Siege Testing – (2) Getting Started

Just baby steps to start off.

Today’s main priority for me was scarifying the South Lawn before the rain came, so the siege was delayed until late on. There was a lot of trying things which didn’t work too well, and then trying them again. My developing siege game is played in two modes – strategic and tactical. A strategic siege turn represents a complete day elapsed. At any point in a strategic turn, either side can declare a switch to tactical – a tactical turn represents about half an hour of more detailed action, and the game becomes simplified, up-and-down-the-table Commands & Colors until the tactical spell is over.

Middlehampton, ready for the siege

Thus a sally, or a storm, or anything outside the scope of the normal day of bombardment, digging and attrition requires a tactical switch.

Each army has a number (range 1-3) for each of the following indicators: Resolve, Vigour and Leadership. These affect the troops’ fighting effectiveness, and also their ability to carry out digging and other labouring tasks. I have a sketchy mechanism for controlling rations, and reduced rations can have an effect on Resolve and Vigour. There should be some system for Plague, but I haven’t worked that in yet. The fortress defenders also have the mixed blessing of a civilian population – these have a number of interesting attributes, but in particular they have a Loyalty Number, which can range from +3 (fiercely supportive of the garrison, will fight alongside them, if required) to -3 (hostile, require constant policing, prepared to revolt or collaborate with the enemy). Thus the townspeople can be a valuable source of labour, or they can be a major nuisance and distraction, and this has a knock-on to the Resolve and the effectiveness of the garrison.

At the start of each day, the Digging Number for the day is set. Initially, this is set by rolling 2D6 and taking the lower; in subsequent turns, roll a die at the start of the day – if it is higher than the Digging Number, increase the Digging Number by 1; if it is lower, reduce the DN by 1. The DN must be in the range 1 to 6, and is the score which must be achieved by diggers to complete a section of work on that day – it is, if you like, a simple, rather bovine abstraction of weather and other imponderables which make shovelling earth more or less difficult. It is possible, for example, for the DN to get so high that it becomes almost impossible for the besieger to make any progress.

Never had a use for the Giant Die before - here's today's Digging Number - seems clear enough...

In the Test Siege of Middlehampton (for such this is), the initial Digging No came up as a 3. The population is between 4 and 5 thousand, the soldiers placed there for defence include 3 companies of musketeers from the county trained bands, plus 2 full regiments of foot, 2 regts of horse and a total of 7 guns, of which only 3 are heavy. The townspeople – strong supporters of the King – have a Loyalty Number of 2 – they will gladly work to help the garrison, but will not fight. The initial scenario tests also revealed that there were 6 days available before the attacker (those Covenanters again) would appear.

Very neat job - no trace of the old suburb, and a nice new earthwork - these
boys are good - they will give you a competitive quotation for raised flower beds

The Military Governor of the Town, Sir Edward Bloat, took advantage of the available time, the easy Digging Number and the sunny disposition of the citizens to demolish the suburb of ramshackle sheds and farm buildings outside the town’s Stockgate, and – under the direction of his German chief engineer, Captain Von Schuwel – to erect an earthwork embankment in front of the section of the curtain wall west of the Stockgate, complete with a “mount” – an entrenched artillery position. This would give valuable protection for the old masonry wall footings, eliminate the risk of the suburb buildings providing shelter for the enemy, and add to his available firepower. The walkways and most of the towers of the old walls were unsuitable for artillery.

Man the Sconce

The rest of the town garrison are kept off the table for the moment - if I had little
houses with detachable roofs, I could put them inside the buildings, and maybe
they could all have cups of tea and sandwiches

He had also considered the alternative of building earthwork walls right around the suburb, and leaving it in place, but there was insufficient time to complete the work. He installed 2 of his heavy guns, plus Bertram’s company of the musketeers, in the Duke’s Sconce, a modern addition to the town’s defences, and waited for the visitors.

Lord Leven’s boys duly arrived, and got busy setting up a first parallel, placing the two heaviest cannon and an enormous mortar in emplacements to bombard the Sconce, which was seen as a major obstacle to an otherwise systematic operation to approach the walls of the town.

