Comments on the differing approaches of miniatures rule writers and board game designers made in various journals of the hobby prompts me to comment at some length. I would like to suggest that it is the respective ways that board gamers and miniaturists represent troops that lead directly to the divergence, and that some miniature rules writers do not exploit their advantages half far enough. Take the board game for a start. Typically, this is a strategic or operational level simulation played on a large scale map with moves measured in days or weeks and symbols representing whole units. At that level, miniatures offer no competition, because in real life strategists use maps and symbols and have the same decision span. The board game is therefore infinitely more realistic than an equivalent miniatures game could be. Problems start to appear when the game scale is reduced to the grand tactical level, where a real life commander would derive much of his information from going and looking at the real terrain and situation, as well as looking at his maps. At the very least, he will have telephone or face to face conversations with subordinates and scouts. The strategic board game techniques are still used, but don't measure up quite so well. Miniaturists have long neglected gaming at this level, but are now becoming increasingly interested and devloping new sets of rules to cope. However, just as the board gamers try to carry their techniques down from the higher levels, so the miniatures writer tends to carry his up from the tactical level. Fine, so long as he remembers he is possibly carrying excess luggage. Now before I became a professional writer (no, in THE COURIER I write for love), I was in Work Study. One of the basic ideas of Frank Gilbreth [ED NOTE: Cheaper by the Dozen], the great American that invented that activity, is that to measure what is going on, you must first split it down to its smallest possible parts. Even if you can't measure the parts accurately, the sum of a lot of small estimates is usually a lot closer to reality than one big one. I might add that the same approach is used by HERO, who have produced the only simulation of divisional level combat that the U.S. Army consider accurate. If all these professional analysts are right, then miniaturists start with a big advantage as far as accuracy is concerned. However, to my mind, they have a bigger one yet, in that they are much less likely to forget that units are NOT symbols with capabilities, but are made up of people. All miniature rules writers now stand up and acknowledge the audience's applause. O.K. Sit down, and we will go into that a little further. What sort of people? Regrettably, those represented on the miniatures table are not always ordinary joes like you and I. They are more inclined to be stereotypes. The Scots Greys charging at Waterloo are to a man patriotic, battle mad, prepared to give way to none, unwilling to rally back while a Frenchman remains before them. The French cuirassier bearing down on the square in close order at a majestic trot is inspired by the thought of successions of victories and the knowledge that he is never flung in until the climax of the battle. The English line regiment awaiting him is to a man calm, confident, excellent shots and trusts in "Conkey Arthur" (sic). Well, there is a certain amount of truth in all of these, yet the full truth is somewhat more complex. The Scots Grey is riding a corn fed scatty thoroughbred, hardly rode before he enlisted, had only a minimal amount of riding instruction in the menage, and has a sword in one hand. His regiment never had a big enough training area in England to practice charging and rallying. The chance of him stopping even if he wants to are remote. The Frenchman is almost equally unskilled, but is riding a poor quality nag which is having to carry some 300 pounds weight and which he slept on top of last night rather than lie down in the mud. He is a poor horsemaster, so it hasn't fed too well. He is charging over a wet, muddy cornfield. He remembers that the man that broke the enemy line last time did not survive it. He will not get run away with, and he will ride up to the square, but he is then going to have the nerve and his horse the energy to break in? The English line infantry slept in the mud and had no breakfast. They have been shot at by artillery for hours and blood, guts and corpses are all around, the continual noise is deafening, and smoke prevents them seeing what is happening. Some are mental defectives, some criminals, most ordinary countrymen. The cuirassiers appear, and a ripple of fear goes through the ranks, adding to their anger. Calm and cool? No, they are in a state of cold fighting madness, eager for revenge. Try the ancient period. The Macedonian phalanx is bearing down on the Roman legion. In the fourth Macedonian rank is Heracles. His pike is long enough to reach past his own front rank man, as Polybius says. However, the unit has closed up so he has only his own shoulder width to operate in. He can't see much because of the heads in front of him, and he is in any case tending to crouch to avoid the occasional arrow that skitters overhead. His pike is long, unwieldy and a little whippy. Somehow, he