When we get together to recreate the great battles in history on the game table, we really can put on a spectacle! Lots of brightly colored pieces of lead on grass that would be the envy of the neighbors in my neighborhood! All the units contain (at whatever ratio the rules use) 100% TO&E. Nobody is sick, tired, hungry, and thirsty and has all of their canteens and cartridge boxes full! Our gaily painted mounted generals preside over swarms of little men who are looking every which way, waving their muskets in every conceivable direction the sculptor could devise yet still be able to cast up. Funny, these units look more like they are ready to run away during this meeting engagement than fight for the honor of their owners!
Sound like one of your typical "historical" wargames? The only thing historical about the settings is that the figures have been meticulously researched out and appropriately painted. Seems that is where the history ends. For the rest of the game, well, those little guys might as well be Orkz and Dwarvez!
"Hey, I'm only playing a game with toy soldiers, here! Gimmie a break!" Well that's fine! Just don't claim to be "Historical Miniature Gamers"! So what IS a Historical Miniature Garner?
My definition: "A person who does all within his/her abilities to capture the essence of the historical environment, in miniature, before the start of game turn one." This includes choosing rules sets that will allow one to model those factors that were important to the period yet remain fun and playable. Contrary to popular myth, one CAN capture the essence of the EFFECTS of real life without having to navigate through reams of rules!
Let's take a look at an example to better illustrate what I am really ranting about:
If you are actually fighting a TRUE meeting engagement, by the nature of the term, BOTH forces are (and have been) moving for a while. In the real world, your soldiers will have a certain degree of fatigue, thirst, straggling, and confusion upon encountering the enemy. Don't forget that the weather, terrain and unknown enemy strength should act to intensify these physical conditions imposed on real-life men. Modeling these conditions SHOULD be set by the scenario.... NOT the rules set.
Unfortunately, while most accounts of battles will address these aspects as they go on to describe the conditions of battle, the poor guy saddled with coming up with today's scenario didn't have time (nor inclination) to address these issues for today's game. But hey, my fellow tabletop warriors, he is NOT alone!
Scenario writing (the really good ones) is a hard thing to do! I'd wager that across the country, the "Meeting Engagement" is the most used type of scenario. Why? Because it requires the least amount of thought, pre-game preparations and set-up. One can more quickly get started beating the bejezus out of your enemy! Now this is just fine for the crowd that are just "garners", but this sort of game lacks "something" to the Historical Miniature Gamer. If one is willing to get the right number of buttons or the right shade of blue applied to our beautiful minis, then why not take a bit more time to put the HISTORY into the HISTORICAL game?
Let me change the tone of this article from making fun of our fellow gaming brethren and touch upon a few more points that seem to be missed by many. Each of these points can spawn quite a few articles in and of themselves, but I just want to provide some food for thought. Hopefully, this food will nurture new ways that we (as a whole) can inject history back into our games. Hopefully, adding more environment and history will result in a deeper enjoyment from our games. For many of us, who don't get as much time to play as others, the enjoyment factor can stand a bit of enhancement, IMHO. Throughout history, technology changes. So does the economic, political and social conditions change. There are MANY other things that do not change throughout history, Man being the most important. (I have yet to read a history book about man fighting any other organized life form other than man.) A few other items for you to consider are:
- 1. How did the armies get to the battlefield?
2. Armies need to eat. Ever consider how they got food to eat?
3. Ever think about how many wagons it takes to feed the horses that are pulling the supply wagon train?
4. Where did armies encamp to sleep and why at that location?
5. Why is this battle being fought? What makes this piece of real estate worth fighting for?
6. What are truly the effects of weather on our armies? How do we depict the EFFECTS of weather upon the performance of our units in both movement and combats?
7. The man of the 1700's is NOT the same man of the 2000's. Consider factors like, education, nutrition, how big a part of the man's life religion played, family ties, trust in their leaders (or lack there of), what happens if you get wounded on the battlefield, training of the men, training of their leaders, experience of the men serving under THESE leaders, etc. Sorry, NOT an issue of morale; it's an issue directly related to unit effectiveness.
8. The earth is not flat like a ping-pong table. How can we model/simulate the undulations in the ground that actually provide cover and concealment of entire units? (Frederick the Great used such undulation of terrain to mask the oblique order maneuvers against many of his enemies. The same can be said for the US Sherman tanks engaging German tanks in WWII.)
9. In what order did armies march? Which units were in the lead? Who were in the rear? Why? How did a body of troops deploy from route march into combat formations? How did they know where to line up? How long did it take to deploy?
10. Are the time, distance and special relationships considered in the rules we use? Are they "close"? Many rules sets allow a horse and musket era unit to shoot further than their frontage. Take a unit of 600 men in three ranks. Allow two feet per man and you get a frontage of 400 feet. That's approximately 134 yards. If the leftmost and rightmost man were to take two steps forward, turn and shoot at each other, they probably could not hit each other! (OK, unless the unit is a unit of sharpshooters!) Most effective firefight range throughout history seems to have hovered around 50 yards! At 50 yards, you can see and probably hear the other side with enough clarity that disorder can be easily recognized.
11. Casualties are NOT what stops a unit from being effective! The more guns shooting does not directly relate to more casualties! It should be the effect of the casualties on the unit's leadership's ability to control the men that should be quantified. In any period of history, you can find examples of units running away with little or no casualties while others fighting to nearly the last man! Clearly, folks, the effectiveness of a unit ability to function, as a unit is NOT directly linked to casualties! (Bet that starts some flame wars!) There MUST be something else!
12. What is an Officer? What does he really do? How does ho do it? What can he do? What can he not do? Why?
There you have a dozen items to ponder. Like I said earlier, each one can spawn several articles by themselves. The real question is, "How well do the rules I am using address these issues?" or "How can my games better model the EFFECTS of the history on the game I am about to put on?" It's time to say "goodbye" to many concepts that have been perpetuated for the last 30+ years! They were early attempts to address many of these issues, but it has been too easy for designers to feel that garners MUST have casualties and morale or else the game is not historical! We will never have realistic games of war. Unless you smash your casualties with a hammer when "killed", our little armies can "die" in this game and "live" to fight another day! Our rules should strive to model the effects of all the factors of history and the environment have on the effectiveness of our units. It doesn't have to be complex, just factored in so that when we play the role of a certain commander, we can better appreciate the difficulties the real life officer had to deal with. Such scenarios that do make the attempt to consider real world conditions usually provide the most intense games for the players!
I hope that next time you get ready to play, you grab a book about the battle you are about to fight and get a grasp of what actually happened.
Compare how well your miniature battle followed the actual battle. What concerns played a part in the real one and what concerns were you dealing with in your game? Any similarities? Did you walk away feeling that you just fought the same battle as you have read? If so, I'll also bet that you enjoyed the game more than the rest, lately! (Unless you lost ... then blame your dice!)
Back to MWAN # 127 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum
This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com