Back in 1983 the Courier Publishing Company published a revised edition of a set of ACW rules by Paul Koch entitled "On To Richmond" (OTR). An earlier edition of these rules had appeared in an issue of The Courier magazine. I obtained a copy and became thoroughly hooked when I first played a game using them. With continued play, I began to find nitpicks that bugged me about the rules and I began to modify the rules to take care of these nits. Once I took care of the initial nits, I found myself continuing to make various changes for a variety of reasons. This article presents some of my thoughts about war gaming related to why I modify rules, describes how various of my modifications to OTR came about, and provides my bases for them. It also may show how such a nice clean, simple brigade level system became the dirty, complex regimental level system revision I sent in to Hal.
Every war gamer I have met has personal preferences, biases, and prejudices regarding rules. These form the basis as to why a gamer likes or dislikes certain rules. If you are a gamer who likes details and more details, a simple system just will not do. If you are a gamer who prizes simplicity, you are guaranteed to go batty by having to roll for where on a tank your AT round just hit and then roll again to see what damage is caused due to that specific hit location and then again to see what happens to the crew.
At the core this is why there is no one set of universal war game rules for any period. Along with this waragamers have different interests and perspectives. S ome like to paint all the details on a figure as they really dig the visual aspects of the hobby. Others are into the game mechanics and don't mind pushing around unpainted lead or plastic just to see how a certain rules system works. Still others are interested in the history and wouldn't dream of making certain moves, even if allowed by the rules, because they wouldn't be historically correct (such as allowing a Norman archer unit to move in column through the gap between two Saxon units using shield wall so it could deploy in their rear). I mention this because there are individuals in our hobby that tend to be amazingly intolerant of other gainers' likes and dislikes. Unless you only play solitaire games, the hobby has a social aspect which results in the interactions of a wide range of personal behaviors.
This includes encountering as other players in a large game those "turkeys" you wouldn't want to caught dead with in public (like the guy who not only monopolizes the after-the-game pizza bull session with his ideas of the superiority of a particular military system/ weapon/country, but does so in such a loud voice that when the couple in the next booth leave, they turn to the monopolizer to say "Thanks for the lecture. It was ever so interesting!!"). In playing in games with such people, I feel politeness is called for. I further feel one can be polite without being surly or condescending and also without accepting intolerable behavior (examples being name calling, temper tantrums, repeated drifting from the table leading to absences when game action must be taken and then being miffed when someone else filled in). And one usually has the option of walking away from a game if it gets too bad.
A corollary to meeting "turkeys" is meeting players you like and respect. When such players suggest playing a different rule systems or trying out an idea, I feel it is important to be willing to do so. However, if they suggest a rules set I've played before and really don't enjoy playing, I'll say that and see if there isn't something else we can agree on to play. If I am indifferent, or new, to a given rules set and I have gaming buddies who like it, I'll try it. If I find I like it, it's a win-win outcome as by being willing to try something new or different, I find something enjoyable. If I find I'm indifferent or mildly turned off by it and they really do like it, I may still try to convert them over to systems I really like, but more by hosting such a game rather than by refusing to play a given system, being surly while playing it, or making demeaning remarks about it during play. And if I absolutely can't stand playing a given system, I'll do my best to find a polite way of saying this and declining to play further games with that system.
Now I readily admit one of my pleasures in the hobby is in tinkering with rules, especially if I feel they are almost, but not quite, what I am after. So, if I really like a rules system, I either use it as is or modify it to better suit my preferences/opinions or the preferences/opinions of the people I am largely gaming with at the time. When I look back at how I have modified OTR over the years, I find the latter to have been just as much of a driver as the former. For example, the folks that were my steady gaming buddies when I first discovered OTR were content to use it at the brigade level and to use stand elimination. After moving to the Chicago area and developing some steady gaming buddies, I found they preferred regimental level games with single figure elimination.
