It often occurs to me that a blog can be kind of a mixed
blessing. For example, if I really can’t make up my mind about some element of
wargames rules, it would be more dignified – and I might well look a little
less foolish – if I did my dithering and thinking aloud off-blog. On the other
hand, I invariably get useful input via the Comments, and that more than makes
up for the discomfort of being seen to blunder about in real time. People are
very kind – maybe they take pity on me.
Having oscillated between hot and cold on the subject of the
Victory without Quarter ECW rules for
some time now, and having gone so far as to do a fair amount of amendment and
rewriting of those rules, the announcement that once again I am not happy with
some aspects of them might generate a range of reaction somewhere between mild
eye-rolling and total indifference. So the fool can’t make up his mind – so
what’s new?
My concerns with VwQ
are mainly about the activation rules. I’m really still not very happy with
them – not even with my own revamped version – and they get a mixed press on
TMP and elsewhere. Taking the core activation system out of VwQ might be likened to removing the
nervous system from your favourite cat. The results are unpredictable. You
might not like what you are left with. Might be better to think of something
else to do instead.
As a last ditch effort to stop short of a completely fresh
start, I’ve been doing a bit more reading about activation approaches, to see
what else might just fit with the rest of VwQ.
I have been revisiting all sorts of games. I liked the activation rules in the
latest version of Ross’s Hearts of Tin
rules, and these formed the basis of some further scribblings of my own, and I
had an exchange of thoughts on this with Martin. As it happens, Martin recently
purchased the John Curry reprint of Donald Featherstone’s Wargaming Pike and Shot (first published 1977), which is not the
first place I would have thought of looking for ideas on activation. Martin’s
enthusiasm encouraged me to buy my own copy, however. Well, well.
It's actually a pretty good book. The bulk of it consists of scenario descriptions of battles from the Renaissance and 30 Years' War period, but a new bit of this revised edition is a summary of some
previously unpublished rules used by Don, and there is a discussion of turn
sequences which uses a simple activation rule (or, as Don calls it, motivation – which I rather like) – it
involves a fair amount of dice-rolling, so it might be a bit labour intensive
for my taste, but it looks interesting. I haven’t tried it out yet. Naturally,
I couldn’t just use it as published, so I’ve started by meddling with it and
tweaking to fit with my own games better. What follows is not Don F’s rule, but
it is influenced by it and is not unlike it.
Let's start with a slight detour. First thing you need for this is some easy way of
identifying units which are part of the same formation, or which all report to
the same commander. A while ago, when I was under the spell of Sam Mustafa’s Fast Play Grande Armée, I adopted a very
handy idea of his, which was to put coloured markers on the bases of units
which were brigaded together, so you could see the breadth of an individual
general’s command at a single glance. Naturally, once again, I fiddled with the
system until it looked like this:
This is a Napoleonic example – here you see some labels
waiting to be cut out and attached to unit bases. This is a collection of
leaders and units from Maucune’s Division, which you will see has the
distinguishing colour of yellow. The brigades are identified by the colour of
the inner square. Thus it is very easy to identify all Maucune’s units (yellow outer
square), or all the units which report to General Montfort, who is one of
Maucune’s brigade commanders (red within yellow). These labels are much smaller
in reality than they appear here – I laminate them, cut them out and attach
with a smear of BluTack. [OCD on the
battlefield.]
Right, you may be thinking, this must be leading up to
something. There is obviously some reason why we might wish to identify higher
formations in this way. And you will be correct - at long last, we come to the
ideas about activation.
1. A brigade should consist of between 3 and 8 units. If a
higher level of organisation is suitable for your game, a division may comprise
between 2 and 4 such brigades.
2. When the player takes his turn, he nominates one of
his generals. In a big game, he may have a choice of nominating 1 of his
division commanders or up to two of his brigade commanders – decide for
yourself how this would work.
a. For the nominated general he
now rolls 2D6 for each unit in that general’s command for which he wishes to
issue an order – this is where the coloured labels come in handy, so you don’t
miss any.
b. A natural roll of 9 or more
activates the unit – give them a counter or something – they are under orders
for this turn.
c. Otherwise, adjust the dice
roll as follows:
i. For a good general, add 1
ii. For a poor general, deduct 1 – sort-of-OK generals require
no adjustment
iii. For a good unit, add 1
iv. For a poor unit, or one with heavy losses (shaken,
whatever...) deduct 1
v. For each complete 6 inches (or whatever you fancy) that the
unit is distant from the general, deduct 1 (for hexes, this would be “for each
hex beyond the first...”)
d. If the result is 4 or more,
the unit is under orders
e. This continues until all units
under the general’s command are activated, or
until one fails the test, in which case no more units are tested. This
means that it is important to take care over the order in which units are
tested for activation – go for the good guys who are near at hand first – one
failure and that’s your lot for this general on this turn.
3. The activated units now move, fight and all that stuff,
as you would expect. End of turn.
4. Then the opposing player nominates one (or maybe two) of
his generals, and so on. And that’s it, really. It may involve too much dice
throwing, I'm not sure, but it has a few ingredients which appeal:
a. It’s simple, and easy to
understand
b. Restricting activation to a
single general keeps the game focused and ensures a quick rotation of turns
c. The fact that you can choose the
general gives more direct control – less of a random element than a card
system, for example, but some bad luck with the dice can still make life
difficult.
5. And, as an add-on, we propose that any general who is a
casualty has to be replaced, but should be replaced by an officer who is one
degree worse.
-ooOoo-
Re-reading this now, it seems to me that most of this is
familiar anyway, and I’m not sure why it has taken Martin and me so much
correspondence to get to this stage. I am not even sure that I shall go on to
test it, though I have thoroughly enjoyed the development process. However, in
a spirit of what I hope will charitably be taken as innocent enthusiasm, I
offer it for your thoughts.
