Rules - Turn Sequences

I've recently been working on some wargame rules of my own (yet again), and I seem to have developed a bee in my bonnet about building them around the turn sequence from the old WRG 1685-1845 rules, which in the past impressed me greatly. It is (or was, at the time I was impressed), unusual in that moving is the last thing you do, including the declaration of the first half of any charges to contact you wish to make. Thereafter, reaction to those charges, defensive retaliation, the completion of the charges and the actual melees take place in your opponent's turn.

I thought that was clever - I confess I never used the full rules as written, because I found them tricky to get the hang of, and there were far too many lists and reaction tests for my liking. Anyway, since the spark had now glowed again, I thought I should make a more serious job of understanding them properly, so that I could maybe use the turn structure in my new game - I have to say that the WRG's rules sometimes rely heavily on your spotting the subjunctive verb in Paragraph 417 to appreciate the full beauty of the logic. [Also, over the years I have skipped past "jezails" in the combat factor lists more times than I could estimate, and I still don't know what a jezail is.]

This, of course, is a jezail

Again, I have found this quite tricky. My new rules were suddenly full of morale tests that I hadn't wanted, there were coloured counters all over the place, to show where you were up to with keeping track of routing units, and, since the game would collapse in a heap if you did anything out of the correct order, I had written out the turn sequence as a checklist.

In a recent email exchange with a fellow bloggist - a game designer of some repute, let it be said - he offered the view that the turn sequence has to be capable of being carried in your head - if you need a chart then there may be something seriously wrong. He is right - I guess I knew this, but I needed someone else to say it.

Lightbulb.

I have - all right, regretfully - dropped the WRG bits, and my new game is looking slimmer and more like my idea of a recreation immediately.

What is capable of being carried in the head, of course, also depends heavily on how the old head is performing, and I am aware that the passing years have made me less patient in this area, but I prefer to think that I have become more fussy about how a game should be, rather than simply more stupid. Other opinions probably abound.

I was joking about this with another friend (I am showing off here, since this means I must have at least two friends), and we agreed that a wallchart for the turn sequence in chess would be

(1) White moves
(2) Black moves
(3) go to (1)

I could probably post that as a download on boardgamegeek - now there's fame.

Morale – Now I Remember

I thought I should write this while I still feel the need to do so. It’s amazing how you forget. Yesterday, I blithely set about playing out a small cavalry skirmish for the ECW campaign (previous post, if you can be bothered), and felt that, since the game was too small and fiddly for my usual Commands & Colors style rules, I should get back to some proper, old-fashioned wargaming, and use more traditional rules, such as I knew and loved when I was young and enthusiastic. I was rather looking forward to it.

I didn’t go into this completely blind – I decided to use a derivative of Victory without Quarter, which I have used before for larger ECW actions – including a very large one at Old John’s HQ two years ago. Fine. As I recall, apart from a couple of gaps in the rules (which the derivative is intended to fix), the games went OK.

Well…

I got a bit of a shock yesterday – I mean, the game was OK, but the very small scale of the action threw up an effect which I didn’t expect – or, at least, if I should have expected it then I’d forgotten what wargames used to be like.

The rules I used were a wholehearted effort to do things the old way – put the boards with the non-hex side up, dig out the measuring tape, have the QRS tables taped up on the dresser to keep things grooving along. I didn’t have a bounce stick for roundshot, but it would have felt even better if I had. The action involved a grand total of seven units, with two generals, and I was very happy to measure out march distances, divide the last three inches by two because that was a rough patch of ground, take a full move to deploy from march column into line, measure the outer-edge travel of a line wheeling, all that good stuff. There was a lot of manoeuvring and measuring and moving about, which was fun, and there were two cavalry melees, in quick succession. Then, it seemed, there were about thirty morale tests, which must have taken 80% of the total brain effort and about half the elapsed time.

Holy smoke. The tests in this game require 2D6 to be supplemented by various plus and minus factors, and you pass by totalling 7 or more. You fail by getting 4 to 6. You fail disastrously (and have to go away, quickly) if you get less than 4. Some of the plus/minus factors are constant givens for a unit (level of training, quality etc) some change slowly as the action progresses (increasing losses, past upsets) and some are transients based on current situation (proximity of friends, command, cover, enemy etc). It is a pretty standard, traditional approach to morale. Though it is not complicated, and you can remember a lot of it without reference to the sheet, there is a fair sized list to check against. Every time.