As it turns out, I think OTR is adoptable enough to accomplish both. While I generally prefer the brigade level and stand elimination, I don't mind regimental level games as long as the gaming scenarios don't become stagnant and predictable (you know this is happening when you can glance at the table at the start, predict when and where the lines will be when the game is called, and turn out to be right 90% of the time). I have found that OTR in conjunction with a good scenario design reduces the predictability of many game scenarios and this makes playing them more appealing to me. When I find games starting to become too tiresome, I look for ways to tweak the system to speed up resolution or to put some unpredictability back into the system. And my gaming buddies have come up with some of the better suggestions on how to do this.
A separate factor I consider in tweaking game rules is whether I am consistently playing large games with many players or smaller games with 2-4 players. I have found some rule systems just don't work well when multiple players are involved, especially when just one player at a time is doing something. If you have 8 players and only 1 player actually is moving troops or rolling dice, what are the other 7 players supposed to do? You see this repeatedly at conventions (Wally Simon often slams ... excuse me, comments on ... this type of convention game in his PW Review magazine).
When I first moved to the Chicago area, I went from playing with a few steady buddies on a regular basis to playing in a hobby shop gaming area as games were scheduled. Playing in such an environment is a lot like playing at a convention. You don't know exactly how many will show up, who will show up, how well they will know the rules, etc. It can be fun. It also can be a real drag. Now I had found OTR to not be much fun when more than 4 players got involved as only one person at a time was doing something. You either needed to keep the game moving by urging players to keep their moves short or had to divide the table into sectors where play proceeds simultaneously (as suggested by Paul Koch in the published rules). Some players get testy when urged to move play along. And my experience with multiple sectors has been the sectors usually get out of synch as to which turn is ongoing so that one sector could get several turns ahead of, or behind, the rest.
So while I was doing hobby shop gaming, I did not push OTR. Instead I pursued the chimera of the "Perfect" game for that setting; you know, one where folks are kept active and involved in the game, rules are easy to learn and remember, figures are kept moving, loud arguments don't start and last for 30 minutes, and a great time is had by all (a big sigh here!!!). As it turns out, my first attempt at a regiment level system for OTR also was an attempt at such a game. It did not work very well. Folks with access to old issues of MWAN can find this system described in MWAN #40, the first article I ever sent in to Hal (can it really be over 12 years ago?). I abandoned the effort at a regimental OTR shortly thereafter and pursued other ACW "perfect" convention style rules. The two ACW rules I sent to Hal that came out in MWAN #62 were written towards the end of this period.
When I first started playing OTR eighteen years ago, I had been playing ACW miniature rules for about 7 years. Every rule set I had played was based on regiment sized units (or lower). The complexity of the rules had ranged from two sides of a single sheet of paper to 60 page booklets. Given this, the rules all had limitations in the size of forces that could be reasonably garned with in an afternoon or evening and these limitations largely were caused by the regiment being the base unit size. Playing with a division level force was the largest manageable, even with multiple players, and resolutions were seldom reached in 5-6 hours of play. I also had found the games to have become increasingly predictable in outcome and general play, mostly due to the interplay of a fixed turn sequence and large small arm ranges as compared to the movement distances (an example being letting units fire out to 24" while having typical line moves of 4" a turn).
Table size also became a problem, especially with large ranges and large units. Even a ping-pong table could become cramped. It turned out that playing on a 6'x 8' surface became the minimum necessary to provide some space for maneuver (though at 4" a move, you couldn't do much of that).
OTR was a welcome break from all this. It featured units based on brigades, a somewhat unpredictable turn sequence in that each "division" sized force was represented by a card and cards were shuffled and drawn to determine the order in which these forces carried out their operations, and the small arm ranges did not dwarf the movement rates (12" versus 6"). The rules also were fairly clean and simple with the result that a corps level game could be set up and played to a conclusion in 4-5 hours. I loved ifl!!
