Chateauneuf 1814

Wargaming

by David Commerford

DIS Wargaming

The game was run as a, Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS), exercise by Major James Machin with the invaluable assistance of Jerome Lavis. The purpose of the game (apart from having a good time) was to field test Jame's Valour and Discipline rules which some of you will remember hearing about, from me, and to prove the viability of Web based gaming. DIS has been used in the Military Environment for years.

Many of you would recognise its principals as computer assisted or computer generated wargames for big boys. Its function in terms of predicting weapon and tactical performance, without spending a fortune, or killing people for the fun of it, is something many of you will have seen in documentaries, without actually knowing what it was called.

In the real world, complex computer models are use to simulate things like, how an artillery round travels from point A to point B, often mixed in with live troop movements, to help predict real time consequences. What we did was the poor mans equivalent. Actually, of all of us James ended up the poor man. He shelled out for the computer equipment to make it work! Put simply we (the participants) played the game via email pictures, of what our command figures could see, from a WebCam view of the table, in Jame's house. This, along with the exchange of written orders and information on sounds and updates as to our intentions being carried out, were all we had!

James used the V&D rules to run the game, govern the actions of non players (like my sensible Guard Chef d' Escadron's reaction to the artillery fire) set the limits of physical visibility and provide the general mechanics such as combat resolution, fire, moral etc. In essence, the rules were various models for this exercise, the computer programs if you will, which regulated the flow of the action.

After the Game the Playing

Our discussions after the game drew out quite a few points here's a selection:

When reading history you can't get too many opinions

Players all had their own version of events. Who you are, what you see and what happens to you completely governs the experience of events. Your view of your personal success, or failure, only further clouds the issue of what actually happened. We felt that this must also be true of real world events, as written down by those who were involved and authors who have written books based on what those people said.

When faced with a decision the natural tendency is to do nothing

We found that unless you were forced into making a decision by events, the overall level of information was so poor, compared with face to face gaming, that inertia was the natural order of things. It was so easy to stay put and wait for more information, of what ever kind, for fear of making a mistake, that the unreal cut and thrust of normal table top action just did not happen. Faced with what felt like actual responsibility the temptation to make a game of it disappeared.

The higher up the chain of command you are the more time you have

This sounds crazy but its true. Once you have made your plan, informed everyone who needs to be informed and double checked it. You wind up your little clockwork army and away it goes. All you have to do then is sit back, hope you have got it right and try and make any corrections that come to your attention. As C in C you are so far back that in a lot of instances you won't be able to see what going on, overall. There's no radio, so if subordinates don't inform you of what's happening you can't tell if its good, or bad, until a messenger turns up. By which time things at the point of origin may have already changed any way. In any event, communication is slow and infrequent, so you have plenty of time to deal with the few decisions you have to make. The most important thing is to try and get the ones you do make, right!

Brigade command is a frightening experience

Yes this is where it all happens. Not only are you responsible for making it all work in terms of the orders you get but you spend your time trying to make decisions on things you are only vaguely aware of. In addition you have to report progress (or the lack of it) check your instructions are being carried out and not infrequently put yourself in harms way to sort out the incompetence of your subordinates. Hence my remarks about how lucky Curial (Me) was to have what turned out to be the only Guard units in the game. Although I may have been worried I was doing the big picture bit right. Given it was supposed to be 1814, one thing I was pretty sure of, was that my guys would do what I asked and that circumstances would have to be pretty dire for the opposition to get the better of them man for man!

Believe me, this is not to be undervalued. Some of the Allied Commanders said they felt like spinning tops when the action really got heated. Finally, the choice between, spending time trying to observe what's happening around you, in order to be better informed, for your next decision and getting involved with the action, is a very difficult one to make!

Perception is everything

Seeing what your eyes tell you is very difficult. With "real" levels of visibility (never laugh at people who game with upside down periscopes, they know a bloody sight more than you do!) you can make a real fool of your self and be forced to take some real risks. Being 15mm tall is a bummer!

Two personal examples. The large force of cavalry I saw off to my left, while at the cross-roads, actually were French Dragoons but at the time I felt I could not wait to find out. Rightly, as it turned out, as they were far too busy to help me, but the fact still remains I moved away on the basis of what they might have been, not what they were.

Secondly, I launched the highly successful charge of the Grenadiers a Cheval on the basis that French infantry were running past me and I did not recognise either the shape of the cavalry in front, or the colour of their saddlecloths, as being French! There was no way I could have said "Charge the 15th Hussars in front of you" to my imaginary Guard Cavalry "Chef " "Charge that cavalry" with a point in the rough direction, would most definitely have been all he got from me!

History has its own Autopilot

One of the more interesting things, or a proof that we were all very sad individuals, depending on your view, is how we all fell into our parts automatically. Not only did we immediately address each other, write orders and communicate with the Umpire, in the manner of 19th Century correspondents who had discovered how to type, our tactical deployments followed historical patterns as if we had been born to it! Granted, most if not all, of us were gamers whose length of experience in Napoleonic command probably exceeded our historical counter parts (all be it only at a theoretical level).

Nevertheless, the point of the need for depth of deployment, marching or deploying with a refused flank and a dozen other related items, became obvious virtually from the outset. Even where players started out a little out of period step, James was able to observe, from his lofty Umpire's perch, a progression into the Combat Environment dictating the individuals tactics away from Wargames practice into a period mode.

Situational Awareness costs

The need to achieve SA is paramount to success. However, to get there you have to make tough choices, particularly in terms of keeping your command together. To get a view you may need to be in a certain place for a certain time. In most games time effectively stands still while you do this or there are artificial mechanisms like command radius to keep you and your units together.

In a game where neither of these apply, the importance on where you as the general are, at any point in time, has a relevance that equates with reality in a manner that it is hard to imagine unless you have experienced it.

Conclusion

So there you have it. The world's largest wargame. In terms of player distance to the table top, at any rate.

Everyone enjoyed it and we all, quite independently, as well as collectively, learned some valuable lessons as to the possibilities and difficulties of period command. That old chestnut about the loneliness of command is a very real thing and not just because the guy covering you flank is on the other side of the world! To have to make decisions, without most of the information we as gamers take for granted, was a very interesting experience indeed. I'm sure that those of you who play Kreigsspeil regularly will gain a lot of satisfaction, in "told you so" terms from this article. Fair enough.

However, to you, I would say only this. If you have never played your games as totally isolated individuals and had access to scale levels of visual information, you may be ahead in your understanding of the period compared to pure table top gamers, but you have still got a way to go!

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