Part the First: The Evils of Figure Scales
I recently played an American Revolution game with a guy who paints beautiful, individually- mounted 25mm figures. He prefers the individual mounting because he likes to knock down the "dead guys" and leave the casualties strewn about the field. It gives him a good sense of the battle as a thing in motion, not to mention as a big mess. I must admit, it is fun to do. It reminds me of my boyhood with plastic "army men" in the dirt of my parents' garden. All wargaming was 1:1 scale in those days. We didn't try to envision that a miniature represented anything other than the man he was cast to represent.
I've always been a "big battles" kind of guy, though, and so figure scale was important to me. In my favorite period (horse and musket) I gravitate toward the famous actions like Waterloo, Borodino, Chancellorsville, and so on. I've experimented with many different figure scales over the years, and it seems that even when I didn't have any problems with the way they worked, somebody else did. So I've finally arrived at a solution to the problems of figure scale in wargames: I don't use it at all.
What I mean is that I no longer pretend to have any relationship at all between the number of miniatures on my bases, and the number of historical men that that base supposedly represents. (Here goes my poor, blackened heretic's body up yet another gallows ... ) This really seems to bother a lot of people.
Let's be honest about this for a moment, shall we? Miniatures were never "to scale," anyway. I don't care which figure size or basing system you use; none of them work out right. At a 1:50 ground scale, for instance (1" equals 50 yards), your 25mm figures would be men approximately 15 stories tall! Even the tiny 6mm figures would be 24-foot-tall Goliaths. So miniatures are never right in vertical scale.
They're not right in depth, either. Let's take a look at all those traditional 1:60 battalion-level games which use the basing system of Empire. Our 12-figure infantry battalion deployed in line is one-half inch deep. That's 25 yards, or 75 feet. But an actual Napoleonic French infantry battalion in line would have been exactly 117" deep, or less than ten feet. (And that's a three-rank line; the British would have been even more shallow.) Our base depth should therefore be only about one-eighth of an inch. That's too small for any miniatures except maybe the microscopic 2mm figures.
Place the companies into an attack column (a "column of divisions") and it gets even worse. We've all seen the squarish blocks of figures advancing across the table: Here come the French in their columns! But an actual column of divisions was very shallow. It was, after all, only three companies (nine men) deep. Instead of that square, it should be a thin rectangle only a little more than half an inch deep.
Cavalry is worse still. A two-rank cavalry line would be about 20 feet deep, which at the 1:50 game scale should be a base only one-sixth of an inch! I think gamers are going to have to invent some very short horses.
Fine, Sam, you say, but we're not just representing the men. We're also representing an area of empty space around that unit, in which no other unit is present. You would be exactly right to say that. And now that we've admitted as much - now that we concede that most of our base-stands actually represent empty space - why, exactly, are we so uptight about scale at all? Surely if you admit that your base-scale is off by about six hundred percent, then you'd be willing to admit that scale itself is pointless? If you say, "No, No - scale is very important!" then kindly tell me why you don't make the figures and bases to scale?
Problems of figures and scale get even more absurd when we begin "killing" figures. In the old days of wargaming, figures fell over and died, like our plastic army men. That meant, of course, that the frontage of a unit changed rather abruptly. If you argue that scale is truly literal - if you say that that blast from the cannons literally killed exactly 120 men - then you can get away with this rationalization, and remove those two figures, arguing that the officers and NCOs have dressed the ranks and pulled in the survivors.
But virtually every game designer takes great pains to remind you that casualties are not to be taken literally. A "hit" is not supposed to represent the loss of life of exactly X number of men, but rather a combination of bloodshed and loss of esprit de corps, and loss of cohesion, and so on. After all, taking those hits will probably cause you take a morale check, with some negative modifier related to the number of hits you took. If the hits don't represent dead guys per se, then they must represent morale, otherwise you wouldn't check morale when taking a hit. Most games ask you to imagine that the men of this unit have a morale level of Y, which has a declining value relative to the casualties it suffers. Since dead men don't check morale, we must assume therefore that living men are affected by fire in this manner. Ergo: hits don't directly represent bloodshed.