Then I started encountering some personal nits (after all, I do consider myself a "grognard"). For example, under the original rules a line could move through another line with no penalty as long as they did not end up intermingled. An enterprising buddy of mine used this to create the "one-two punch" fire method. He would put two units from the same "divisiorf' in line one behind the other. When those units' card came up, he would fire the front unit and then would move the second unit three inches forward through the front unit and fire it at the same target. Another version of this was to stack two lines behind a third. The first one would fire, the second one move through the first one and fire, and then the third one would move through the other two and fire. Under OTR's fire combat system, this could knock one, two, or even three stands off an enemy unit before it could reply. This "game tactic" offended my sensibilities (especially after it had been pulled on me a couple of times). I created a "dense target" rule that said if units were in successive lines within 3" of the front edge of the front unit, each such unit received a Morale Hit if the front unit received a Morale or Kill Hit from fire. Looking back at this, the simpler resolution would have been to not permit lines to interpenetrate as later suggested by Paul Koch in a separate Courier article.
Another nit I changed had to do with smoothbore artillery. Smoothbore artillery in the original rules always rolled double dice in close range. As artillery was permitted to move full, unlimber and fire (an abstract way of representing how mobile most ACW artillery could be), another "game tactic" was to keep a smoothbore battery limbered on a road, wait until a propitious moment, and then run the artillery down the road its maximum road move, unlimber within close range of an enemy unit, and blast it with double dice. I changed this to permitting the double dice only when smoothbore artillery was firing on enemy units charging it.
I made a more significant change to the melee system. The original rules used a differential in final melee values to decide the outcome (higher final melee value minus the lower final melee value). The outcome became more decisive with larger differentials. The differential bands went by groups of 25 (1-25, 26-50, 51-75, and 76+). 1 found that unless more than six stands were involved on one or both sides of the melee, the melee tended to produce a differential in the 1-25 band (the least effective result). For example, you could outnumber an enemy unit by three-to-one (say six stands versus two stands) and winning this melee would turn out to be the same as if both sides had six stands. I changed the melee system to use a ratio of the final melee values to determine the effect; the higher the ratio, the more decisive the effect. This avoided the original situation where final melee values of 18 to 2 had the same effect as ones of 40 to 39. Under my revised system, the 18 to 2 became an overrun situation and the other a close fought contest with one side grudgingly giving way. I have since retained this ratio melee system through all the various versions of OTR I have tried out and have used it in self-made home rules.
Various other "improvements" I made at that time included writing a numbering system for the various sections into the rules and charts so one could more quickly locate information; correcting typographical errors and inconsistencies between the charts and the rules; and, incorporating updates to the rules when articles later appeared in The Courier. For example, Paul Koch wrote an article where he changed the morale system to one based on the personality of the division commander. This expanded the morale chart from two columns, Union and Confederate, to several columns, one for each type of commander (poltroon, cautious, and so on). I liked the concept, but further changed it to be based on the experience level and nationality of the brigade rather than the personality of the division commander.
I labeled the new columns "A" through "F." The "A" column was applied to raw units from either side or units temporarily without a division commander (i.e., dead and not yet replaced). The "B" column was applied to Union regular units, the "C" column to Confederate regular units, and so on. I also created a "performance" chart to determine a unit's actual performance (combat value) for a game. I based it on several assumptions: experienced units were more likely to have better performance than inexperienced units, even the best units could have a bad day, and even raw units could have a sterling performance. This chart had columns related to the overall experience/61an level of the unit (raw, regular, veteran, or elite) and rows related to the unit's performance. Each intersection gave a result, or range of results, from the row of a ten-sided die. For example, if a "raw" unit rolled a "6," it had afair performance, whereas if a "veteran7' unit rolled a "6," it had a good performance. I have retained these improvements in one form or another.
As previously mentioned, I didn't play OTR much when I first moved to the Chicago area and also did not play many one-on-one games. After several years I started playing more one-on-one games on a regular basis, mainly with Rick Stoffel, my best gaming buddy. I eventually introduced him to OTR. Previously, I had played OTR mostly using 25 mm figures. Rick and I tried it with 15 nun figures with all ranges and movements cut in half This didn't feel right to Rick, so we tried it again using the 25 mm ranges and movement. He felt this had the right "feet" to it and I also found it worked fine. After several pick up style games, we proceeded to play a campaign using a system and map I had bought through The Zouave magazine (it was based on a hypothetical 1863 Peninsula campaign).
