The hottest topics so far is that Chris alleges to have a working e-mail which I don't believe and Marcus is on vacation. I can't believe we all have that bad of hangover from New Year's Eve?
Question to the group, has anyone tried using matrix game arguments with a conventional cardboard monster of death or for that matter any rigid Kriegspiel--say DBA? If not why not? If so how did it turn out. If you haven't tried why not?
My two cents (New Pence for the Brits.): My thinking is that most wargamers won't try because they think their games represent reality or a good model of the event. Why should we mess with a carefully written set of rules, typeset, proofread and playtested and all those cute markers with those exact figures on them 6-3-4. You wargamers know what I mean. The more detailed the rules and the more figures the better the sales, assuming this isn't the Prussian-Danish war.
I recently procured a volume called something like Brassey's Guide to Modern Land Warfare, which is an extract of some military encyclopedia the DOD paid for. Very informative and a steal at $12.00 remaindered. Anyway on the section on combat effectiveness, reading it the authors point out that it is extrodinarly difficult to quantatively deal with this question, there were way too many variables and that often non-quantitative factors like morale, tactics and leadership (two out of 3 non quantitative) could make a decisive difference. The other factor not really dealt with in the article, but seems pretty apparent, that given such a complex event as a battle, with some many variables, that warfare must be inherently chaotic, small changes in the initial state can have an enormous effect in the final state (result as in defeat or victory). I think it's sometimes called the Butterfly effect.
The Effect of Small Differences
For example in Dupis's study on warfare he figured out that the German's were 20 percent more effective man for man than the allies. That's not an overwhelming advantage. It reflected the high level or professionalism and innovation that Germany put into its military, while the American's were demobilized, the French were drinking cognac at the Maiginot line etc. However that 20 percent advantage was enough to bring them to the gates of Moscow, stomp France and make the British dive into bomb shelters. A simple 20 percent difference could have been made up by more recruits. So what we are dealing with is a chaotic dynamic, the initial advantage was enough to drag out the war for six years. You see this in horse racing by the way. Watch a race and at the finish line blink when the winner passes, you see four or more horse will have finished. (Some of my choices 3 or 4 blinks.)
This thinking leads me to believe that wargames fail in not portraying the chaos affect, that our love for the quantitative, rigid rules etc. is down right unmilitary. The opposite of this can be found in some rules like PBOM where you roll a movement die for each figure or base. At first I thought this is daft, instead of nice neat formations, I get straggler's, units that race ahead with a sudden burst of excitement, you wind up having to hold a line up while the other half of your force minces in with rolls of 1. Do you wait and take the enemy's fire or charge in with half your force waiting to find their speed? Simple but chaotic, in essence a real battle.
In the next installment I will make a modest suggestion as to how this applies to Matrix games.
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© Copyright 2002 by Chris Engle.
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