If you admit that hits don't directly represent a specific number of men killed, then you've lost yet another reason to use a figure scale. Hits can be applied to a unit, and that unit's morale can be checked: all of the above-stated mechanisms can be performed without having to wed yourself to a specific "one figure equals..." formula.
Finally, precise figure scales require gamers to make-believe in a sort of generic infantry battalion or cavalry regiment, and then pretend that all the battalions in the army looked that way.
We've all read the parade states for various battles. One battalion has 850 men. Another has 270 men. Another has 549. This Cuirassier regiment has only two squadrons present, and it's temporarily brigaded with this one Dragoon regiment. Meanwhile, there is one squadron from each of the three following Hussar regiments, and half of this understrength Chasseur regiment....
I have always been amused that the gamers who claim most fiercely to be Historical Simulators nonetheless play these games where they base generic units and then do more fudging of strengths and figures than a Mafla don's accountant. I have never seen an order of battle that looks like the units prescribed by most miniatures rules. No matter what scale they use on paper, gamers always end up fudging it to accommodate historical fact, or simply ignoring historical fact in order to accommodate the stupid rules about scale.
Part the Second: the Evils of Time Scales
If you think figure scales are frustrating to model, just try modeling time! The basic problem here is that we are dealing with perception, not actual ticks of a clock. We've all had the experience of time "flying by" or "dragging by," depending on our state of mind, the conditions of our work, and many other things.
Human beings can be trained to perform tasks. Those tasks can be estimated to take a certain amount of time. But the fact is that humans are supremely illogical and undependable creatures. A man who might take 40 minutes to perform a task on Monday might take an hour to perform it on Tuesday. And what if he's been fighting with his wife, or his stomach aches, or it's unseasonably cold, or.... In short, it is always hard to predict how we use time, and what results come of it.
Wargame rules would have you believe that not only one, but hundreds and thousands of men can be predictably "clocked" to do all sorts of things: everything from marching across a field, to changing formations, to carrying a dispatch, to (literally) thinking. Many wargames use a command system that is wedded to specific increments of time. The most glaring example has to be From Valmy to Waterloo, in which the French command system in 1809 allows them to change orders every thirty minutes, while the Russian command system allows them to change orders only once every 90 minutes. This is a classic example of ignoring reality in order to make a "simulation.'' Imagine every single general in the entire French army, in every battle everywhere in Europe, under all weather conditions and all times of day... all of them ticking away to a massive synchronized clock in Paris. Every thirty minutes a buzzer goes off and they can write orders. Meanwhile, the poor Russians have to wait for every third buzzer.
But you will protest: No, no, Sam, it's not to be taken literally. It's just a game mechanic, just a system by which we show that the French staff was three times faster than that of the Russians... Here we go again. If you admit that the time scale is not to be taken literally, then why are you using a time scale at all?
This relates, also, to ground scale. Many people have pointed out over the years that the movement rates attributed to units in wargames don't fit with the time and ground scales. We know, for instance, that Prussian infantry marched at a normal pace of about 140 feet per minute. If we use a 15-minute game turn, and our standard 1:50 ground scale, then they should be able to march about 14.4" in a turn (and much faster at quick-time.) A brief look through the games on my shelf that use this scale, though, reveals the following:
Line infantry movement rates in a 15-minute turn: (Games which do not use 15-minute turns have been converted to 15 minutes, for purposes of comparison. Thus, if they move "X" in a 20-minute turn, I calculated what that would be in 15 minutes.)
- Empire: 6" in column, 3" in line.
FVT-W: 7" in column, 3" in line.
Shako: 6" in column, 2" in line.
Piquet: 4" in column, 3" in line
As you might have imagined, cavalry movement rates are even less accurate in most games. George Nafziger estimates that cavalry "walked" at a speed of about 330 feet per minute. In our 1:50 game scale, with a 15 minute turn, that yields a 33" movement rate. Double that if you want them to trot. If you intend to gallop... well, they should be able to move across the table and halfway through the kitchen.
Why do the wargame movement rates seem so low? In some of the cases listed above, they are less than a third of the speed that the Prussian regulations state for their infantry. Most game designers answer that here again we shouldn't be taking things so literally: the infantry is moving for part of the turn, and perhaps there is confusion here and there. This isn't a parade-ground, after all.