This produced several nice battles we gamed using OTR. After finishing this campaign, we continued to play OTR. Somewhere along the way I changed the fire combat system from full stand elimination to figure elimination as Rick felt the stand elimination was too bloody. This was a relatively simple process of converting the OTR die roll system into a loss chart for stands and then substituting number of figures lost for stands lost. I did the first by creating columns for number of stands firing and rows for the range of die roll results. Using the OTR die roll system (including the catastrophic kill optional rule), I then filled in the blanks. I did the stand to figure loss conversion by treating the loss of two stands as being equal to losing from 7-10 figures, the loss of I full stand as being equal to losing from 3-6 figures, and a morale hit as being equal to losing 1-2 figures. I graded the figure loss from highest to lowest in any given column (low die rolls giving the higher losses). I eventually created more columns by having each column increase by 1-2 figure increments and interpolating losses between the existing columns (I think my engineering background is showing here).
Using 15 mm figures on 1" stands (3 or 4 figures per stand) and 6 stand standard units while still using the 25 mm ranges and movement rates resulted in an in-between scale where a unit represented 2 or 3 merged regiments rather than either a brigade or a regiment. I referred to these as demibrigades. Now this scale situation did not bother Rick at all, but it bothered me. And it is because it bothered me that I subsequently redefined the game's ground and figure scale and called it a regiment level system. Nothing else changed as ranges and movement rates remained the same; I merely redefined what the distances meant and how big a unit was. Now all this took place over a few years. Rick and I played a variety of games, periods, and rule systems during this time. Because he also liked OTR, Rick suggested we use it for the American Revolution period. He had bought a bunch of painted American Revolutionary War (ARW) 25 mm figures (which I eventually bought frOmhim). We decided to do this using an OTR Napoleonic variant I had further developed from the few Sentences on this presented in the published OTR. This ARW set eventually took on a life of its Own with Rick doing a lot of the initial revision and eventually became the "On To Philadelphia7' version I sent to Hal last year (see MWAN #102).
By changing game scale once again, I created another variant to use with "Fire and Fury" (F&F) scaled brigades so Rick and I could do a campaign based on the Gettysburg order of battle in the F&F rules. This variant went back to stand elimination, The problem we ran into was one related to the OB as the Union artillery reserve unit became the dominating unit on the game table (try an original OTR game where the Union has a "division" consisting of 5 artillery units in addition to the normal artillery units attached at corps or division level and you'll get the picture). We lost interest in this campaign and dropped the variant. It is interesting to compare OTR to F&F. Supposedly F&F began life as a variant of OTR and I can see some similarities. The biggest thing I have noticed in comparing the two is I feel the deciding factor in OTR is firepower while I feel the deciding factor in F&F is melee (and you sure want to have a Reb unit to use in melee). Fascinating how two brigade based systems can take such a different approach in perspective.
After another few years went by, I decided I wanted to once again use the 25 mm figures I had from my Knoxville days. I also wanted to be able to play games on a 4'x 6' table with these figures. At one point I had reorganized these figures from OTR standard brigade sized units (6 stands for Union and 8 stands for Confederate) into 3 stand "regiments" for use with an ACW rules set Orv Banasik was developing in the early 1990's. He kindly provided me with several drafts and I had tried them out in several hobby shop games. I eventually decided Orv's set was meant for big battles handled by 1-2 players on a side pushing around a bunch of units (or more players on a really big table pushing around a really large number of units). I liked the system. I felt I just didn't have the number of figures necessary to do these rules justice with 4-5 players on aside. ThebestIcoulddo with the number of figures I had was to give each player only a few units to push around and they would get bored with this because the units didn't last long in combat. Doing much with these rules also ran afoul oftiming. I was trying them out about the same time I was switching from hobby shop games to one-on-one games. For one-on-one games I already had an ACW system I liked (OTR) and thus stopped using Orv's draft ACW system.