EVERY TIME.

No real surprises here – those of us who learned our wargaming from Messrs Featherstone, Wesencraft, Tunstill and Co would expect a wargame to be like this. It was, if I remember correctly, a point of pride amongst us that this particular clever bit of the game made it more scientific than (for example) Snakes & Ladders. I can remember explaining to my mother that the game wasn’t just bang-bang (such a game would be childish, of course), but the morale mechanisms actually gave the little men a say in what happened, and the challenge for the general was coping with the frustrations which the rules and the dice (and therefore Fate, of course – we were in distinguished company here) handed out. Well, I’m sorry, Mum, but I’m not so enthusiastic now – perhaps I should have cut my teeth on Young and Lawford instead – it might well have given me a more pragmatic education in these matters.

Here’s an example from yesterday. Two cavalry units – both rather shaky – face up to each other on a hillside in Northern England in 1644. Let us call them A and B.

A get within charge range of B, and declare a charge – good for them.

First have to check their morale, to see if they are up for it. Yes, they pass. Charge.

Unit B wish to countercharge – have to check morale. They pass, but in the event the chargers are too close, so B receive the charge at the halt.

The first round of melee takes place, in addition to everything else, A are uphill of B, so the melee is a bit one-sided. B take heavier loss, are shaken and pushed two inches down the slope. They have to have their morale tested  to see if they rout – no, they hold their ground, albeit shaken.

In the next turn, the general in charge of B is lucky enough to get the initiative, so his first order is to rally the shaken unit B. This obviously requires a morale test. They pass, rather surprisingly, so they straighten out their line and wait to be charged again.

A’s turn. A are ordered to charge again – since unit B are now rallied and steady again, A need a morale test – they pass, and charge.

There is no question of a countercharge, the newly-rallied B receive the charge at the halt, and take many casualties – they lose the melee, so – that’s right – they must test morale. They fail – they collapse, and rout 3D6 inches immediately.

Right. A’s commander does not wish them to pursue, so he attempts to hold them by means of – you guessed it – a morale test. They fail, so they pursue, out of control, a distance of 3D6 (which, as it happens, is less than the other lot’s 3D6, so they do not catch them).

From this point, the respective commanders can each look forward to a morale test for A and B every turn until they rally. In yesterday’s action, the routers (B) passed very close to a friendly unit (C), who thus required a morale test to see how they reacted to this. They failed – they were shaken, and thus not able to take orders from the commander.

Round about the same moment, the uncontrolled pursuit brought A face to face with C (who couldn’t have attacked them anyway, but A did not know this), and A had to take a morale test to see how they reacted. They got double 1, which is a bit extreme, and thus they not only stopped their wild pursuit but did an about-face and routed back the way they had come. There were now 3 units who would require a morale test each turn to try to rally them.

Enough of this – you get the idea. Whatever else happened was almost incidental compared with this relentless industry of morale. Obviously I survived the experience, but the tiny action had served to highlight the disproportionate effort which goes into these tests in this style of game.

I had forgotten. I remember now. I don’t really want to do this again – not like this. Commands and Colors just hands out retreats as part of the loose change on the Battle Dice – easy peasy. It’s surprising how quickly you get used to that, though it might not suit everyone. I had a think about what else I used to do – there was life before C&C, and it wasn’t all as wretched as yesterday, so what else was there?

Well, 4 years ago I was using in-house Napoleonic rules which owed a lot to many sources, but particularly to Doc Monaghan’s The Big Battalions – I especially liked his inclusion of musketry volley fire into melees, which made a lot of sense and simplified a lot of things, and I liked the approach to melees themselves, which virtually eliminated all the morale testing around that area.