By this point you know my response. If you admit that time and distance are all fuzzy and variable for any two units and two occasions, then why use a standard move ment/ti me/g round scale at all? Why go through the motions to rationalize a generic number that isn't a direct representation of anything?
Any game designer would concede that a cavalry unit should not be moving 33" in a single turn, as that would make it able to cross the entire table in just two turns. But once again "game logic" is interfering with reality. Most game designers make decisions based upon how one rule in their system interacts with the other rules. In other words, you make up your rules, and then you give the units capabilities that allow the rules to work. Fine. I have no problem with that. That's how I do it, too. But please - let's stop pretending it's a "simulation."
Part the Last: In Which Our Hero Indulges in Shameless Self-Promotion
For the past year I've been playtesting my new large-scale Napoleonics game, Grande Artn4~e, and I've developed a number of systems which do away with most notions of figure scale, time scale, and the relationship between game turns and movement rates. I don't want to get too specific and blow the surprises (or the trademark) when the game comes out this Fall, but I'd like to sketch out the big ideas.
Grande Armee has no figure scale. Base-sizes are standardized, on the assumption that they will represent roughly X-number of men (a "brigade" sized unit of 2,000 - 4,000, usually.) On that base you can put any number or size of figures you like. I use the actual historical number of men in the unit, then divide it by a divisor which corresponds to the unit's morale rating. The result is the unit's "Strength Points" (SPs) which are thus a representation of both manpower and morale, since one was divided into the other. (A brigade of 2,000 Guards might have 10SPs, while a brigade of 2,000 Landwehr would only have 4). No morale checks. It's extremely simple, yet uses exact historical OBs.
Early in the design phase, I was puzzling over how to reflect the damage done by artillery fire. After all, if you don't have a figure scale, how do you say how many men are "hit" by a shot? The answer is that you don't have to say. A "shot" takes away SPs in an arbitrary fashion, just like in any other rules. But since we've already established that a unit's SPs are a function of both its morale and its numerical strength, that one shot will have a different result on the Guard than it will have on the Landwehr. The system solves itself. One SP of Guards, after all, represents fewer men than one SP of Landwehr. Therefore, the better units get hit by the same cannonballs, and probably die at the same rate, but they hang in there longer because their morale is better. In most games that's a two-step process: you take the lhits, then you check morale. In Grande Armee, it's all rolled up into one. And unlike morale checks, which are either/or outcomes, this allows for incremental stages of morale loss.
The game also uses no time scale at all. A "day of battle" has a variable number of turns, and players don't know exactly how many turns the: day will have. (it's based on the weather and a die roll made at the end of each compipted turn.) The turns are variable in length, and players can't predict that, either. Some turns drag on forever and some end quickly, before you've been able to do everythi,ng you wanted to do.
Within each turn the players get a cup-full of chits for Command Points (CPS). These are then spent activating and/or exerting control over parts of one's army. They represent a literal "spending of time." The number of CPs you get is variable, based on the skill of your commanding general, and a die roll. The idea is that you spend them judiciously, because you don't know how long the turn will last. The further distant you are from the major forces of your army, the more CPs you have to spend to manipulate those forces (else they act on their own, in ways sometimes injurious to your plans.)
The spending of CPs reflects that a general can only concentrate on so many things at a time, and if he devotes a great deal of time and attention to X, then he loses his grip on Y and Z. The basic model here is chaos: your army is not under your control if you don't actually expend your "attention" to control it. Your relationship to time is thus very personal and variable: you are constantly in a struggle against time.
I understand that some players might not like the idea of not having a "clock." I admit, it can be fun to say, "Okay, it's now 4:30 PM in game-time..." But think about the reason that most gamers say that. It's because we're omniscient to an absurd degree, with a knowledge not only of what time it is, but also how many more turns we have left, and exactly what can and can't happen in each of those turns, and in what order. What I did with Grande Armee was eliminate that sure-fire knowledge that it's all over on Turn 8. Both commanders will know roughly how much time they have to fight the battle. But once the battle has gotten underway, they are distracted, and always a little behind the curve of events. Both commanders will have a sense for roughly when the battle is drawing to a close. Maybe, like Napoleon at Marengo, they can snatch a few extra turns out of the end of the game and turn things around. But you can't bet on that.