Anyway, I had reorganized my units. While looking at them one day, I had one of those "light bulb moments" in which I realized these three stand units of 25 mm figures (12 figures total) had the same frontage as the six stand units of 15 mm figures (24 figures total) Rick and I had been gaming with. This meant I could use the same ranges and movement rates. I initially tried using these 12 figure units using the same combat charts and melee system as for the 24 figure units. I found I wasn't getting enough spread in the firepower results and the melees were pretty bloody with just 2-3 stands on a side as the melee system was using stand elimination. This meant I got to tinker some more (joy, oh joy) and redo the combat process. Solwoundupwithtwo sets of charts. Onelused for games using 15 mm figures and the other I used for games with 25 nun figures. The beauty was I could still use the same gaming table, ranges, and movement distances. I have since found that the visual aspect is a bit different and the play feels slightly different (losing 2 figures out of a 24 figure unit doesn't worry me, but losing 2 figures out of a 12 figure unit does).
I'd like to point out two ideas that Rick came up with that I incorporated into my revised OTR. One idea worked out well and the other I eventually dropped. While we were gradually developing the "On To Philadelphia" ARW variant, Rick suggested modifying the closure to melee process to include a "firefight" phase if units failed to close. This was based on the tendency of charging units to stop and return fire when fired upon during the charge. Getting the unit to continue to close was next to impossible once it had stopped. As a result many charges ended in bloody, short range exchanges of fire with one side or the other eventually backing off. OTR already had a step in its melee process to see if units attempting to close on the front of an enemy unit actually did so. This was based on rolling ID10 and comparing the result to the unit's combat value (CV). If the result did not exceed the CV value, the unit closed to contact. If the result did exceed the CV value, it moved halfway and stopped. If it was in column, it could change to line. In either case, the target unit got to fire at the charging unit. Closure on the flank or rear of an enemy unit was automatic (I redefined what was meant by a flank to prevent players from moving units from a unit's front to its side to get the flank bonus - they had to start from the side for the bonus to apply).
Rick suggested changing the failed to close result to include a short range "firefight" that could last one or two rounds. At the end of each round, each unit rolled 1D10 and compared the result to its CV. If the result exceeded the CV, the unit had to withdraw; if not, the unit stayed. This added some more flavor to the rules and still provided the possibility that a unit that pulled up short on its charge could still force its opposing unit from its position. It also meant that in some situations, a given unit might be able to fire three times during its turn, an oddity I decided to accept given the general abstractness of war games. I view the multiple fires as representing intense close in fighting. Troops tended to fire more rapidly when enemy forces attempted to close. Several articles and books written by ACW veterans commented on how veteran troops could tell when charges were taking place elsewhere on a battlefield by following the sound of the gunfire. The sound would suddenly increase whenever units were close pressed and then drop back down when one side or the other fell back. This "firefight" provision has remained in the ARW variant and has been added to the ACW rules.
A different suggestion involved the use of a unit's CV to determine when it received a morale marker from combat (morale markers must be removed before a unit can do anything). I had been using that anytime a unit lost a figure, it received a morale marker. Rick suggested that this be changed to anytime the unit received losses equal to or greater than half its CV, it would receive a morale marker. If a unit had a CV of 4, it received a morale marker anytime it received 2 or more losses, but would not receive a morale marker if it lost only I figure. I forget the original intent behind the suggestion. It probably was to further emphasize the difference between militia and elite units. I had no objections when Rick proposed this and we used it for about 2-3 years. During that time I gradually noticed that some units seldom received morale markers thus being "good to the last man" and commander passes weren't being used up. This was more prevalent with the ARW variant than with the ACW rules.