A regiment of foot (of 3 bases, in full Vigour) gets to throw 3D6 – that becomes 4D6 if they have an engineer attached. To build a section of trench, one of the dice must be equal to or greater than the Digging No. To build a gun emplacement, 2 dice must meet the number. If the work is not completed, the position of what is planned is denoted by gabions, and until such time as the earthwork is finished the diggers get reduced cover. I haven’t done any forward sapping yet – the plan is that the engineers will be more important in this.

One of the gun emplacements isn't finished - just a few gabions, which will give
the diggers very little protection in the meantime

Good view here of the new earthworks pieces from Fat Frank - I rather like them

It became obvious very quickly that the Scots’ heavy guns were going to make little impression on Von Schuvel’s fine Sconce, so, concerned about the time in which the town was to be taken, Leven ordered an assault on the Sconce, to attempt to take it by escalade. So the call went up - "Tactical"! The advancing foot were hit by a storm of iron from the artillery, and two regiments were stopped with heavy losses, but the remaining 3 units in the assault pressed on, and captured the outwork very easily, in the end. The cannon were taken, and turned on the town, and the musketeer company, though it is said they asked for quarter, were cut down to a man.

This very serious mortar was Leven's original main hope for blasting the Royalists
out of the Sconce, which would be a better idea if it was less inaccurate - the mortar
has an additional disadvantage in that it is possible for the grenado (shell) to ignite
but not the propellant charge, which requires a lot of sprinting on the part of the
gunners, and usually wrecks the mortar

The besiegers' two Full Cannons are the main wall crushers, but they have to be
at close range to score consistent hits

That’s as far as I’ve got. I haven’t even started working with food supplies, and there’s a pile of stuff (not least the dreaded mining, for which I have a cunning scheme) which I shall get to. It is very easy to come up with draft rules which make it impossible to cause any casualties in certain situations. Tweakle, tweakle. Fix it and move on.

With the Sconce in Parliament’s hands, the spadework should proceed in a more standard manner. I say this, kind of hoping that it implies that I know what that should be – in fact I am learning a lot as I go along. Keep Chris Duffy's book open at the right page.

Good fun – chaotic, but good.

More soon.

The Realism Paradox - a thought for today... and yesterday

In yesterday's post I made reference to some siege game rules which appear in Appendix 3 of Christopher Duffy's wonderful Fire & Stone - The Science of Fortress Warfare 1660-1860 (Peters, Fraser & Dunlop - London, 1975). I've been re-reading this book recently, along with its "prequel" for the period 1494-1660, which was published some 4 years later.

At the beginning of this same Appendix 3 there is a paragraph which made me chuckle. Nowadays the views expressed would not be regarded as reactionary or even particularly controversial, but the loss of direction within the wargaming hobby which is described here has a lot to answer for - for me, certainly. In this paragraph is the very thing which forced me into a 10 year sabbatical, which explains my periodic ebb and flow of enthusiasm - maybe even why I have mostly done my wargaming on my own, away from fashions and from know-alls. I wish I'd read and understood this around the time it was published - I shall certainly keep it handy as a reminder now. All those games which would not and could not ever end - how much would you like the time back now?

The original, recreational spirit of wargaming is preserved among civilian and military enthusiasts who have devised rules which enable them to re-fight battles and campaigns of any period in the past. Unfortunately the codes of regulations even in the amateur game have become so elaborate that the participants spend more time in making their calculations and arguing among themselves than in moving their pieces. Thus a re-fought Waterloo or Gettysburg often proves to be hardly less acrimonious than the original version, and the sense of the rapid passage of time - one of the most vital elements of "realism" - is frequently lost altogether.

Christopher Duffy  1975

Manoeuvring in Hexes

Tinkering-around time again. If hexes bring you out in a rash, I recommend you go and read something else!

As any regular readers will know, I mostly play Commands & Colors: Napoleonics these days, with miniatures, and am very happy with those rules, though I have to make the occasional adjustment to them to suit a particular game.

