"Gentlemen, examine this ground carefully, it is going to be a battlefield: you will have a part to play upon it." --Napoleon to his Marshal's on the eve of Austerlitz Terrain in most wargames is reasonably well defined and has certain effects as specified in whatever rule set is being used. Standard uses of terrain – to conceal or protect, to give further visibility or range. Historically, unexpected difficulties of terrain and troops unexpectedly overcoming difficulties of terrain have had major effects on battles. I will quote two examples from, the first from the battle of Vimiero and the second from Talavera. (source: Discovering Famous Battles: The Peninsular War by R J Wilkinson-Latham) At Vimiero, Junot, the French commander sent two brigades to envelope the British left flank: "At the same time Brennier with his force attacked what Junot had considered to be the weakly held left, but found an impassible ravine. He avoided this by going as far north as Praganza, reappearing again at the end of the battle." "Solignac with his column did not follow Brennier in his roundabout route but found a passage, through which he quickly moved his men." At Talavera, the British light cavalry got itself into trouble: "The charge of Anson's brigade was nearing the French squares when the leading horsemen suddenly came upon a watercourse concealed by long grass. At the speed the cavalry was moving, it was impossible to halt the charge; the colonel managed to clear the ditch, but the troops behind tumbled into confusion into the watercourse. The German Light Dragoons suffered the same fate although they were further up the valley. Scores of horses broke their necks, men were crushed and maimed and the charge failed." certainly those who have seen the film of Waterloo – is the cuirassiers falling into the sunken road. These are examples where disaster has occurred because terrain was in some way hidden and not what commanders expected. There are cases where commanders relied on apparently difficult terran to stop enemy troops and found themselves in trouble because it didn't! One classic case is the heights of Abraham, where Wolfe got his army up the cliffs in front of Montreal in order to defeat Montcalm. At Craonne in 1814, the French walked cavalry up the edge of a plateau in order to surprise their opponents. How do we represent these occurrences on a war games table? In Wargames Illustrated No 134, Dominic Skelton suggested hidden descriptions for each terrain piece, listing what was passable in what order. This was to emphasise that no terrain could be taken for granted and to encourage the use of reconnaissance troops to find out what terrain was like. This mechanism can be extended to cover apparently empty terrain. An alternative idea is to have a chart similar to the standard Fire and Fury movement chart for the first (few) times a given area of table is entered. Players roll a die score to see if unexpected obstacles are encountered or unexpected easy passage is obtained (and with the possibility of a combination of both factors such as suddenly getting lost in the middle of a forest after an easy passage). Experienced commanders at all levels used skirmishers to check terrain for the unexpected. Skilled cavalry commanders such as Blücher (when a Hussar colonel in the revolutionary wars) used outriders to check terrain and for hidden troops. Veteran commanders would even use enemy skirmishers to check the nature of the terrain in front of them! Both by observing their movements in the advance and by deliberately driving them away a short distance to see if the ground was flat or had hidden dips. Mechanisms as previously suggested would bring this side of skirmishing into a wargame. Some rules systems permit hidden troops. This works best with a written order system, but in any case use can be made of marked maps so that only visible troops are deployed. One standard approach with a written orders system is for visible troops to be deployed, then orders written. An interesting extension of this would be for only mutually visible terrain to be deployed on the table, before orders were written. There is a variant on this where players mark deployment on a map provided by the umpire and then place units on the table according to marked dispositions (the map provided of course being wildly inaccurate!) Historically, terrain was as often an unknown quantity to the general in command as the enemy; it was not necessarily "neutral". A number of mechanisms are possible to reflect this in a wargame, and I intend play testing a few options. Results to follow! Back to Table of Contents -- Kriegspieler #7 To Kriegspieler List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Kriegspieler Publications. 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