I further noticed it when we began to use my revised ACW charts for 25 nun figures. One night I sat down with the various charts and compared them in an attempt to figure out what might account for what I had noticed. I discovered a subtle difference that came into play when using smaller units, especially elite ones. In a nutshell, using smaller units resulted in smaller losses on target units which resulted in triggering the morale marker placement on fewer occasions. And due to the differences between the 15 mm and the 25 mrn ACW fire combat charts, you could have the same sized unit (in terms of represented troops) fire and have different results with the same die roll. I'll give an example using "typical" sized units for the two ACW scales. For the 15 mm ACW scale, the typical unit is 24 figures at a 1-to-20 ratio (480 men). For the 25 mm scale, it is 12 figures at about a 1-to-35 or40 ratio (450-480 men). If each unit fired at an enernyunit with a CV of 4, you would need 2 or more losses to place a morale marker under the CV approach. For the 15 nun scale unit, a die roll result of 6 or less will accomplish this. For the 25 mm scale unit, a die roll result of 4 or less will accomplish this. If I placed a morale marker due to any loss, a die roll result of 8 or less on either chart will result in a loss and placement of a morale marker.
This falls into a category of rules revision I think of as "unintended results." You make a change based on something that seems reasonable and later find it also causes stuff you didn't foresee and this stuff might not be so reasonable. When Rick and I started using this CV basis for placing morale markers, we were primarily playing with the 15 mm ACW charts and the "unintended results"weren't very noticeable. They only became noticeable with much play and the revised charts. Once I discovered what was going on, I thought through what morale markers were suppose to represent and the effect morale markers had on the game. The OTR system uses morale markers instead of morale die rolls to reflect how units respond to bad stuff. A more frequent placement of morale markers in units leaving the game a bit faster than just wearing them away through combat. Andit also forces a player into more decisions about whether or not to use a commander's pass to remove a morale marker. Given my preferences for game play, I decided to stop using the CV approach and go back to the way it had been as it made the game less predictable, shortened the game's overall length, and made a decisive end more likely.
At this same time, I also came up with a different method for reflecting the impact of unit losses on how a unit reacted to removing a morale marker. The original OTR provided a negative modifier for each stand lost from a unit regardless of the original size of the unit. The impact on a 4 stand unit losing a stand was the same as for a 8 stand unit.
I tried various other approaches through the years, but never found anything that was satisfactory. I then came up with an escalating result for various loss bands. This now appears in both "On To Philadelphia7 and the regimental OTR. The most immediate result is to make units increasingly more brittle as losses mount, a reasonable expectation. It also flu-ther adds to deciding when to use a commander's pass as once they're gone, you must roll on the chart and use all modifiers. So do you conserve passes to use late in a game when units are worn down and likely to rout when rolling on the chart or do you use them early to ensure critical moves or combat results take place? I also created a loss chart so a player could quickly determine what range band a unit was in after losing a given number of figures.
The last addition I will cover in this article involves attaching artillery to infantry. This is not in OTR but appears in other rules like Napoleon's Battles. It is very much an abstraction. Attaching artillery to an infantry unit results in fire combat losses being placed first on the infantry unit. The downside for the artillery is movement is restricted to that of the infantry unit and whatever happens to the infantry with regard to removing a morale marker also happens to the artillery. Now this is not to be interpreted as the infantrymen throwing themselves in front of bullets that normally would hwit artillery crew.
The abstraction represents close infantry support for artillery and the comparative target density of two rank fines with files being shoulder-to-shoulder versus the relative dispersion of artillery crew serving guns. It also abstractly represents the tendency of units to fire at what is directly in front of them and not to pick-and-choose their target. A different way of depicting this would have been to force units firing at artillery attached to an infantry unit to split their fire between the artillery unit and the infantry. This in turn would have meant identifying which figures could shoot where and this can get complicated. All in all it seemed simpler to have the attached rule that way it is. The artillery gains "protection" against fire, but ties its fate in with the unit it is being "protected" by. This is an example of how I believe TANSTAAFL (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch) should be applied to war game rules. Nothing should be made invulnerable because that takes the fun out of playing. The flip side is to ensure units that have a strong vulnerability can acquire some protection. And make no mistake about it, once artillery gets into small arms range, it is very vulnerable (which seemed to be the case, especially during the ACW).
I have not covered everything that has gone on in my revising OTR (though it may certainly seem to the reader that I have), but I think I've done enough that it's plain how I turned such a nice, clean, set of brigade level rules into the dirty, complex regimental version I sent Hal.
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