Principal areas where these adjustments are called upon are:

(1) I mostly play solo – standard game can be compromised by lack of surprises…

(2) The published scenarios give balanced games, with the armies set up all ready to start fighting; I very rarely use these scenarios, and a lot of my games – especially in campaigns – require the bringing up of reserves, sometimes off-table reserves, or rapid deployment of big groups; though there are a couple of the Command Cards which allow rapid movement of large formations, C&CN is not well suited to this kind of action without some special add-ons

(3) Any game which is not clearly across-the-table and divided sensibly into Left, Centre and Right doesn’t fit the Command Card system

(4) A couple of other things which I remember when I see them, but I can’t find all my notes as I sit here…

The whole philosophy of C&CN is that the game moves quickly – you can see the battle develop; the turns are short and very limited, but you get lots of them in quick succession – a battle on a standard-sized board/table (13 x 9 hexes) should last about 2 hours. To enable this, some very clever mechanisms are employed, and a degree of simplification which may be seen as a turn-off by unbelievers – the C-in-C does not concern himself with the exact formation of each unit, nor the placing of skirmishers – with a couple of exceptions (notably squares) this stuff is left to the regimental officers. In C&CN we do not form units into lines or columns, we do not even concern ourselves with which way a unit is facing – if they are still on the table, we assume they are getting on with doing what they are supposed to be doing, and if the combats go disastrously against us then maybe one of the contributory reasons was a lack of tactical skill at unit level – the C-in-C will never know, but it’s a handy excuse if needed…

That is all very fine, and I am very content with the approach, but I used to play an in-house (computer-managed) game called Elan, which also used hexes, and that allowed some tactical manoeuvring and suchlike; I would never suggest that Elan was even half as successful as C&CN as a game, but the tactical bit was rather fun, and it would be nice to do some of that again from time to time.

I have some other tweaks, some of which I have discussed here before, which involve alternative (dice based) activation systems instead of the Command Cards, with a rapid-movement option involving faster marching when distant from the enemy, and the ability to give orders to an entire brigade as a single entity, provided it has been kept together and in good order.

Recently I have been re-reading Neil Thomas’s Napoleonic rules (and especially some very fine work done by Jay “OldTrousers” and others on fitting Neil’s game onto a hex grid), the White Mountain Thirty Years War rules (which are a cousin of C&C Ancients), which allow for units to have a direction of facing, and my own Elan game (the movement aspects of which worked very comfortably for some 25 years before I ever heard of C&C, and which are logically very similar to what Jay set out on his blog).

Two further thoughts  - tickles at the back of my brain – to give the idea.

(1) Just looking at the four wooden blocks in a C&CN infantry regiment (or bases in the miniatures version), I have often often thought it would be possible to form them into a line or a column, though the blocks don’t make it clear which way the guys are facing, and the very idea is a heresy and would cause Richard Borg to shudder.

(2) I did consider just trying Jay’s hexified version of Neil Thomas’s game, as he has set it out. Two slight issues with that – the scale of the board and the size of the actions don’t really fit what I am likely to want to do. Also the C&CN combat dice, with (Hallelujah!) the built-in retreat system (which does away with the dreaded industry of morale testing) would be sadly missed.

Thus I have come around to my current plan, which is to have an alternative to pure C&CN available for games which could make use of it – this is not, repeat NOT, intended as an improvement on C&CN, nor as any kind of replacement. My present thinking is to use C&CN’s combat dice system, with as few alterations as possible, with a modified movement and manoeuvre system and with a dice-based activation system allowing brigade-sized groups to be activated. Yes, this does away with much of the beauty of C&CN, so I do not pretend this is a variant of C&CN – it is merely another game which uses a C&CN-style board and C&CN combat dice. I emphasise that the movement and frontage rules set out here are based on my old Elan game, and that it needs a fair amount of work (especially in the skirmishing department). Today I’m just intending to cover the formations-and-facing rules.

