A short time ago I had the opportunity to host an American Civil War miniatures game in 15mm. The rules to be used were the old standby called RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG by BATTLELINE. It is a fairly straightforward set of rules and one with which all of the players in our group were familiar. This time I decided to try something completely different to possibly better reflect some of the problems of command control that might be experienced by a brigade commander during the Civil War. The typical command that is manageable in these rules is about a brigade of infantry with attached artillery. This comes out to anywhere between 4 to 6 regiments of 12 to 24 figures each and from 1 to 4 pieces of artillery representing 2 gun batteries. Altogether we are talking about 100 figures per player. There were to be 3 brigades actively engaged on each side and a fourth command given to the division commander to act as the reserve. The situation was really nothing elaborate. The Confederates held a small town and had strong forces moving through to attack towards the Union rear while the Yankees were moving up strong forces to support an exposed brigade on a hilltop position not far from the town and its crossroads. The briefing of both sides was done in the normal manner and there was nothing unusual about the strategy sessions. All players were then advised to write exact set up orders for their respective brigades as well as general orders that they would begin the game with a d continue following until notified of changes by messenger. We also were using a handful Of house rules that we always use for Civil War but beyond that all appeared to be heading for a conventional game. It was after all of this was accomplished that I hit them with the special command control part of the rules. Each player was to hand his setup orders to a player on the opposing side to set up and vice-versa. This in itself was cause for not just a little confusion. Players who had not been too specific or clear at diagramming their positions were not too happy with the way the initial deployments looked, but it was too late to do anything about it now. The players were then informed that they would be moving the troops of the opposing side in accordance with the orders written for them. They were still responsible for writing orders for their own brigade which would be moved by an opposing player. This insured that troops would only be moved according to written orders and that any unclear and/or incomplete orders would cause realistic problems for the regiments in that brigade. In addition, each player would resolve fire using the enemy unit he was moving to fire on other friendly troops (not his own brigade). He would then be responsible to send any pertinent situation reports to the commander of the brigade he fired on (who would be a player on his own side) to let him know how his brigade was faring in the action. In turn he would get a situation report about how his own brigade was doing from someone else on his own side and he must make decisions on this limited (and often confusing) intelligence. To further clarify this let me give you an example; Union General Hooker issues orders to the regiments of his own brigade; he executes movement and fire for Confederate General Hood's brigade onto and against Union General Meade's brigade. He then writes a situation report to Meade (when needed) about what is going on with that brigade. Hooker then gets situation reports from the other Union player that is fighting against his brigade elsewhere an the field and issues new orders to his brigade accordingly. Mass Confusion! After the first turn or two of this the players caught on pretty well as to what they were supposed to do. They also realised just what a problem it was to get their troops into action when they were thusly removed from 'hands on' control of them. Players wrote orders that they themselves later admitted were confused or even contradictory. Units spent precious time deploying and then re-deploying to correct errors in judgement or confusion in orders written. The Union reserve had moved a total of only half the distance it would have normally moved due to order writing problems. The exposed Union brigade on the hilltop position held throughout the entire game due to the difficulty the Confederates had in bringing the weight of 3 brigades against it. Basically, the system, although relatively simple to implement, cause problems Out Of all proportion to what you might think. This made it clear to all that there was more to command control than they thought. All players were new to the system and it threw them. Too specific or too vague orders were the worst problem. With this experience behind them, they would certainly fare much better next time. The reasoning behind the system used was to make it more difficult than usual for a player to bring his brigade into action. First of all, he would be subject to someone else (an enemy commander) moving his troops according to his orders. Therefore, nothing was assumed by the player moving troops. Orders were strictly followed when they were understood. Each player had troops to physically move and fire so he was an active participant in the game. All same though, the players had a hard time giving ful attention to every last detail of the actions of their own brigades. The players also had to write situation for units that didn't have anything to do with their own and base the decisions about their own brigades on these same kind of reports coming to them from other players on their own side. The total effect was to remove the player as much as possible from the position of knowing all and seeing all about his brigade to one of having to make decisions from a distance, based on incomplete information within a short amount of time to really analyse the situation. It was this aspect that led to much confusion because players didn't understand why their troops were not performing the way they wanted them to because they hadn't given them the proper orders to carry out. As a result, the game developed more like an actual battle, more slowly and with more mistakes and confusion than we are used to seeing in a typical wargame. There were many times when weakness or mistakes went unexploited by the enemy because they were simply too slow to react. Other times when things worked out perfectly due to good planning as well. To summarize, the unorthodox system was simple to implement and it worked very well at this level of c ommand. It is something we will try again. I can recommend it highly for those of you look for a change of pace and a little mass confusion in your gaming. Back to MWAN # 24 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1986 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