In TBB, each side has an effectiveness score based on type, nationality and formation, with additions/subtractions for context; add 1D6 for each side, and subtract the defender’s total from the attacker’s. The table of results takes care of all the morale testing at a stroke. You can just get on with your charge…

I quote from TBB – this table gives net results and what they mean:

+5        Defender routed before contact

+3,+4  Defender routed

+1,+2  Defender retreats

0          Violent Struggle takes place

-1,-2    Attacker retreats

-3,-4    Attacker routed

-5         Attacker routed before contact

-6         Attacker refused to advance

Then there are instructions for how many casualties apply to victorious, defeated and routing units, and how to conduct the retreats. Oh yes, a Violent Struggle means that both sides suffer heavy casualties, as though they had been defeated.

So?

Well, the game still contains a lot of detailed rules, but – to me – that seems a more sensible – not to say humane – way to cope with the morale implications of a melee. For future detailed, tactical games, I shall try to find rules which are more like The Big Battalions.

That is, of course, provided I have not forgotten again.

Keeping in Step - Movement in IGO-UGO Wargames

When I started dabbling in wargaming, longer ago than you might believe possible, first of all I digested a couple of the Featherstone books, and I got the hang of the basic idea of a game cycle comprising the “Three M’s” – Movement, Missiles and Melees (in that order), and the alternate-moves approach which those books embraced.

I also visited a local club, and found they had their own rules, typed up as a leaflet, but what they played was still, recognisably, a branch of the same family.

Round about the same time, I read somewhere that it was a lot more authentic militarily (and thus better, more serious, more grown-up) to employ a simultaneous-movement system, using written orders for each unit. I was interested enough to try this, and found that – more authentic or not – the overhead of writing, checking and managing the orders was extremely tedious, and any increase in accuracy or compliance with the rules was negligible. There were sheets of paper everywhere, the orders invariably degenerated into unreadable, ambiguous wiggly lines and curved arrows, or abbreviations which could mean almost anything, and the actual game moves which followed had only a very slight connection with what the orders might have said. That crooked arrow curving to left would be interpreted to suit whatever the player felt was in his best interests from moment to moment. The amount of cheating in the game actually increased, likewise the amount of argument. I recall a player claiming that a solitary exclamation mark against a unit on his sheet meant “charge, straight ahead” – what else, he protested, could it mean?

Simultaneous moves didn’t do it for me at all. Of course, my old chum George Jeffrey would have claimed that it worked perfectly for him and his club members (because they were all gentlemen), and that if you couldn’t trust the people you played with then you shouldn’t play with them. And I would have replied, as I would reply now, “wuff wuff”. I never heard such bitter arguments over a supposed pastime as I heard at George’s club nights.

However, alternate-moves did not always result in calm perfection, either. One snag which was always troublesome in IGO-UGO games was that some unit or other would get out of step with the rest of the battle – one move ahead or one move behind – wrong, anyway. As long as everyone moved only during their side’s movement phase, everything was fine, but things became complicated when someone retreated during the enemy’s fire phase, or ran away from a melee which might be during their own turn or the other side’s, or even if someone wished to countercharge when being attacked. Suddenly you would have a unit which was one move ahead of everyone else, and there would then be a discussion of whether they should miss their next official movement opportunity (since they had already moved), views of which frequently varied according to what particular disaster might befall them if they now stood still. This was one area, even of fairly well developed and stable rules, which regularly caused confusion and disagreement.

Now then, although I found them too fussy and too prescriptive to use in their entirety, the publication of the Wargames Research Group’s “Wargames Rules 1685-1845” in 1977 introduced me to a variation on the Three M’s which I found logical and pleasing – in very broad terms, the move now became Missiles, Melees, Movement and – in particular – a (charge) move to contact would now be declared but only partially carried out during the movement phase, the chargers stopping some distance short of their target at the end of their turn, to wait for fire and other enemy reaction before attempting to complete the charge during the opponent’s turn. Of course, the full details of the turn sequence were more fiddly than this, but they hung together well enough if you kept your eye on that nippy old problem of who had moved out of turn, and what should be done about it.

My personal approach to this made use of some coloured counters – red “Attack” arrows, black “Hold” markers and brown “Withdraw” arrows. In a later refinement, I got some custom, plastic versions made up for me by Litko, but the game system worked well enough for years before I added that extra level of elegance.