One preliminary note, and it may bring a few hoots from friends who know of my aversion to morale testing: formation changes and changes to front can be ordered, but they may also be attempted, out of turn, as a reaction to an enemy attack. It would be pointless to allow this to be successful on all occasions, and the reality would be that the better units would have a greater chance of success, so – yes, despite all my normal stance on this – these rules require a reaction test. I introduce this reluctantly, and I make a point of keeping it as bovinely simple as possible. When required to react to an attack, by changing formation or facing, a unit will have to score not less than a certain number on 1D6 – troops have 4 basic classes, thus:

1 – The Old Guard, certain very special elites

2 – Steady, reliable, trained troops

3 – Poorly trained, demotivated or raw troops

4 – Militia and levies, dross

"No, no - we are Class 2, and don't you forget it..."

The class of the unit will be improved (reduced) by 1 if a Leader is present, and worsened (increased) by 1 for each casualty counter. The test will be to equal or beat the altered Troop Class with 1D6. Thus, for example, Class 3 troops with a general need a 2 or better to allow them to react successfully; Class 1 troops with 2 casualty markers need a 3 or better. Simple as I could make it. One further detail I am thinking is to add a rule that a straight roll of 1 is always a failure, so the Guard may sometimes let you down, and a straight 6 is always a success, however desperate the situation.

With a nervous cough, I move on hastily.

Units must face a vertex (point) of a hex, as in C&CN. The two sides of the hex on either side of this vertex represent the unit’s front, and they may move, fire or melee only in that direction. They may, however, turn – according to the following, which I’ll come back to later.

(1) as it enters a new hex, a unit may turn by 60 degrees either way – i.e. to the next vertex – without penalty

(2) any bigger turn, or any stationary turn (i.e. turning on the spot before any movement) takes an amount of time equivalent to 1 hex of movement

Some additional points, before we get into the detail of movement allowances and so on:

(a) charges to combat must be straight ahead – there may be a preliminary turn if the movement allowance permits one, but a charge cannot wheel as it goes in

(b) this is similar to the normal Zone of Control idea familiar in boardgames – a unit entering a hex adjacent to an enemy must stop – they cannot slither around an enemy unit to reach a flank. Note that this does not apply for attacks on units in built up areas or woods, or squares, none of which have flanks or rear.

(c) units attacked in flank or rear who do not manage to react and turn are worse off in two ways – the enemy gets an extra die, and they themselves do not get to fight back – again, squares and units in towns and woods do not have flanks or rear.

(d) skirmishers don’t have a front either

Move Distances

Squares, unlimbered artillery                                                      zero (though may change formation)

Infantry in line                                                                            1 hex

Infantry in column, skirmishers, limbered foot artillery             2 hexes

Cavalry, generals, horse artillery                                                 3 hexes

Units in column of march may add 1 hex of movement if their entire turn of movement is on a road (otherwise terrain effects are pretty much as C&CN)

Change of formation, and any stationary turn, or turn greater than 60 degrees costs 1 hex of movement. Limbering and unlimbering is a change of formation.

Unit Types (note that scenario rules may limit this – e.g. some nations are not allowed to use column of attack)

Close-Order Infantry

Column of March - bases one behind the other - this formation gets a bonus on a road, and can march through a wood or town at normal speed, without stopping, but cannot fight or fight back unless the unit changes formation

Column of Attack - 2 bases wide - this formation can shoot only with the front row of bases, but may melee with 2 rows of bases. Note that, in all formations of all fighting units, the number of bases able to take part in a combat is limited to the original number less any casualty markers. The casualty markers are especially useful here, since keeping the bases on the table allows the formation to be indicated. A unit is removed, of course, when the number of casualty markers is equal to the number of bases (duh).

