While I have played with metal miniatures since pre-school, I only began wargaming in the formal sense in 1965. In 1977 I was delighted by the publication of Bruce Quarrie’s Napoleon’s Campaigns in Miniature: A Wargamers’ Guide to the Napoleonic Wars 1796—1815. What he had to say influenced me profoundly. It probably influenced others as well. Now that is all very fine and good, except in the matter of his ‘points system’. Bruce approached the point cost of a man based upon the actual cost. What was his salary, his weapon, his uniform, his food, and his horse? How long might he have had to spend in training, while he was being fed and salaried?

It was beautifully precise—though I did wonder if I’d have to hire a staff to run a campaign—but there was one tragic flaw. Bruce was talking about raising the entire army of every European power. This would have given each player the complete armed forces of their nation. Most gamers today do not do this. Most of us can’t.

The average wargamer today plays in one of two ways. Either he is redoing an historical battle, in which points are quite irrelevant, or he is playing a game in which points are used in order to give each side evenly balanced forces. In Bruce’s system French Old Guard is a bargain, particularly compared to Spanish militia. After all, both have to eat, wear clothing, and carry a musket that uses black powder to fire a lead ball.

Indeed, the failing point of most point systems in most wargames, from Warrior to Napoleon’s Battles, is that the point system they have used are—according to their own authors—imbalanced. Any rules system that establishes a points system to balance play, and then establishes an imbalanced point system that gives bargains, is doomed to failure.

Napoleon’s Campaigns then goes on to show how the French have better officers, for whom they pay no more. The French line infantry can march 96 miles in a week, while their Austrian counterparts can only manage 36, and how the French can go from column of march into column of divisions for combat three times faster. I applaud this knowledge, but if your point system gives the French all of this mobility over their opponents and the point system does not accurately reflect the value of this benefit, then the resultant game is bound to be beyond a disappointing failure.

Fred Vietmeyer, in Column, Line, & Square, made everyone equal-—except the British, who shoot better, and the French, who melee better—-but that didn’t last. Every major player wanted his own imbalance tilted his way, so that everyone got special advantages. I remember liking the Bavarians—and being of Bavarian ancestry, that was only natural because they had 45 man line battalions with the same number of line troops as a 36 man French battalion. The French had 24 line and 12 elites, whereas the Bavarians had 24 line and 21 elites. What did I pay extra for that? Nothing, except play balance. I won’t even mention the Bavarian Guard Armored Cuirassiers, who were raised in 1815 and never saw action—except in every minor skirmish in which I participated. I was a real scrub in those days. But I guess we all wanted to gain whatever unfair advantage our troops had, since every other army was doing the same.

My point (get it?) is that a point system has the obligation to give the players a balancing mechanism—particularly for those rules systems that advertise themselves for tournament play—-so that they can form an historical army and get historical results. Every BARGAIN in any rules system is essentially a failure of that rules system!

If the result of a battle should be a reflection of anything, it should be of our tactical skill, rather than our ability to sleaze the system by discovering bizarre nooks and crannies in the point system rules.

WarTopia New Wargame Rules

The latest effort in wargame rules has been put forth by Tim O’Connor in his Wartopia series. I have neither read it nor played it, so I offer neither critique nor praise. However, every time someone writes a great rules system, it’s one we don’t have to write, or rewrite with entire booklets of local house rules. So I wish him well.