I’ll skip over the matter of activation – exactly which units (and how many) might do something in a given turn; broadly speaking, units moved only when it was their side’s movement phase, but there were some oddball groups: 

• Units which, as the result of reaction to a morale test – possibly following combat – were stuck, unable to move, or else were forced to retreat for a single move and were then stuck. These units would be given a black “Hold” marker.
• Units which, as the result of such a test, had just routed – they were required to run away for a move, and would then be tested in each subsequent turn to see if they rallied or continued to run. These units, in the turn in which they broke, would get a black “Hold” AND a brown “Withdraw”.
• Units which were already running, and needed to be tested to see if they rallied – these would be identifiable by the presence of a brown “Withdraw” – the black “Hold” would not be present if they were in a continuing rout.
• Units which were charging to contact (or countercharging) – these would have a red “Attack” marker, which also served to remind the players that they were eligible for an impetus bonus (or whatever the rules allowed in this situation).

In what follows, note that all the references to “Test” (as in “Test morale”) may be addressed in whatever level of detail is required by your preferred rules – at times I have used detailed morale tests (sometimes far too many of them), at other times I have taken little trouble over them; it makes no difference – the point at which such testing would be done (if any…) is quite clear in the sequence; the emphasis here is on movement – who has moved and who has not, and the procedure with the markers is to keep things in order (and it’s surprising how confusing this can get, especially in a solo game).

Phases in a player’s turn (player’s own actions are in a black font – anything which is an enemy action is in red; anything which involved both players is in brown): 

1. Test units being charged (if they break and run, give them a “Hold” marker and a “Withdraw”, if they are to retire in an orderly manner then move them back and give only the “Hold” marker; if they are able to countercharge, advance them to meeting point, mark them with an “Attack” marker – melee is formed).
2. Test routers who have been running since at least the previous turn – i.e. any units which just have a “Withdraw” marker (no “Hold”) – if they rally, replace the “Withdraw” with a “Hold”, and turn them as appropriate; if they continue to run, they keep their “Withdraw” marker, and they remain one move ahead of the game – move them back another rout move.
3. Fire artillery. When all artillery fire is complete, enemy player removes losses, checks for staff casualties and tests morale reaction as appropriate – as before, any unit which is halted or retires gets a “Hold” marker, and any which breaks and runs gets both a “Hold” and a “Withdraw”, and any retirals or routs are carried out now – out of sequence.
4. Fire musketry. When all musketry fire is complete, enemy player checks for losses and reaction as for artillery fire.
5. Enemy chargers who are still able to continue their attack now press home the charge, retaining their red “Attack” marker – melees are formed.
6. Both players now work out melee outcomes (including losses, staff casualties and reaction) in accordance with rules – if the melee continues into a further turn, leave it formed but remove “Attack” markers so no-one gets inappropriate impetus bonus. Any melee losers who retire in good order are pulled back, and get a black “Hold”; if they rout they get both a “Hold” and a “Withdraw” and are turned around and moved back one rout move.
7. Now is the Movement phase – the player may move (activated) units which are not in a formed melee and which do not have “Hold” and/or “Withdraw” markers. Charges may be declared (subject to necessary morale tests), and charging units are moved part of the way to the target unit, and given a red “Attack” marker (they will have the opportunity to complete the charge at the beginning of the enemy player’s next turn).
8. When movement is complete, remove all black “Hold” markers from your own units – they have now (correctly) missed out on the movement phase, and are back in step with the rest of the game. Units which still have a brown “Withdraw” are still running, and will be tested for rally/rout in the player’s next turn.

That’s the end of the player’s turn; now the other player goes through the same sequence.

So, to summarise, units which retire or are pinned for a single turn are given a black “Hold” marker which will stop them moving again when it is their normal time to do so, and routers will keep testing, out of sequence, until they are rallied, at which point they are held for a move to get them back into step.

I fear I may appear to have explained something relatively simple in a complicated way, and the plastic markers may seem like overkill, but in a large battle I found this marker system works very well, and avoids confusion in the very areas where the most critical pieces of action are taking place.

                                                                                   

  

Topsy Turvy Wargames – why not?