Line - single row of bases - all bases may shoot, but only bases engaged (i.e. same width as opponent) may melee

3-deep Line - I'm still considering this as an option - one-third of bases (to nearer whole number) are in a second row - front row of bases may fire, in melee formation fights with front row bases engaged (as Line above) plus 1 base

 Square - may not move - has no front - each base may shoot once per turn, through an adjacent face of the hex - melee rules are as near to C&CN as I can make them

Unformed - this is just a proposal at this stage - I am thinking that infantry in a town or a wood must be unformed (unless they are in Column of March, passing through) - up to one half the bases may fire through any one hex face per turn - each base may only fire once - melee? - not sure - I think all bases may fight in a town or wood, otherwise an unformed unit in the open fights with half bases. Still working on this...

Light Infantry

First off, let me say that French légère are just classified as line infantry in my games. Actual light infantry appear in two forms:

(1) units such as British or Spanish lights are capable of acting in close order or sending skirmishers out with supports

(2) units of converged voltigeurs or light companies are different - the only formations permitted for these are Column of March or Skirmish Order, in which latter they may be deployed with other, close-order units as a screen - I'm still working on skirmish rules, so this bit is a work in progress

Let's look at the dual-purpose light regiments first - in my organisation, these consist of two normal, line-infantry type, close-order bases, and two, half-strength, open order. Thus a battalion with a total strength of 3 bases may be deployed in the following ways:

With the open-order bases tucked away to the rear, here's a light unit in Column of March, mimicking their normal close-order brethren

They can also be a close-order unit in Column of Attack...

... or in Line (I haven't got a "3-deep" version of this)...

... or in Square.

Or they can do this special trick, which is deploying with skirmishers to the front, supports standing to the rear.

They can probably do Unformed as well, though I didn't bother with a picture.

Now consider the converged units of light companies - these only have two real formations...

...Column of March, if they wish to go along a road in a hurry...

... or in skirmish order, in which case they can be added as a screen to other units - the skirmish rules are still being worked on. Skirmishers caught in melee by close-order troops do not do well - they are just eliminated. Skirmishers, by the way, do not have a front - they can fire or move in any direction, and can hide behind friends if they need to.

Cavalry

Cavalry have only two formations...

... Column of March (can't fight in this formation)...

... or a formation which is Everything Else - it might be Line, or a series of Lines, or Waves or whatever you want - the whole regiment gets to fight in a melee.

Cavalry also move far enough to give a demonstration of how the turning rule works:

First of all, here's an infantry column demonstrating the move straight forward - the unit may follow either of the two red arrows, and move into either of two hexes, still facing in the same direction - having moved forward in this way, the unit may, if it wishes, turn up to 60 degrees in either direction at no extra penalty - they are regarded as having "wheeled" as they entered the hex.

Cavalry have a 3-hex move - here's an illustration of one of the many possible moves the rules would allow. The unit advances (red arrow) into the next hex, and gets a free wheel (of 60 degrees) to the right (the new facing is shown by the brown arrow), advances along the second red arrow, wheels again (second brown shows the new front), and does it yet again, finishing with a free wheel to face the final brown. So the unit may advance in a semi-circle, as an example - also note that such a move would not be permitted to be a charge to attack, which must be in a single direction after any initial turn.

Artillery

Unlimbered artillery only has one formation:

The front is shown by the brown arrow, and the permitted cone of fire is marked here. A stationary turn requires 1 hex of movement, and a battery which turns is thus regarded as having moved for the fire rules.

A single limber represents a complete battery on the move - a limber (like a general, and like skirmishers) has no front and may move or turn in any direction, without limitation - it may not fight, but it may get a Road Bonus if applicable, and may unlimber with the guns facing in any direction.

That is really all I wanted to write at the moment - I don't wish to get into detailed nitty-gritty of the rules (not least because much of it is not decided yet!), but thought that a discussion of how units may behave in a reasonably Old School manner in the world of hexes might be of interest.

I'll keep working on this, but I'd welcome any comments in the meantime. Bear in mind that this movement and manoeuvre system does work, and has done so for years with my old Elan rules - the new bit is attempting to graft it onto the C&CN combat system.

I'm sure that's quite enough for the moment.

A Day for Fighting

Initial set-up - Dalhousie's 7th Divn on this side, his Portuguese on his left...

