Dave Ryan returned from the USA recently and thrust a very odd magazine into my hands. I read it, read it again and slill couldn't really work out what I thought about it. I then passed it onto Derek Henderson and asked for his opinion. What follows below are our thoughts on..... M3 (Mind, Map and Maneuver) [sic]

"There exists no current means of testing theory save battle. The Art (of War) is not a hobby for us, it is our speciality. Theory must be combined with practice in order to learn." --Editorial, M3 Issue 2.

What? Well, apparently it is "The Reference Guide for Great Captains" in "the Art of War". M3 is keen on "Great Captains" as an expression, so I'll stick to it too.

Reading the journal is heavy going. The editor claims that he wants the reader to think but even reading the journal is made harder by there being sufficient quotable sections per page to fill Private Eye's "Pseuds Corner" for the next 10 years. (And I've only seen issue 2!)

I quote ".. we must expound a Unified Field Theory of the Art of War, because that is what our theory of the Art of War encompasses. No less. Such a work never existed...No one now feels such a thing can be done... except for M3. Our mission stands to complete the work."

Premise

M3's main premise is that an understanding of the Art of War can only be achieved by studying the battles of the Great Captains. One impudent individual dared to suggest that war could not be learnt by focusing on battles and was promptly shot down in flames. The M3 party line continued, "The terms strategic, operational and tactical are fictitious. They hold no value, but are also a detriment to understanding the art."

I'd say tactical, strategic and political myself but doubtless am the same sort of heretic. Maybe the M3 staff should look at Vietnam. You'll not learn how to fight a war here by studying victories on the ground. I'm unaware of any lost battles but the war itself hardly reflects this. Similarly, learning how to hunt merchantmen with U-boats doesn't tell you a lot about why the merchantmen were there in the first place. How to win a wars to master the Art as M3 would have it, goes way beyond how to win its constituent battles.

Some Great Captains are held up as shining examples as having mastered the Art. Napoleon and Frederick the Great are just two. My understanding of Napoleon is that his brilliance lay in strategy and that tactically he was pretty average. As a quality commander he'd done his bit and won as many of his battles as he could before the first shot was fired on the battlefield. As for Frederick the "Won 7 Lost 7" there must be better examples even under pure battlefield criteria! Also in this vein, although I could not find a definitive list of who 3M consider Great Captains to be, there do seem to be quite a lot of German Panzer commanders lurking in the wings.

I do hope we not going to be led by the nose to worship at the alter of German operational brilliance (once again) - when it came to it these so called maestros (or are we to be told it was all Hitler's fault?) couldn't hack it and were out generalled and out fought all the way back to the Reichstag by the Red Army. Not a great advert either for 'battle defining the art of war' or the inclusion of these Panzer leaders as Great Captains. Surely Zhukov, Chuikov, Rokossovsky et. al. should feature as Great Captains? I'd take Operation Bagration (the destruction of Army Group Centre for you panzer fans) as an example of decisive battlefield success over Manstein's 'back hand blow' anyday.

Anyway, the journal is somewhat unsure just what it means by the Art of War. On the one hand this is presented as if it was somewhat ethereal and hard to quantify or grasp. I can sympathise with this. On the other hand we (the students!) will learn from "various levels of command". We will learn to ensure strict traffic control procedures, to place MPs at important crossings and that "the terrain not represented in wargames, because it is irrelevant to the representational scale is VITALLY important to the troops represented by wargame unit counters."

So What?

So it is, but so what? No Great Captain ever chose to fight a battle because of the presence of a ditch or hedge. The use of small terrain features tells you nothing about the Art of War although no one will argue about their value in small unit actions. True exponents of the Art of War have won long before there is a need for any small battlefield feature to play its part.

The study of the Great Captains does not seem to take account of any social, religious, doctrinal, political or economic constraints that they may have had upon them. It's only a matter of time before all Napoleonic troops use the reverse slope and ancient tribes form battle winning cohorts. So where does the wargaming come in? I'm not sure I know.