This will be another of my more ruminating posts – asking a pile of questions, and offering very little in the way of answers. There’s something I can’t quite put my finger on – definitely some idea which is just out of reach. You might well be able to explain it to me, or even convince me that the matter can be safely forgotten about. This is not going to be a competent review of the Huzzah! wargames rules, though it might encourage you to have a look at them.

There were quite a few starting points this time – some probably more obviously significant than others:

(1) I was telling someone about one of my favourite daft moments in a military book – in Frederick E Smith’s screenplay paperback of Waterloo (from the 1970 Bondarchuk movie) there is an episode during the Battle of Ligny where Smith states that “suddenly a shot rang out”, and – of course – Blücher’s horse is hit, and the old bugger is pinned underneath. History notwithstanding, think about it for a moment – suddenly a shot rang out? – and, presumably, it broke the complete silence in which the Battle of Ligny had been enacted prior to that point? Yes, this is silly, but somehow it encapsulates what we expect military dramas to say – more significantly, there is maybe something here which reflects the way we think of battles.

Certainly, my wargames are a bit like this. Because of the tricks we play with time and activation to make the game playable, the tabletop action consists of a series of isolated volleys, separated by periods of measuring and calculation (and whatever else it is you do during your games). Sad person that I am, I sometimes play a background soundtrack of a horse-&-musket battle during my wargames, which is fun, but it is very obvious that the activity on the audio is not very like my battle, which seems much more like a series of shots suddenly ringing out, as it were, in an otherwise silent and mathematical context, in a style which Frederick E Smith would recognize immediately.

(2) In a comment about a recent blog post, I mentioned that I suspected that – certainly at the time of the ECW – the proportion of people killed by an aimed shot intended for them was small. If someone dispatched you while holding the other end of a sword, or if he fired at short range to stop you attacking him, then there was some personal malice involved, but otherwise casualties must have been men who were hit by a passing ball – if there are enough bullets flying about, someone is definitely going to get hurt. It’s like running with scissors – you just know it’s going to happen.

(3) I remembered a minor (low wattage) lightbulb moment I had a couple of years ago when working on Grand Tactical rules; I realized that the tedium of answering the same, repetitious questions about the tactical situation of an artillery target fired on by more than one battery in the same turn could be simplified by considering the total effect on the target unit in one go, rather than as a series of separate shots from the firers. In other words, turn the thing back to front and think about it from the target’s viewpoint. Topsy Turvy, in fact.

(4) As part of an ongoing pastime I have of reading wargames rules, I recently came back to Huzzah!, published by Oozlum Games, which is a ruleset I have never really played with, but which interests me greatly. It is, so to speak, back-to-front in that it focuses on the risks to, and demoralization of, a unit in a combat situation rather than studying individual volleys and the reaction to them.

(5) (This is the last one, I promise) – I was reading someone else’s ECW rules, and was surprised at how effective musketry at long range (100 to 200 paces) was. I can see that someone coming within 200 paces of a musket-armed unit is getting into a stressful situation, but somehow the risk doesn’t seem to me to be simply that of being hit by an aimed volley at such long range.

OK – that’s all the inputs. This left me thinking: what is it that a musket armed ECW unit does to an enemy unit 200 paces away? I think what they do mostly is they frighten them. The potential damage and pain that is implied is more significant than the loss occasioned by the aimed balls at this range. How the recipient unit reacts to this is dependant on a familiar list of things such as their training, fatigue level and so on – the Morale shopping list.

The important point here is that a battlefield is an appalling place, filled with noise, horror and flying metal. Any unit coming within firing range of the enemy is, first and foremost, entering a very dangerous place – an area of high risk. The Huzzah! approach seems appropriate. A commander’s view of one his regiments is not how many have been killed, it is are they still in action, and can they still hurt the enemy? Inability to hurt the enemy any longer could certainly be explained by their all being struck down, but I think there is a general agreement now that what mostly happened was that the effects (physical and mental) of being in a very dangerous and stressful place for a period reduced the effectiveness of a unit to a point where they no longer contributed to the army’s effort.