Been a bit busy, not to mention preoccupied, for a week or so, but today I have the table and some soldiers out, and am going to have a wargame this afternoon.

Standard-size Commands & Colors: Napoleonics battle (i.e. without the table extension), but a comparitive rarity for me will be the visit of a guest general, which I am looking forward to. This leads to the following thoughts:

(1) This chap has not played C&CN before, so I had better get my head straight enough to explain the game sensibly and clearly, without getting sidetracked into too much detail or too many pointless stories. Right.

(2) It also means that I had better brush up on those nippy bits in the rules that seem to fade when I take my eye off them – “Combined Arms” combats; whether units can retreat through woods or fordable rivers (yes); the correct rules for attacked Leaders to escape through an enemy unit. Must also remember to drop any house tweaks that I am testing at present. Mustn’t come across as a charlatan or an idiot.

(3) And it means I shall have to avoid putting my visitor off the game; I do not necessarily wish him to adopt C&CN as his rules of choice for life (don’t be silly), but I would be sad if my enthusiasm proved to be a turn-off (which, whisper it, is not unknown).

(4) It also means that the game had better have some reasonable degree of balance. In a solo game, this matters very little, but it is more necessary with a visitor, since he might be demotivated if the outcome were a foregone conclusion. Worse still, rules newbie or not, he might thrash me (which, also, is not unknown).

(5) Which directed my attention back to GMT’s published scenarios, and the user-generated scenarios on the internet site. I didn’t find anything that quite fitted the bill – the scenarios are all good enough games, but I’ve played most of them before, I have a slight personal bias against some of them in that they bear little resemblance to the historical battle which they are claimed to represent, and it seems uncomfortable, to me, to set out to play a defined portion of a larger battle (the adventures of the French left flank at Salamanca, for example, which I am sure is an excellent game, but feels rather like eating only the potato chips from the salad). Yes, I realise this is stupid of me.

(6) So I eventually came up with something of about the right size and layout, and fiddled around with the OOB until the sides looked reasonable. Two French divisions under my old chum Loison, with cavalry support and a couple of batteries, will attempt to secure an important river crossing on a supply route, and drive away the Anglo-Portuguese Seventh Division (under the Earl of Dalhousie, who in reality was probably not contemporary with Loison in this theatre, but who cares), which also has some horse and a few guns.

I think it looks OK. The armies were selected, to some extent, by considering which units haven’t had a run out recently - hence the presence of the 4eme Vistule, the Garde de Paris and the splendid Chasseurs des Montagnes in Loison's bit of VI Corps. Also, since his own is not available, Dalhousie has borrowed the Portuguese brigade from the 6th Division. It's all right - it's a game.

Action at Iravez, October 1811

Anglo-Portuguese 7th Divn (Maj.Gen Earl of Dalhousie)

1st Brigade (Lt.Col Colin Halkett)

1st & 2nd Lt Bns, KGL & Brunswick-Oels Jaegers

2nd Brigade (Maj.Gen JHC Von Bernewitz)

51st Foot, 68th Foot & Chasseurs Britanniques

3rd Brigade (Br.Gen Rezende}

8th (2 Bns) & 12th (2) Portuguese Line & 9^th Cacadores

Cavalry Brigade (Br.Gen Madden)

1st & 11th Portuguese Cavalry & 5th Drgn.Gds (attached)

McDonald’s Troop, RHA

Arriaga’s Battery, Portuguese Art.

Total: 5 infantry, 6 light infantry, 3 cavalry, 2 artillery

French Force (Gen de Divn Loison)

Division Foy

Brigade Chemineau

6e Leger (3 Bns) & 69e Ligne (2)

Brigade Fririon

39e (2) & 76e (2) Ligne

Art à Pied

Division Vilatte

Brigade Thouvenot

28e Leger, Garde de Paris & Chasseurs des Montagnes

Brigade Soulier

17e Leger, Grenadiers Provisoirs & 4e Vistule

            Art à Pied

Cavalerie

Brigade Maupoint

4e & 20e Dragons, 15e Chasseurs à Cheval

            Total: 9 infantry, 6 light infantry, 3 cavalry, 2 artillery

C&CN: Possession of villages at both ends of the bridge gains 1 VP.

