A Small But Contentious Affair
One of the reasons I decided to play a small, simple scenario with the 54's today was that I wanted to test a few things.
The first thing was that I haven't been as happy as I wanted to be with the 6" grid. I had been reluctant to go to 6" as I worried that there weren't quite enough grid squares for many scenarios but I hadn't expected to find the units feeling lost in the 6" squares thus putting ideas in my head. Since I still have my 5" gridded cloth, I threw it on to the table. Unfortunately the 5" squares worked much better so there's some low priority work to be done.
The second, more important, thing is that the old urge for a more detailed and complex game had been starting to rear its head and half hearted attempts to compromise have been unsatisfactory. So, I decided to make this an exercise of trying things on the table.
This of course made a detailed narrative a little hard since I occasionally replayed parts of some turns several times with slightly different rules to see how they felt so I'll let the pictures tell the official story while I stick with the technical stuff.
The first and easiest matter was that of Command Control and "friction". Over the years I have tried out almost every possible system to incorporate these things but the only really satisfying approach was to play multi-player games. One of the easiest wrenches one can throw in is to use dice or cards to limit how many units a player can move each turn, especially if you provide ways for a general to make decisions that will help him to make things work if luck is against him and that's what I used to do.
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| The Rebels deploy with artillery firing overhead from a low rise while the cavalry supports the left flank. |
The second, more important, thing is that the old urge for a more detailed and complex game had been starting to rear its head and half hearted attempts to compromise have been unsatisfactory. So, I decided to make this an exercise of trying things on the table.
This of course made a detailed narrative a little hard since I occasionally replayed parts of some turns several times with slightly different rules to see how they felt so I'll let the pictures tell the official story while I stick with the technical stuff.
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| The Queen's Infantry occupy the houses around the crossroads supported by artillery and cavalry while the Grenadiers set out to capture the other junction. |
It didn't take long to settle this. While activation systems can appear to mimic real life issues, they do so for the wrong reasons and change the way the player as commander makes decisions. One is forced to think in terms of game rules as much or more than military principles. I don't need artificial means of screwing up as a commander, I can do it all on my own, especially if combat results are hard to predict.
So that is settled, I've worried at this particular question with these rules like a dog with a bone for 5 years at least and I always come back to troops always attempting to carry out their orders unless they are on their own and relying on their unit commander's initiative. This works well enough especially if movement is limited and the support of friends beneficial.
The second main issue and the most worrisome was the question of how much tactical detail detail to show. Philosophically, this system is supposed to look at the game from the Commander's POV and what's going on internally is the job of some unknown ingusan officer. The Commander only needs to know that the unit is carrying out orders and succeeding or that it is in trouble.
For some reason the bigger figures and the profusion of memoirs, eye witness accounts, drill books and the like for this period combined with the low level of the actions fought make me want to show more details about what is going on. Every attempt to do so has run foul of one or more obstacles such as unintended consequences where the rules encourage the wrong tactics or the game becoming as tedious as the real thing where these small actions often included long stretches of long range fire where neither side did much damage. Exciting to an inexperienced individual taking part in the real thing, less so to a hobbyist pushing toy soldiers about and rolling handfuls of dice with nothing happening.
One solution is to increase the complexity of the game yet more and strive for more accuracy with the intent of the result being an exercise rather than a game. Another which I like better these days is to dial back the detail and just concentrate on getting the right effect without worrying so much about what we aren't seeing. That was always the intent of the Square Brigadier and its still the best approach for my goals and allows more units on the table for an ordinary game.
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| The Rebels decide to attack the Crossroad with the Grey Brigade. |
For some reason the bigger figures and the profusion of memoirs, eye witness accounts, drill books and the like for this period combined with the low level of the actions fought make me want to show more details about what is going on. Every attempt to do so has run foul of one or more obstacles such as unintended consequences where the rules encourage the wrong tactics or the game becoming as tedious as the real thing where these small actions often included long stretches of long range fire where neither side did much damage. Exciting to an inexperienced individual taking part in the real thing, less so to a hobbyist pushing toy soldiers about and rolling handfuls of dice with nothing happening.
One solution is to increase the complexity of the game yet more and strive for more accuracy with the intent of the result being an exercise rather than a game. Another which I like better these days is to dial back the detail and just concentrate on getting the right effect without worrying so much about what we aren't seeing. That was always the intent of the Square Brigadier and its still the best approach for my goals and allows more units on the table for an ordinary game.
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| The Rebel gunners are pounding the Royal battery which is struggling. Its time for the Grenadiers to clear the Blue infantry from the Stone House and end this. |
The last thing is closely related and involves choices about combat resolution, how many dice to throw vs how many hits, whether or not units should deteriorate incrementally or not
done and whether or not I want my smallest units to be able to break down into even smaller detachments. Some of these things are just easier with BIG battalions on a big table and 12 hour games. Well, it was no real surprise to me that once I'd dealt with the other issues, this one came quickly to heel. In other words, the original system worked best esp since a tweak from a few years ago where I don't remove units when they take their small maximum number of hits but allow them to keep retreating and trying to rally until they leave the table.
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| But luck is not with the Redcoats and when their Commander is shot leading a bayonet charge against the stone house they break. Outflanked and with battery and cavalry both shot to pieces, its time to pull back. |
The one surprise that came to me is that a whole host of minor issues disappeared when I decided to drop the melee resolution rule. It felt very ...almost immoral (!) to do so since I am so accustomed to have a win/lose mechanism. However, since my "melee" includes close range firefights as well as charges with cold steel I needed to have the rules able to provide prolonged struggles as well as sudden routs but for the right reasons. Oddly, by taking the rule out and dropping the number of hits per unit back to the original while allowing broken units to rally, I get the same range of options without a special rule but with a more appropriate range of results on average.
So once again the watchword is: "Less is More".
I have done a quick rewrite of the short version of the rules which I will add in my list of rules but I need to check it over for missing bits and then expand it to explain things more fully and add back in more of the extras and special things that are missing from the quick version. This is a job that I've been avoiding until I resolved these issues to my satisfaction but its time.
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I have done a quick rewrite of the short version of the rules which I will add in my list of rules but I need to check it over for missing bits and then expand it to explain things more fully and add back in more of the extras and special things that are missing from the quick version. This is a job that I've been avoiding until I resolved these issues to my satisfaction but its time.