My battlefield soundtrack seems to portray complete mayhem – a whole pile of firing going on throughout – yet we know that units would try to conserve their ammunition, and that there would be little point in firing blind at distant targets. The Topsy-Turvy approach (courtesy of Huzzah!) is that we consider the situation of a unit which is such-and-such a distance from various threats, and is thus stressed by the sum of the various hazards – as currently experienced and also the expectation of what could happen next. There is a whole pile of lethal material flying about – the nearer you are to the source of the firing, the more discouraging (and damaging) this will be.

The emphasis shifts to examining each unit’s exposure – how far are they from each potential threat? Never mind the individual firers and their activity, assume they will be keeping busy, making things unpleasant, and consider instead the state of each unit exposed to fire.

I have no draft rules to sum this up, and no firm ideas yet, other than an itch which needs scratching, though you might be interested to read the Huzzah! rules.

Topsy Turvy. Interesting. Maybe?

The Grand Tactical Game - Morale (or Not)

This week I started doing some detail testing of the Combat mechanisms for MEP, and it became obvious that there are a few more changes needed. Simplifying the actual Combat, and calming down the casualty rates a bit, will be addressed in a forthcoming post – probably next week, in which I also hope to do a couple of walk-throughs of examples of Combats. I’ll make a new draft of the rules available at that time.

But the first surprise, and the most radical (for me) was the realisation that the whole subject of morale needed a rethink.

I remind myself that this is a grand tactical game, and the basic units are brigades. As I have mentioned before, it is spiritually close to being a boardgame. In passing, I must observe that I don’t recall seeing very much in the way of detailed morale rules in boardgames, though I’m sure there are some somewhere. Maybe this is a clue.

In a tactical game, I am used to seeing a battalion routing from contact, subsequently rallied – maybe by the personal intervention of a general officer – then turned round, formed up smartly, and sent back into action, though maybe a bit more circumspectly than before.

But this grand tactical game has brigade-sized units comprising Elements which are each a battalion or equivalent. Losses are counted in Elements – a complete battalion is the smallest amount of loss which we bother with. Let’s think about that for a moment – if a 3-Element unit loses an Element as a result of some incident, it does not mean that 750 infantrymen have just been vaporised, it means that the combined effect of actual casualties and demotivation caused by the incident have reduced the combat capability of the unit by an amount which is roughly equivalent to a battalion’s-worth of the soldiers not contributing any more. They may be dead, or hurt, or they may be shocked into uselessness, or they may be legging it to the rear – it doesn’t actually matter. The point is that there are not so many of them taking part - the “loss” is an amalgam of reduction in headcount and loss of morale. The italics are deliberate.

Continuing this theme, when a unit has lost all its Elements it is eliminated. At risk of unnecessary repetition (after all, this is not a difficult concept, though I seem to have some trouble getting the hang of it!), they have not all been wiped out, they have been reduced to a crowd of fugitive survivors, retreating in disorder, probably throwing away all military paraphernalia as they go, to speed their exit. Whatever else, they are not coming back. Again, their elimination is as much – maybe more – to do with morale as it is to do with casualties.

In view of this, I suddenly had a blinding flash of the obvious – having morale tests in addition to this process is too much of the same thing. What if we dropped the stand-alone morale tests altogether? Also, what is the point of having units on the tabletop explicitly marked as Routing when the casualty mechanisms already allow for people running away? A unit which is reduced to zero strength is running away, and won’t come back – that’s probably all we need. OK – we won’t have Routers, so we don’t need to try to rally them, so that’s another morale test scrapped.

The initial draft has morale tests for units which suffer (significant) loss to artillery and skirmisher fire. OK – it is possible to imagine a unit being reduced to zero by continuing fire – they have run away. If they have not run away, and have just been damaged a bit, there is probably a need for some Activation or Command style check to see if they are prepared to follow orders if they are required to advance (or whatever), but the reaction-type morale test as drafted is not necessary.

So I propose to drop the morale tests, and units losing in combat will be pushed back – they will not run away until they are eliminated. There will be no Routers, and no rallying of Routers.

I feel a bit elated at removing a sizeable piece of fiddle-faddle from the game – I am also nervously aware that the morale tests may be back next week, after some more playtesting, so am not going to make too much of a fuss about it!

More soon.