River is fordable throughout, but artillery and wagons must cross at the bridge – French mission is to secure the crossing for supply trains, and drive Allied troops back.

Each side has 6 cards; 9 VPs wins the day. Dice for choice of first move.

Rules - the Diablo System and other things

Inevitably, Martin P wanted to know why I was looking at D4’s in yesterday’s post. Yes, quite – this does lead on to the topic of why Martin needs to know – or was he simply checking that I myself had some idea what I was doing?

In consequence, this post is probably going to be all over the place. I have a natural inclination to get involved in ideas when they stem, simultaneously, from different sources – some might regard this as a lack of focus, I just find that the cross-fertilization of ideas from different directions is productive – often illuminating (and sometimes just plain silly, of course).

The main driver for this has been my interest in producing an occasional alternative for Commands & Colors (for variety and to keep me entertained, and because certain kinds of tabletop action are not ideally suited to straight C&C), though this may simply be a search for some optional alternatives to some parts of C&C. The Command Cards are one area – there is nothing at all wrong with them, but solo play, for example, requires some crafty workarounds (and removal of some of the cards – First Strike, Out of Supply don’t work solo, and Counter Attack isn’t much of a surprise in a solo game, either). Also, the Command Cards do not work if the game is played in any other manner  apart from straight-across-the-table. So an alternative activation/command system is always a useful option to have in the bag – there was a pretty good discussion on this in a post in February (here), and that is one of the kick-off points for this post.

Another possible add-on I am interested in is the introduction of some element of tactical manoeuvre – facing and unit formation – yes, I realise that the lack of this (apart from squares) in C&CN is deliberate and sensible – such things are not the business of an army commander – but for a smallish action it would still be fun to carry out a bit of column-into-line, not to mention the threat of cavalry explicitly getting around your flank (rather than such a possibility being abstracted in the range of available combat outcomes on the dice).

Before I became a C&CN disciple, I mostly used a ruleset of my own, which in its later forms I called Elan, a name which I thought had a pleasing whiff of informed elegance until John Ramsay asked me why I had named it after a sports car. Elan used a hex-grid table, and it was computer-managed (my own software), but it also allowed a measure of wheeling and reforming units – even limbering of artillery and tinkering with skirmishers. Such fripperies are redundant in the C&CN world, of course, but the idea seems quite nostalgic from time to time. Elan is currently in a frozen state – I got disenchanted with having a netbook computer next to the battlefield (I think that mostly I became disenchanted with the optical challenge of spending so much time peering at the damn screen, then trying to remember where that particular unit was on the table), so I spent a month or two removing the computer from the game, and made it into a nice, traditional, dice and paper game, but in this form it was among the more fiddly games of history. It is probably self-evident that constant weather checks and the management of concealed units are child’s play on a computer, but a dreadful chore without one.

Anyway, for various reasons Elan is at present a non-starter as a playable game – more a pool of useful mechanisms and things-I-used-to-do – but I do have a fond recollection of a few aspects of how the game used to play. Facing and formation are two major elements of this.

Another feed for the current spate of pondering was my preliminary reading of Blücher – this game uses “Momentum Dice” to limit the number of actions you may take in a turn – your opponent rolls the MO Dice, and keeps them hidden – he knows how many activations you have available in your turn, but he won’t tell you until you reach that number. Thus you have a limit, but don’t know what it is – which makes it necessary to prioritise very carefully – make sure you do the important things first – this “unknown limit” idea is attractive, but it doesn’t work in this form for a solo player (obviously), and it has one distinctive effect – if you prioritise carefully, and then are stopped at some point from carrying out any more activations, there are certain kinds of actions which become rarities – when I have done this sort of thing, I found that orders for artillery and for the movement of commanders tended to get lost, because the main priorities were the movement of big formations, and the guns and generals were down the queue a bit. Point noted – I shall come back to this, if I remember.

