex in an organic fashion as the game grows rather than by increasing the complexity of rules.

An added advantage of this approach is that a skirmish can take place with the same rules, troops and grid rather than having a small game set and a big game set.  The skirmishes can be relied on when time or space is limited and the bigger games indulged in as a special event. The only issue for me is squeezing my big figures and terrain into a small grid. But that is nothing that a little ingenuity and compromise can't handle.

However, another option that I have been mulling in background mode is to have a pin or disorder result from shooting, something easily tracked with a small marker.

 I'm also leaning towards a change in melee so that there is a defender roll followed by an attacker roll rather than simultaneous rolls. (yes this is what I do in HofT) This would eliminate mutual destruction, make attacking at 1:1 a dangerous task and would avoid the need for more complex ways of dealing with some of the issues.

Right, I'm off to town to get my reading glasses, have lunch with a friend and play a game of either Wings of War or BKC on hexes.