Despite its self proclaimed appeal M3 has little to offer wargamers who realise that their games will never replicate the real thing. The word game appears in wargame and few hobbyists have the time or inclination to study in the manner that M3 suggests we should. I'm a keen wargamer but also have a life.

Wargaming is a pastime - not an obsession. I've no intention of trying to perfect the Art of War for my "children or grandchildren"! I gave up thoughts of becoming a Great Captain at about the same time I abandoned hopes of playing centre forward for Arsenal. I warGAME for fun, perhaps I'm far too frivolous to be worthy of reading 3M. I also do not wargame to get a 'high score' or 'ranking' which it appears 3M's devotees of their 'virtual warfare' do - is this not competition gaming under a different guise? There are representation and so on. "Current simulations boil down to combat, boring chart referencing and attrition". To cover the sort of things that M3 suggests you do you'd need "a three inch thick rule book".

"A person .... desirous of wargaming has to study rules". For 6th Edition competitive ancients players and their like (who I consider in the UK at least are yesterday's wargamers), maybe M3's got a point. For the thinking wargamer, interested in the war behind the game M3 is behind the times. Most wargames are passing references to wargames but not a lot of specifics.

Computer Simulations

From the issue of M3 I read I'd say that M3's attitude is that computer simulations are brilliant (they hide the rules, enemy forces and so on. I'd even go so far as to detect a hidden agenda. Despite the Editor's denial of any commercial interest I detect a good few plugs for "Virtual Warfare" coming through. Board games are too transparent and figure games are too "rule based, chart driven, perfect intelligence" with agreed objectives prior to play and possess a lack of realistic logistical dismissed due to winning being linked exclusively to victory points, everyone knowing the exact capabilities of their troops (and those of their opponents) and being aware of the exact scenario, deployments, arrival times etc.

Doesn't sound like the games I normally play. There seems, too, to be a quite legitimate attack on wargames companies who have a status quo to defend. Nevertheless the sweeping M3 viewpoint doesn't sit comfortably with the wargames I usually play and is very much having a go at the anorak tendency. An attack I'd be only too happy to join in. (2 or 3 A4 sides of rules, a good brief, quality umpire and friendly players who know the period give me the best games.)

Final Attitude

What finally wound me up about the M3 editor's attitude was not only his "I'm right and everyone else is wrong" approach but his insistence in reporting his critics' comments verbatim and drawing attention to their every typo and misplaced comma with a [sic]. He's going to love "Battlefields"! (Thus, it's only fair to point out that in M3 Journal 2 the 3rd sentence on page 24, in the midst of a very average battle report, had no verb in it and that the word "please" on page 34 had no final "e".). Also irritating is that the staff of 3M put the verbal boot into all and sundry but hide behind pseudonyms.

However, on the positive side, amongst all this verbal diarrhea there are some good ideas struggling to get out. There is an emphasis on command and control, on the commander's personality and how such things are often overlooked in military simulations. The role of psychology over technology is emphasised. Learning the minutiae of weapons and uniforms is correctly identified as not being usually relevant to an appreciation of the battlefield. The human component of warfare is stressed. All are ideas I go along with. If 3M had concentrated on the above I would be loudly praising it as a breath of long needed fresh air.

There is an interesting article on the importance and effect of heights on the battlefield which I wouldrecommend to anyone, a few fairly good discussions on planning and, lurking hither and thither, odd comments on game design that really catch your eye. It's just a pity you have to wade through so much posturing to find them.

IN SUMMARY

M3 is a magazine you'll love or hate, for its content and/or style of writing. I hated it (Derek).

I think if you are at all interested in gaming beyond the "let's field 1,500 points' type of game then you should check out at least one issue of 3M. Overall, I suspect you'll hate it - but occasionally find something of value or an article that makes you think. Perhaps for me the true frustration of 3M is that it promised much, delivered the odd nugget but ultimately drowned under the weight of its own pomposity (Ben).

Other Review:

Battle Ground Ardennes

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