Infantry Fire and Wargame Design

Introduction

by Michael Edmondson [1]


Among the most fundamental of issues to be addressed by the wargame designer is the resolution of infantry firefights - that is, the determination of their expected outcomes, prior to the introduction (via dice, cards, etc.) [2] of whatever degree of randomization about the expected values may be deemed desirable. For this purpose he can choose among three competing theories of fire action:

    1.) Targeted or "Concentrated" Fire;
    2.) Area Fire; and
    3.) Ineffective Fire, performed mainly to entertain the firer. Each of these theories and its implications shall be examined in turn.

It should be noted at the outset that the three have in common that they operate independently of measures of time, which is to say that in themselves they offer no guidance as to the actual number of minutes (or hours or days, etc.) required to produce the predicted results. Then again, neither is any of the three incompatible with whatever time scale the designer may otherwise consider appropriate.

Footnotes

[1] [Editor's Note: Since my computer software is incapable of forming the square root sign, which is used several times in this article, I have made use of the check mark. Please regard this as a square root sign to be applied to the number that follows it for purposes of this article.]

[2] [Author's Note]:! myself prefer the drawing of cards to the rolling of dice, which have an infuriating tendency to tumble off the tabletop, or, worse, to crash into and derange my painstakingly ordered troop formations, for which same offense another toy soldier enthusiast, the Czar Peter III, is said to have had an errant rat court-martialed and hanged. A fitting punishment! But I digress.

Infantry Fire and Wargame Design

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© Copyright 2002 by James J. Mitchell

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