The simplest alternative to an opponent-generated unknown limit is simply to roll a dice and that is the number of activations allowed. This is dead simple, and an obvious way to do it, and that is what I may well come back to – I’ve done this in the past. The downside is in knowing up front how much scope you have – I find the unknown limit idea attractive.

Yet another feed was some excellent work Jay (Old Trousers) has done on his blog in refining and documenting Neil Thomas’s Napoleonic Wargaming rules for use on a hex grid. I had been thinking along these lines myself for a while, but (of course) didn’t get around to setting it out properly. For a while I thought of just trying Jay’s/Neil’s rules as they stand – apart from my requirement to use larger armies and a bigger table. Then I thought that the manoeuvre rules looked very much like what Elan used to do, and then I realised how much I would miss the convenience of the C&CN combat dice, with their built-in morale system, and I decided that what I would do in the short term, at least, is to try the manoeuvre and movement rules from Jay’s game with the combat system from C&CN, and add in my thoughts on an unknown-limit activation system, which is what I shall come to next.

El Diablo. I mentioned this in the February post I linked to earlier, though I didn’t mention the Diablo name. The terminology is my own, and requires a quick, time-wasting yarn from yesteryear – no-one expected that, surely.

In my first year at university I stayed in a large lodging house which was like the United Nations – about two dozen students from many countries. Three of the guys used to get together late in the evening and spend an hour playing card and dice games for money – small stakes. I couldn’t afford to get involved, but I used to enjoy watching. The guys (not that it matters) were Skip, from Chicago, Bjorn, an Icelander, and Engel, from Rotterdam, who was rather older, having been seconded by his employer to do a course in marine engineering at Heriot Watt.

One of the games they played was called El Diablo – I don’t really remember the full details, but it was a sort of relative of Crap Dice – the game itself was negligible, the point was the betting – the players would bet on how far they could progress, and watchers could also make side bets. The game used a normal six-sided die – this system is what I discussed in the February post as a means of producing an unknown limit for activation.

This is not a picture of Martin

1D6 version of Diablo: Each turn scores a minimum of 1; to score 2, you need to roll 2+ on the die; to score 3, having successfully got to 2, you then need to roll 3+, and so on. You stop when you fail, and your score is the last one which succeeded – thus scores are in the range of 1 to 6; 1 is the minimum, and it is very rare to get to 6. I can’t remember how the betting worked, and it is irrelevant anyway.

I tried using what I have decided to call Diablo(6) as an activation system in an ECW game. You get to activate 1 unit for free; you need to throw 2 or better to activate a second, and so on. You stop when you fail, but you have already selected the units for activation when you get to that point. It was simple to use, did not slow the game down and worked OK, except…

Well, except that it gave miserable results – the number of activations in practice was more stingy than a simple roll of 1D6 would have been.

The average score of 1D6, of course, is 3.5

The average result of Diablo(6) is the sum of p(j).j for j = 1 to 6, which works out at a niggardly 2.775

Now neither of these numbers compares badly with the average number of “orders” you would expect to be allowed to give as a result of a C&CN Command Card – especially if I add in the facility to activate an entire brigade with a single order – but the fact remains that the artillery and the generals were getting starved of action.

That’s getting close to as far as I’ve got – my current thinking is that there should be two quick activation sessions per turn – a distinct artillery session of Diablo(4) (using a D4), and the activations from this may only be used for artillery. Then the main activation uses Diablo(8), with a full D8 – these activations may be used for anything, including artillery.

It is tempting to consider using different kinds of dice, for different commander abilities, or for handicapping; I also considered whether the dice should be chosen to match the number of units fielded – in this I agree with Michael’s comment last time, that there is a limit to what one general can do, however big the army, so maybe D4 and D8 will work across the board (so to speak).

The train, as you will observe, has not yet stopped moving, but I have at least answered Martin’s question about D4’s. I may set out some stuff about introducing an element of tactical manoeuvre, once my thoughts start to look printable - maybe some photos would be good. Hmmm.