Finally, we should bear in mind that the entire concept of a "turn" as it exists in most wargames is an utterly artificial creation which has nothing to do with the way that a battle unfolded. Time flows differently for different people in different situations. Better organized people have a better command of time, and are more efficient in their work. Better commanders can do more things at once. They are (as one biographer of Wellington put it), good "battlefield managers."
Movement rates are variable, as are the effects of terrain. This is done with only a single die roll, which also handles things like junior officers who decide to attack even when you don't want them to, or those who won't attack even though you do want them to. Most small-unit tactics are completely out of your hands, since you're far away at Army HQ; whether your cavalry pursues or not, whether your artillery fires and, relocates in the face of an enemy attack, the formations your brigadiers adopt, the use of skirmishers - all these things are done with a die, unless you are so close to the units in question (weather and visibility permitting) that you could actually spend CPs on individual units, rather than on "orders" to your sub-commanders. (There are no written orders, by the way. Once again, this is abstracted by the use of CPs.)
One of the cool things about doing away with time scales is that you can justify any number of possible variations in the way units move. It is possible, although unlikely, that infantry can move more than cavalry in a single "pulse" of the game. This is because we are simulating time as well as speed. Perhaps the cavalry did not start moving at the same time. Perhaps its officers halted it for some reason. Just because two events occur in a pulse does not mean that they occur at the same time, nor take the same amount of time to complete. Generally, yes, cavalry will be faster than infantry.
The goal here is to separate your intentions as much as possible from the outcomes, particularly when dealing with units that would be far away from the commander's eye. Of course it makes sense that we should be able to move cavalry faster than infantry. But remember that we think that way because we the players are hovering over every unit in the army, and we have frozen time suddenly in this turn, and we act with each unit precisely how we wish, then we advance time another frozen increment, and do it all again, and so on. Most turn-based wargames represent a kind of slide-show of time, and we can push the "advance" button whenever we want. Grande Armee tries to make your control of things sluggish and unpredictable. So you move your cavalry, but perhaps it hasn't quite worked out the way you intended. Given that you're two miles away and can't see either the cavalry or the enemy infantry it's supposedly trying to contact, even this is probably too much precision.
Finally, I want to place these comments within the context of what I feel is the other "alternative time scale" game on the market right now: Piquet by Bob Jones.
There isn't much similarity between Piquet and Grande Armee, although Bob and I were motivated to these designs by the same frustrations with existing systems. For one thing, my game is not as ambitious as his, nor as flexible. It's purely about Napoleonics, and it has many systems that simply wouldn't make sense if applied to a different period of history. The scales are different, with Piquet being more tactical in orientation, and Grande Armee grand-tactical.
Both games try to tackle this concept of time as a liquid and unpredictable substance, but do so in very different ways. I like Piquet, and play it about once a year, but Bob's conception of the commander isn't my cup of tea. When I play Piquet I always feel at the mercy of the dumb luck of the d20 and the deck of cards. A card comes up, and I have to do what it says (or do nothing). Then another card comes Lip, and so on. The only decision I ever make as commander is a Yes or No decision: do I act on this card I just drew, or not?
I would argue that a commander does not depend so totally on random chance. My premise is that the commander does have a degree of control, but it's a limited degree, and a limited kind of control. The better commander has more control (he gets more CPs), but even the poor commander has some. With those CPs he makes his choices about what he wants to control, and what he will leave to his subordinates, to chance, or to the initiative of the enemy. A good commander doesn't wait for fate to hand him the right card.
By the time this article sees print in MWAN, I will have finished the Gr,7170~ Armee playtests in New York, and my blind playtesters will have sent in their last battlereports on the scenarios. Now comes the photography and page layout, and all that jazz. For those of you time/scale weirclos like me who want a crack at the game just before it comes out, look for me at Historicon.
Back to MWAN #116 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2002 Hal Thinglum
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