*The author of this nice piece neglected to put his name on the article - shame! - ED.
The Complete Brigadier is certainly one of the best rule sets to be published in the last ten years. The style, format, and quality of the rules brought back pleasant memories of my introduction to wargaming in the pages of Young and Lawford's Charge! or How to Play Wargames. The rules are well-written, thoughtful, and show a marked sense of humor (particularly the pen-and-ink drawings of Peter T. Quinlan).
The goal of The Complete Brigadier is to provide at the brigade level a reasonably complete game in a two to four hour period. The rules stress command control and as wargamers we are principally interested in commanding. The rules are so well written, reasonable, and accurate in regards to brigade level tactical detail, that I am hopeful that these rules may someday become the equivalent of WRG's ancient rules in providing a common basis for competition in the horse and musket period.
While rules have increasingly become more accurate and more professionally packaged, some of the most interesting breakthroughs in the art of wargaming have been in game mechanics (e.g. Jeffrey's VLB and The Sword and Flame). Learning and performing tedious game mechanics that may in the end require an hour's worth of calculations in order to resolve a few short minutes of inspired command has been the biggest hindrance in trying any new set of rules and also to bringing new recruits into the hobby. I offer the following modest gaming aid for The Complete Brigadier in this same spirit, the goal being to improve the game's mechanics and thus provide more time for commanding our legions.
In our early experience with The Complete Brigadier we initially spent about a third of our gaming time in command and related decision making activities and the other two thirds involved in combat and morale resolution. Time and effort spent on resolution is time and effort not spent in commanding. Although command is simultaneous, combat resolution is linear, that is, first all my units fire then all your units fire. One means for alleviating this wasted time is to develop a means of shortening the total time devoted to resolution by making it simultaneous.
Based on a year of experience with the rules, we have found that the worksheet approach shown below eliminates a major portion of this resolution time and has shortened our games by 20-25% while at the same time relieving some of the tedium involved both in learning the game and in performing some of the more mundane and repetitive aspects of the game.
An example of Firing and Morale Worksheet has been provided along with a blank to make copies from. Those familiar with The Complete Brigadier will recognize the worksheet as simply the firing and morale modifier tables presented in a different form - allowing room for calculations as necessary for each turn. (Note: the one peculiarity to those familiar with the rules may be the listing of the firing modifiers in decimal form - a format much more in keeping with practically having to make the calculation.) The use of the worksheet is in every way the same as using the game's tables. Just as orders are written simultaneously and when completed resolved jointly, so too firing and morale can be calculated simultaneously and the results reviewed jointly. I n addition to saving time this system provides a number of side benefits (some of which are evident in the example) including:
- an easy means to audit the opposing side's calculation,
- a written record of events during the battle,
- faster and less time consuming subsequent calculations (no need to redo the calculation from scratch),
- improved accuracy, and
- finally, a good learning tool for the gamer new to the rules.
Obviously this approach could be applied to other miniature rule sets, particularly those that like The Complete Brigadier make use of written orders and calculation for casualties. (We could look at these other applications as improving wargame productivity. Need we worry about the Japanese?) Additionally, worksheets might be helpful in teaching new rule sets or in a convention setting where the typical besieged judge could, in effect, by using a worksheet delegate combat resolution to the players and more truly judge and manage his event. Hopefully, computers will soon provide the means to do all the table look-up, combat and morale resolution, and calculations that keep us from our true goal -making command decisions. In the meantime, we can trim some of the computational workload and make our games more enjoyable through improved game mechanics.
ED NOTE: readers who are interested may photocopy the playing aid directly from THE COURIER.
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