doesn't think it is going to do the front ranker much good. Now world war two and modern. The miniatures writer is a tank man. He delights in concocting tables of armor thickness and penetration, but unfortunately, he has usually never commanded a tank. if he had, he would realize that there are other factors affecting its actions, and reasons for the survival of infantry. The tanker feels conspicuous. His monstrous machine sticks up in the air and his own head is the highest bit. If the tank comes under fire half-way through a bound, it cannot immediately stop and disappear from view like infantry, but must continue. The commander can identify targets well as a distance with high-powered binoculars, at least when they move or fire, but the fire is likely to be at him! The more veteran he is, the less willing he is to leave his nice safe hull down position and advance. The only fair way is to take it in turns to move. With three tanks in the platoon, that gives him two chances in three of not being the victim when the hidden 88 fires. If the best commander is always put in the lead, his nerve will crack. At close quarters, he is blind. There is very little he can do about enemy infantry within 20 yards, even if he sees them. Any cover within 100 yards can hide a bazooka or a sniper, yet if he closes down to escape the latter, the tank becomes almost blind. Yet he feels devoutly grateful that he has six inches of armor to protect him, unlike those poor bloody infantry. The infantry feel equally grateful not to be riding in one of those death traps. They can sneak up to peer through cover with a good chance of not being spotted, and with both eyes and ears at work, are better at spotting close range enemy. They can dash between small pieces of cover, drop and disappear. If a machine gun opens up, they must take cover and will be unwilling to move until it is dealt with. The tank can do that, if it spots the target. O.K., climb up on the tank and point it out. You kidding? They don't like enemy tanks either. You have to get within 100 yards with a bazooka then stand up. If the tank doesn't get you, its infantry escort likely will. However, their biggest hate and biggest killer is the mortar. So call down artillery, if you have a radio and it works, then wait for it to arrive. Target long gone? Too bad. Still, his neighbors will curse him! The moral is to go to the lowest tactical level you are going to be dealing with and put yourself in the soldier's place. Read eyewitness accounts. If they don't exist, use your imagination, but they usually do, even in the ancient period. In any case, your rules will be more accurate than those of the man who plays with symbols instead of soldiers -and a lot more colorful. While the grand tactical game is a very promising area of development for the miniatures rule writer, it should not be overlooked that the visual realism of the grand tactical board game could also be greatly increased. The first step is to provide prettier maps, and this is now becoming the norm among the better designers, the idea being to make the playing board resemble the real country from overhead. This is not what most generals saw in real life, since even on a hill they would still be looking from the side as well as above, so the advantage here will continue to rest with miniatures. The next step is to climb out of the hexagonal rut. Apart from distorting maps unless used very skillfully, the hex has the bad fault of encouraging players to think that movement is possible in all directions from any spot. Tactically, this may be so, but for armies or large units, the possible routes are far more circumscribed. The Canadian game company GAMMA TWO have shown the way here, but their's is not the only technique. Lastly, the card unit symbols that currently cover and hide the prettiest map could be replaced. How about transparent counters bearing fluorescent symbols or realistic representations of marching columns, or dividing the board into larger spaces in which several pieces can be set side by side without stacking or concealing the terrain? It is at the lower tactical level where board games have least appeal, since here they are forced to imitate miniatures gaming techniques without the threedimensional terrain, pretty models and flexibility. Some of the miniatures techniques imitated are so dated that many present players have never met them. The Lionell Tarr attack and defense points system is one such, long discarded by miniaturists as unrealistic. So what are the REALLY salient differences between the way that board and miniature games represent their troops? The board gamer plays with a card rectangle symbolising a unit. This cannot be sub-divided, always occupies the same space regardless of what formation the troops would be in, and its effectiveness is the average total effect that the constituent parts of the unit would add up to. The miniaturist plays with models representing men or weapons. These are combined into units, but the basic building block is one or two orders of magnitude smaller. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. III #2 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1981 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com